streams

Why Are We Drawn to Water?

Are you drawn to water?  Do you love being in, on, around or by it?  Why?

For me, water is the perfect metaphor for reflection. It’s not just that water feels like “home.” (After all, we are 65% water., All of us are  bodies of water.)
why drawn to water text image
It’s not just that water is beautiful, calming, powerful, musical and  inspiring … all at the same time.
It’s not just that water is a muse. (Much like some people drop into a hypnotic state gazing at fire, I lose myself in a writer’s reverie while gazing at and working by water.)
It’s not just that it’s the perfect forum for freedom of movement. (We can swim in water. Float on it. Sail, boat; paddle board, raft and surf on it. Dive in it. Walk and run around it. Splash, play and revel in it.)
For me, it’s the dynamism of water that makes my soul sing. The multi-faceted nature of it. The many yin-yang forms of it. The metaphorical epiphanies facilitated and fostered by it.
Just think of all the thought-provoking quotes associated with water.
1. “I feel most at home in the water. I disappear. That’s where I belong.” – Michael Phelps (Me too. I feel at home by, in, on and around water. Although I don’t disappear. I come alive.)
2. “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” – Alan Watts (Yes, I trust and am relaxing into this experience. When people ask how my Year by the Water is going, I tell them, “Swimmingly.”)
3. “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” – Isak Dineson (It rarely happens, but if something goes wrong, all I have to do it get in water and it washes away the worries.)
4. “Being on a boat that’s moving through the water, it’s so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what’s important and what’s not.” – James Taylor (Agreed. Water produces clarity and instant perspective.)
serendestiny text image
5. “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.” – George Eliot (One of the reasons I set out on my Year by the Water adventure is because I wanted to experience the angels and imprint the golden moments now, not some day in the far off future … or never.
I believe that SerenDestiny - a life where the light is on in our eyes - is not something we sit around and hope for - it's something we take responsibility for)
6. “Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river.” – Jorge Louis Borges (Water and time are indeed Rorschach tests. How we view them often reveals how we view ourselves.)
7. “Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish.” – Ovid (I am reveling in open days. They are lucky hooks that catch unexpected streams of blessings.)
8.  “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” – Isaac Newton (People ask where I’m going to return to when my year’s up. I’m not going to return to anything. I’m not going back to who I was or where I lived. There’s an ocean of truths I’ve yet to explore. Onward. )
As I travel around the country and visits oceans, bays, waterways, streams, rivers and waterfalls … I am thrilled with their capacity to fill me with wonder, appreciation and awe.
Water has become a non-negotiable for me. I’ve lived around and by the water for the past 29 years (Hawaii for 17 years and then on Lake Audubon and Lake Thoreau in Virginia for 12 years) When it’s time to find my next home (I’ve realized I don’t want to SETTLE DOWN. What a depressing phrase.
Settle means compromise and down equals depressed), I want to be like the settlers. The settlers headed west, exploring new country, scouting for a home that had just the right elements. Water. Good soil. Trees. Mountains. A way to do business or earn a living. When they found the right combination of elements, they didn’t settle down, they SETTLED IN.
 At some point, I will be ready to SETTLE IN. Not yet. When it’s time, like the settlers, my next home will be by water. For me, water is at the core of a right life.
How about you? Do you love the water? Why? What role does it play in your life? water book cover
How does it inspire you, center you, feed your soul, heal you, nourish you, energize you, catalyze your creativity? How does it reconnect you with what matters?
I look forward to hearing what water means to you and how you keep it in your life.
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Sam HornIntrigue Expert, TEDx speaker, author of ConzentrateTongue Fu! and Washington Post bestseller Got Your Attention? –  has the best of all worlds doing work she loves, speaking for such clients as NASA, National Geographic, Boeing, Cisco, Capital One, writing books/blogs that add value, and helping clients craft one-of-a-kind projects that scale their impact – for good.

Sam is practicing what she teaches and is on her Year by the Water - traveling to oceans, rivers, bays and bayous, writing about her water-related experiences and epiphanies. and sharing them via her blogs and presentations.  Contact us at 805 528-4351  to arrange for Sam to share her inspiring insights and stories at your next event. 

