Saltwater Heals Quotes

The high salt content in the water allowed tank users to float silently and without effort, achieving ultimate relaxation. If the makers of the tanks were to be believed, floating in the saltwater would improve mental alertness, decrease pain, facilitate healing, improve sports performance, wash your car, do your taxes, and clean the clutter out of your attic.

Nothing could define her unless she let it. She had God in her life to heal those broken places, but she hadn't let him do it.

I've been thinking about what it means to bear witness. The past ten years I've been bearing witness to death, bearing witness to women I love, and bearing witness to the [nuclear] testing going on in the Nevada desert. I've been bearing witness to bombing runs on the edge of the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, bearing witness to the burning of yew trees and their healing secrets in slash piles in the Pacific Northwest and thinking this is not so unlike the burning of witches, who also held knowledge of heading within their bones. I've been bearing witness to traplines of coyotes being poisoned by the Animal Damage Control. And I've been bearing witness to beauty, beauty that strikes a chord so deep you can't stop the tears from flowing. At places as astonishing as Mono Lake, where I've stood knee-deep in salt-water to watch the fresh water of Lee Vining Creek flow over the top like water on vinegar....It's the space of angels. I've been bearing witness to dancing grouse on their leks up at Malheur in Oregon. Bearing witness to both the beauty and pain of our world is a task that I want to be part of. As a writer, this is my work. By bearing witness, the story that is told can provide a healing ground. Through the art of language, the art of story, alchemy can occur. And if we choose to turn our backs, we've walked away from what it means to be human.

I've always found the word "period" strange. A period of what? A period of pain, a period of loss? Many other words for it are disparaging or demeaning. I now prefer to call it my "bleed" or "inner winter", because it's a time when I feel the pull to go inward. I recently learned from Manchán Magan in his book meditating on old Irish words and their nuances, that some old Irish terms for menstrual blood were more celebratory, such as bláthscaoileadh meaning "bloom release" or an t-ádh dearg, "the red luck".

I got it today looking out there. It's not just about the wave itself, it's about the process of being available. I watched how you paddle, the wave comes, you miss it or someone else gets it, so you paddle back again. There's a lot of waiting, for the thrill of catching a wave. It's also about being outside, you're just a speck. The kind of humility of the experience of being in nature.

After the fullness and richness of experiences surfing in far-flung places, there was a loneliness inside me that was not fully human, and a deep tiredness. The loneliness I speak of is one I can feel even when surrounded by other people. It is not far removed from grief or shame. A grief for something lost and a shame for having lost it. The loneliness I speak of is not unlike the kind that Kimmerer describes as "species loneliness", a loneliness that comes from our separation not only from each other but also other species and the rest of the living world.

I have a tendency toward seeking out big, shiny, magical challenges - to find the solution in a quest for the Excalibur sword and pull it from the stone myself, releasing my life force once again. When, in actual fact, what I needed to do was go back to the basics. I'd let the little things slide, the simple, controllable parts of my unpredictable life: good sleep, eating well, drinking more water, daily gratitude, mindfulness meditation, body movement and being immersed in water.

This aliveness amplified a desire to embrace pleasure and nakedness, to live by instinct and intuition, to live by the skin and the senses, To break free. Break free from what? From the confines of my own clothes, from convention and how one must behave in public spaces, from the confines of a risk-averse society, of a Catholic "thou shalt not" Ireland, from sin, from being a role model, a desired object, an individual, an ego, a human being, to be free even of my own skin and all that it contains. I felt a burning hunger, a devouring compulsion, an overriding passion beyond logic or reason, worry or care for total abandonment and surrender. Freedom.

Beginning yo pay attention to my own inner ebb and flow has made me more sensitive to imbalances. It reveals the high cost of being always active in a society that fosters a toxic relationship with time, demanding a constant push toward an always out-of-reach fixed point or outcome on the horizon. Today's society puts a high price on productivity. It values consistency and stasis, not fluctuations of ebb and flow. To do nothing is shameful. So is bleeding. We're not just disconnected from each other and our environment, but from our own bodies. The equally important need for stillness and reflection gets lost.

