A most peculiar spa treatment… part I
My entire body begins to relax even before the warmth has a chance to alter my skin temperature.
Perhaps, my brain scientist’s mind says, it is because of the associative learning I’ve had since I was a very young: I’ve always been called a ‘water baby’ in that I loved being bathed, feeling the buoyancy and swirling eddies that gracefully and gently kissed every millimeter of my being, while my mother sang or simply spoke lovingly to me.
My fondness for aquatic media continued as an energetic toddler who was swimming by myself before I could walk. The energy burned off and the strength gained during my ‘recreational’ swims led to competitive swimming where I lived so much in the pool water during my youth that my blonde hair had greenish hues and my skin continually smelled like chloramines that I was obviously bathing in for hours each day.
During my youth I loved playing in the long Wyoming and Colorado winter snowfalls, building castles, making snowballs or creating snow angels, and eating icicles until I thought I’d freeze from the inside. Water in the solid form, I discovered, was as therapeutic.
A truism along this line that water in varied forms is therapeutic in complementary ways appeared later in my life when I would play basketball outside with my young daughter in the pouring-down rain on hot afternoons in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. “As above, so below” as the saying goes.
Most recently I’ve discovered the healing impact of slowly chanting “OM” at a frequency that reverberates throughout the steam room at a local fitness center, combining inner and outer vibrational healing to that of the gaseous form of water. And, finally, I’ve discovered the immense healing power of completely depriving my senses from all input while floating in a “sensory-depravation chamber” — i.e., a calming water flotation tank. Thus, even when the healing sensations of water are minimized (i.e., the water temperature as closely as possible matches the person’s body temperature and the salinity with magnesium salts so high as to keep even the most unbuoyant afloat), blurring where the person ‘stops’ and the water ‘begins’ while retaining the therapeutic impacts.
It would not be surprising, therefore, that my soul is filled with joy and my mind put at ease as I merely approach the water-filled container. But this container isn’t a swimming pool, a snowy Rocky Mountain meadow, a humid and showery eastern American landscape, or an artificially designed and futuristic looking chamber. Matter of fact, it is a container that most wouldn’t consider anxiolytic and profoundly calming, but quite the opposite. Most people try to avoid it.
How I see (and sense) it differently
Let me explain the context of the water vessel a bit more to paint a picture of how I view it.
This is not simply a basin filled with water. It is a panoply of sensory input.
From a few feet away, I can see the bubbles forming a frothy coating that billows upwards from the unseen surface below. Like some cumulonimbus cloud formation indicating massive energy, but not restricted to whites and grays, these radiate every color of the visible spectrum (and, likely, beyond): Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet… the grand spectrum of Captain Roy G. Biv and his magical rainbow world.
The bubbles are utterly unique, each roughly spherical but differing in their borders, their overall size, the swirling eddies of iridescent life. Goniochromism is an ability to see different refractions and, thus, different parts of the universe by the subtlest of shifts of viewpoint; no movement of the person required, just visual attention. How profound an insight from a bubble?
Not only do the bubbles cast off a fiery visual spectacle, they flood my nose with remote cues of scents that link my olfactory input directly to my amygdala. Again, associative learning that lavender, citrus, and other chemicals cue long-ago formed memories of warm spring days or laughter with loved ones. The odorous medley of the bubbles is likely mixed with more recent ones of the immediate past: Cologne or perfume, food or minty-fresh toothpaste still coating recessed areas of my teeth. As smell and taste are intimately linked, with smell being the more sensitive of our senses between the two, I may subconsciously taste the detected and even some undetected ‘smells’ as my gustatory system is activated by airborne chemicals in a similar fashion.
Smelling and tasting the energizing aromatic tincture feeds back into my visual system by dilating my eyes, as they stimulate my cardiovascular system with an increased heart rate and contractile force, which brings more blood into my nose and mouth to help further capture any undertones I might have missed previously. This reactive arc within my nervous system, however, is not enough to make this any particular experience in that it is inherently devoid of ‘feelings’ of pleasant or unpleasant. Some of us neuroscientists know the fact that many don’t: Sensory inputs induce physiological responses long before any emotions are brought in; in other words, and to use a different-but-related analogy, the increased pupil dilation, heart rate, breathing rate and alertness that precedes orgasm is physiologically identical to what precedes anger. I happen to associate this mixture with happiness while others do with angst.