Waterfalls and Hot Springs

Science shows that delight – whether it’s laughing out loud or exclaiming at something that’s caught our favorable attention – releases feel-good endorphins. I am testimony to that. As written before, this ‪#‎YearbytheWater‬ adventure is half-plan, half-partner.

There are days and weeks when I need to be some place in particular at a certain time.

The last couple weeks, that would have been Washington DC for the White House United State of Women Summit and NYC to speak for Women in Consumer Technology.

homestead

Next month that includes being in Houston with my son Tom, his lovely in every way wife Patty, and my growing-by-the-minute grandson Mateo; then back to NYC for an event at the United Nations.

The rest of the time, I get to make it up as I go, parntering with what wants to happen, in search of delight.

Since I’m driving from the East Coast to Houston, I checked out route options. Hmm. I’ve heard about the The Omni Homestead Resort and its healing hot springs but I’ve never been there.

Sounds intriguing. Let’s go.

So, yesterday, I’m driving through the ‪#‎AlleghenyMountains‬, come around a corner and BOOM, there’s this waterfall.

waterfall

I drive a little further, come around another corner and THERE is the Homestead, America’s first resort, home of the first indoor pool in the country, in all its glory.

I’ve lucked out. In addition to all its normal activities – horseback riding, golf, tennis, etc. – theyre celebrating their 250th (!) anniversary so there are FIREWORKS, set against the backdrop of the towering mountains.

But what catches my eye is AQUA YOGA … which is why you would have found me at the spa this morning. I tried to Herbal Coccoon and the Caribbean Storm "Experimental Shower." I'll take a drenched Ryan Gosling in "The Notebook," thank you very much.

Then it was time for our aqua youga class. Our teacher Teri welcomed us and explained that “yoga” is a Sanskrit word meaning “to unify” and that the focus of our session would be to unify our minds, bodies and spirits with nature.

Our first step (so to speak) was to do a walking meditation on the River Walk - or Reflexology Walk as it’s more accurately named.

Our small group of five moved slowly over the stones, feeling them with our feet as they woke up related parts of our body. Hello pancreas. Hello liver, kidney and heart.

The hydrotherapy we’re doing is based on the work of Father Sebastian Kneipp, an Austrian monk, who was one of the first to teach that the application of pressure on certain foot points relieves tension and improves circulation in corresponding glands and organs.

All I know is that this watery foot massage feels good, once you welcome the pressure instead of perceiving it as ouch, ouch, ouch.

reflexology text

Next, we slowly immersed ourselves in Octagon Spring, with its soothing, restorative, 96 degree water naturally infused with carbon dioxide and minerals of calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Teri led us though gentle yoga poses – half moon, warrior, side plank, boat, tree, Our movements flowed easily, thanks to the buoyancy of the water.

I marveled that I’m “land-locked,” nowhere near an ocean, yet my day has been filled with water in its many forms - waterfalls, hot springs ,cascading streams, river walks, aqua yoga.

Teri keeps us present by asking each of us how the water FEELS.

I tell her that whenever I’m in water, all’s right with my world. I appreciate how the water embraces me, supports me, buoys me. We welcome this temporary cessation of gravity and revel in our freedom and fluidity of movement. We all agree it’s an exquisitely sensual, sensory experience.

We end with Shavasana. Each of float effortlessly on the water, completely relaxed and at peace with ourselves and our surroundings. What a blessed way to start the day.

When we're in water, we are literally and figuratively in our element.

Why? Becaue we're made of water. We're not only connecting with nature; we're returning to our nature. We're coming home.

How about you?

It’s summer. Even if you’re land-locked, could you get yourself to a pool, lake, river or ocean sometime soon?

Could you gift yourself with a temporary escape from stress, tension and demands and get YOUR body in a body of water?

Could you unify your body, mind and spirit with the water, iimmerse yourself in it, move your limbs through it, float on it?

I'd love to hear your water stories. What it means to you and why.