Water Energy

That is why a shower changes your mood. It is why a swim in the ocean can fix a week that nothing else could touch. It is why nearly every tradition on earth, going back as far as we have records, has some form of washing before anything spiritual is done. Baptism, the wudu before prayer, the mikveh, the bathing ghats on the Ganges. Your ancestors knew this. Somewhere along the way we decided a bath was only about dirt.

What water does

Water takes on the energy of whatever it touches. That is its nature, and it is why it is such a good clearer. Run it over your skin and it picks up what is sitting on the surface of you, the residue of the day, and takes it away with it. Sit in it and it works deeper. Move through a large body of it and it works deeper still.

It also carries energy toward you. Water that has been moving, a river, the sea, rain, arrives charged, and you feel that the moment you step into it. Water that has been sitting still in a tank carries less. Notice the difference, without getting precious about it.

The washing ritual

Here is the exercise, and it is the third week of learning energy control in the way I teach it, after the big toes and the tension and release from the body energy page.

Before you meditate, wash your hands and your feet. Warm water in a basin, or a running tap if that is easier. A little scented oil in the water helps, because the smell builds the picture, and lavender or sandalwood are both good.

As the water runs over your skin, see healing energy and love flowing with it and soaking in through your hands and feet. Then see anything negative you have picked up during the day loosening from your skin and washing away with the water, down the drain and gone.

Pat your hands and feet dry slowly, still holding the picture, seeing love going into them as you dry. Then sit down, do your tension and release, and begin your breathing meditation.

You will find that meditation goes deeper, faster, when you do this. The water has done half the work of clearing before you even close your eyes. I still do it, decades on, before anything that matters.

Bathing is more than water

A bath is sitting in a body of water to get clean, and the cleaning goes deeper than the skin. Whether it is a tub, a spa, a rock pool or the sea, you come out carrying less than you went in with.

Now widen the idea, because this is where it gets useful.

Walk into a forest and you are forest bathing. Walk into a crowd and you are crowd bathing. Go to the zoo and you are animal bathing. Sit in a house full of arguments and you are bathing in that. Whatever you have an abundance of around you, you are bathing in it, and you are soaking up its energy exactly the way your skin soaks up the bath.

So the question becomes: what are you bathing in most days? Is it cleansing you, or coating you? Is it for your higher good? Does it help your learning? Is it good for all five aspects of your health, spiritual, physical, mental, emotional and sexual?

Once you see your days this way, some of the places you spend time in and some of the people you spend it with start to look different. Knowing what you are soaking in is the point, so you can wash it off afterwards, and it does not mean running away from any of them.

The sea

If you live anywhere near the coast, the ocean is the biggest clearing tool you will ever have and it is free.

Get in it. Even to the knees. Salt water takes energy off you that nothing else will shift. It is the fastest way I know to recover after a heavy day of reading for people, or after sitting with somebody in real pain, or after a family event that went the way family events go. Twenty minutes in the sea and I am myself again.

If you cannot get in, sit close enough to hear it. The sound of it is doing some of the work on its own, which the sound energy page explains.

And if the sea is a long drive, a river will do, and a bath with a good handful of sea salt in it will do at a pinch. Sit in it until the water goes cool, and let it out while you are still in the tub so you can feel it draining away from you.

Drink it too

The water you drink is the water your body is made of, and your body is your instrument. Drink enough of it. And every so often, drink a glass of it with a little attention, standing still, rather than gulping it at the sink between jobs. Everything else in this area works better on a body that is not running dry, and a surprising amount of what people call feeling flat is simply thirst.

The mistakes people make

Washing without the picture. The water on its own does some of the work. The water with your attention on what it is carrying away does all of it. The visualisation is the exercise.

Using the shower as an escape rather than a clearing. Standing under hot water for twenty minutes replaying an argument is bathing in the argument. Decide what you are washing off before you turn the tap on.

Forgetting to fill up after you clear. Water clears. It does not always refill. After a big clearing, do something from the earth energy page or the memory energy page so you are not walking around empty.

Treating it as a special occasion. Washing your hands and feet before you sit takes two minutes. Make it ordinary.

Water clears. Use it.