Increase Awareness and Cultivate a Fluidity of Being

Water is essential for life. It’s needed for cleansing, to purify and to sustain our human existence. Water can also teach us a lot about how to approach our lives, especially if it’s our desire to live with more fluidity, flexibility and a gentle and patient strength. 

As far as our physical bodies go, we’re made up of about 60 percent water, which is critical to maintaining optimal health at best, and survival at the very least. To be precise, the brain and heart are composed of 73 percent water, the lungs about 83 percent  water, the skin 64 percent water, muscles and kidneys 79 percent water and, at 31 percent, even the bones are watery. 

According to The USGS’s Water Science School’s article, Water in You: Water and the Human Body,  “Water serves a number of essential functions to keep us all going.” Their list highlights many of the amazing feats that water does for us everyday. Water is a vital nutrient to the life of every cell. It regulates our internal body temperature through sweating and respiration. All of the carbohydrates and proteins in our bodies are transported and metabolized by water in the bloodstream (it’s called a stream for a reason). It assists in flushing waste through sweat and urination. Water acts as a shock absorber for the brain, spinal cord and a fetus. It forms saliva, lubricates joints and helps deliver oxygen all over the body. Water is also needed by the brain to manufacture hormones and neurotransmitters. 

Beyond water being vital for the survival of humans and all other life on Earth, it is also powerful, patient, perservient, resilient and adaptable. With perseverance, water can cut through mountains, like the Grand Canyon, and change rock. It is powerful in its ability to erode stone and provide energy. It can be so still that it almost appears as glass, so gentle as it soothes achy limbs and so powerful that it can extinguish raging forest fires. It is also a shape shifter, adapting to any container it is put into and/or temperature it is immersed within. And, it is highly adaptable as it changes from gas to liquid to ice depending on the conditions around it. 

Be Like Water

“Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.” 

-Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, Chapter 78 

Lao Tzu (also known as Laozi or Lao Tze) was a Chinese philosopher credited with founding Taoism who lived in 500 BCE, the same time period as the Buddha. He (or a collection of people because Lao Tze means old teacher) invited us to think about ourselves as though we are water. As quoted above, Lao Tze proposed that nothing is as soft and yielding as water and, yet, as supreme at dissolving the hard and inflexible. 

As you ponder Lao Tzu’s famous words, I invite you to expand your perception and increase awareness as you think of yourself as though you are like water. Water, as Lao Tze also observed, can always change shape. You put it in a bowl— round. In a square container—square. You freeze it—solid. You boil it—gas. It rains, it snows, it fogs, it floods.  You take a glass of water and dump it in the ocean and it becomes part of the ocean. You put food coloring in it and it becomes that color.  Water survives many different circumstances by adapting and taking on many different forms.  

Journal Prompts: Call In Water As A Guide

Water purifies.
Water quells.
Water softens.
Water is strength.
Water adapts.
Water perseveres.
Water flows.

In an exercise to increase awareness, I invite you to take some time to consider the ways in which you’ve acted that you would describe as hard, inflexible, rigid or controlling. The following journal prompts can help. 

In what ways have you noticed yourself acting hard or with rigidity?

Do you find that you push hard to control the people, situations and circumstances in your life? If so, who, what, when and how? 

Are you overly hard on yourself? In what ways?

How have your attempts at pushing a certain agenda or way of being served you in the past? How have they proved to be a disservice?  

Perhaps you notice that you are too easy-going, always going “with the flow’”as a people-pleasing strategy.  Can you imagine being a bit more boundaried ? A riiver flows, but it also has the riverbanks that keeps it contained..  

Are you too easy-going with yourself?  Letting yourself not be accountable, telling yourself it  “doesn’t matter?”  This kind of complacency often causes damage to your own self-esteem and leads to procrastination.  

After taking a moment to reflect on your answers above, consider the following questions. Jotting your reflections down in a journal can help slow down your thinking/feeling processes and gives you something to return to when you notice yourself behaving in ways that feel rigid, hard or inflexible. 

In what ways do you or could you adopt qualities of water, such as being flexible, patient, flowing or adaptable? 

Where in your life could you soften? How would or could a softening improve relationships (both with yourself and others), mitigate stress and/or support you in seeing a situation or the broader scope of your life from a different perspective? 

As you lean into being more like water, how could you use water to connect with this extraordinary element? For instance, taking a luxurious bath, sipping tea or taking a walk in the rain, or making snow angels during a snowstorm. 

Jot down four or five qualities that you associate with water. Next to each, list three ways that you can weave that quality into your life. 

The Fluidity Of Being  

When we increase awareness through visualizing ourselves as water, we can be the one who softens a resentment or melts disagreement. When we act as water does, we can be both patient and powerful when faced with adversity.  When we flow as a river does, we can trust in our path, knowing that we can adapt to different landscapes, finding our way past obstructions and eventually merging into something new. 

Just as water can transform from a flowing moving energy to an iced coldness, so can we. If we need to set a firm boundary, we can flow along a set of banks. If we see a need to be warm and gentle, we can soften. This fluidity does not change our essence. Rather, being in a flow like water helps us to adapt, to grow and to know and trust in our inherent ability to transform, own our power and embrace our softness as we cleanse, purify and heal.

In this ever-changing universe, taking a more gentle and nourishing approach to life can serve us well. Being a little less rigid and a little more in the flow helps us dance between polarities. When we’re more receptive and adaptable, we become more resilient to change. When, like water, we know that the soft will inevitably overcome the hard, we live with more flexibility and strength. We know that soft things don’t break as easily as the rigid, so we bend instead, soft and supple, and live life in a continuous flow.