Modern language can feel inadequate when it comes to expressing wonder and for giving meaning to the living world around us and out part in it. Words can lead to a terrible sense of separation and loss of intimacy with the aliveness of the world. We don't weep because it does not hold any meaning for us, we have lost our emotional connection with the more-than-human world. It's why science alone won't save us; we need art and poetry, creative mediums of expression and meaning-making that can help people process our experiences of a rapidly changing world and connect emotionally.

Air travel has made it possible to travel vast distances in no time at all. We fly so we can get to places more quickly, and waste less time. Yet, we often don't honour the passage of that time or respect the other costs of that rapid transition from one environment to the next. I didn't allow time to "unpack" the tension and stress my body must have carried as a result of the travel, not to mention the terrible stress it put on the environment. I realized so much of my life was driven by a "make it happen" attitude; that belief that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. And yet, my father constantly reminds me, "You can do anything you want. But you can't do everything." There is a cost. It takes energy. Be that fossil fuels, calories or our soul-connection. In some indigenous cultures there is a belief that you need to allow time for your soul to catch up with your physical body after long journeys, so it's important to rest when you arrive and travel more slowly during the journey itself, taking time to pause, wait, rest.

Ireland was once entirely covered in woodland. Now it has the lowest forest cover in all of Europe at just 10 per cent. Only 2-3 per cent of that is native woodland.

Still, the reminders of our former intimacy with the living world remain present in the deliberate circular placement of ancient stones standing upright in a salt marsh; or the concentric circles carved into rocks and still visible thousands of years later; or the scraps of fabric tied to the branches of an ash tree next to a holy well, fresh water springing out of the ground above the tideline, where people still go to make offerings. These markers in the landscape are evidence of our lost attunement to the natural rhythms and cycles of life - the solar and lunar cycles and their sway over Earth's watery cycles, including ocean waves, tides, gestation and menstruation. Natural cycles that, despite our separation from them, continue to coordinate and orchestrate the complex process of life. A cyclical approach to life allows for both the ebb and the flow, the waxing and waning, the luminosity and the darkness .If something is lost, perhaps it can also be found again.

Another taboo in surfing is the shame of paddling in from a surf without catching a wave in; it's almost like a sin, or a sign of defeat. But maybe it didn't always have to be that way. I appreciated his openness, as if all I needed was permission to listen to myself and do what my body needed that day. I felt that maybe the point of it all, of anything, is to experience a deeper sense of connection, in whatever form it comes.

Coming Ashore Suspended in the beautiful essence of isolation a desire to go down into the depth within awakens.

We came back late that afternoon to find Shams burned red by the sun with bags of rubbish and marine litter collected from the beach. He'd spent the whole day cleaning the entire beach. When I asked why he had done it, he explained that the sea had given him such joy that he wanted to look after it and give something back by taking care of it and cleaning it up. His experience of surfing had altered his perception in way that artist and writer Jenny Odell would describe as "reciprocal attention". A renewed attention to the living world that foster a sense of stewardship and interdependence, that helps blur the distinction between what's "outside" of ourselves and what's "inside" us.

From Saltwater to Freshwater.... The river runs through me, for the burst of rain from clouds atop, fell to the rivers that rushed to the sea. In it, was the dying of grief. How the clouds of torment die, so the river can rush! So, I float as the clouds of dark to break and become the flow of water. The waters of salt, now they are; the fresh water after rain. So I become the mouth of a river in a quiet murmur to the sea. The stories buried in my depths, I give out to the world, where nothing remains unremembered.

From Saltwater to Freshwater.... The river runs through me, for the burst of rain from clouds atop, fell to the rivers that rushed to the sea. In it, was the dying of grief. How the clouds of torment die, so the river can rush! So, I float as the clouds of dark to break and become the flow of water. The waters of salt, now they are; the spring water after rain. So I become the mouth of a river in a quiet murmur to the sea. The stories buried in my depths, I give out to the world, where nothing remains unremembered.