My ears, for as pathetic as they are in my middle-aged, post-1980s rock band era loudness and abuse state, are still able to pick up the tones of the water running, as well as the random ‘popping’ of the bubbles coalescing and condensing together. I hear a lulling tune of familiarity and calm because I have ample experience linking these sounds to the luxurious sensations that I know will follow.
All of this — and more — has happened before I contact the water.
And then my hands gently begin caressing the bubbles. Their ethereal feel is not, I’m again reminded, relegated to the intangible world. I can sense them most intensely if I bring the somewhat muted sense of touch to the forefront of my attention. I can feel how they immediately begin to soften my own hardness the same way they do other, more unwanted, materials: The surfactant and emulsive properties agnostic to what the soap is being asked of. In working its magic on the unwanted, it works its magic on me — perhaps descaling hard bits of my own being that might have served me in the past, but no longer do so?
The sensation of touch continues to deepen as my hands dive into the unseen and unknown depths of the vessel. Similar to what began at my fingertips is the sensation of softening of my joints in my fingers and wrist. “How many bones are in the human hand?” I often wonder. Oh, yea, I remember, 27, not including the sesamoid or anyone with polydactyly. I wonder if I can feel all of them as I begin flexing and contracting each area in as many different ways as I can.
While I cannot feel anything yet below the waterline, my mind and warmed hands feel the subtle gradations of heat, density, and other numerous qualities of the liquid. I think this is odd that such thermoclines and other physical borders can exist in a liquid, something seemingly uniform. It is then that I recall that real boundaries exist beyond our normal perception all over the world, like the one between the troposphere and stratosphere, as well as artificially created ones, like the completely man-made and unnatural borders of all modern countries.
The intensity of the differences fades as I allow my hands to gently caress each one, lovingly encouraging one to mix in the other, becoming a collective of unity, not a stratified or hierarchical ‘us-versus-them’ state. “How much better the world would be if we helped dissolve our own ‘nationalistic’ or religion-based divisions?” is a question my heart ponders more than my head tries to figure out.
The mixed emotions within my mind parallel the mixed sensations of my bodily systems. I briefly meditate that everything in life is relational and, thus, mixed: We must have cold in order to define what hot is; we must have pain in order to know peace; we must experience hardness in order to know tenderness. In a similar fashion, I concentrate my focus on the present paucity of resistance of my hands in the water, in the midst of the slightest amount of friction, something I can almost only sense when I allow my attention to fade from the sights, smells and sounds. Even the subtlest distinction can be identified in life if one dampens the input from ancillary systems? Perhaps, I question, this is a two-edged sword: We can find them if we want to, but is finding them in every part of life beneficial to us in every moment? Shouldn’t we seek unity and inclusion and harmony as the default, with an acknowledgment of differences something to be celebrated and not eradicated?
It is only after allowing my body and mind a few more minutes of wandering, uncontrolled and unjudged, that I gently usher my attention back to the present moment.
I am, after all, here for a couple reasons.
Primarily, I am here to pamper my mind and my body with hydrotherapy, reveling in the luxurious and tranquil “health spa to rival all health spas” venue. I cannot think of a more efficacious and powerful of places — especially when I consider that the cost of my visit is next-to-nothing. Nope, no needing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars; no need to travel extensively, fighting traffic and the elements; no need to even dress up (or down) as I am completely accepted each and every time exactly as I am in the moment.
Secondarily, I am here to complete an experience that, itself, was amazing. Part of an ordinary day but made extraordinary because of the company I kept. This was a celebratory feast — celebrating our being able to purchase food, to sit and commune while it was consumed, an opportunity to nourish both the body and the soul.
Not only was a I blessed enough to be able to lovingly cook the food, I am now blessed with the opportunity to practice my mindfulness-based practice of DISH WASHING.
Yup. Washing the dishes. Cleaning up after the meal… scrubbing pots, pans, plates, utensils, glasses and more…
One of the most dreaded of domestic chores is one that I cherish. It is now a mindful meditation ritual for me that I adore every time I have the opportunity.
Yet, this hasn’t been the case for me all the time. Indeed, it used to be one of my most abhorred.
Stay tuned for part II of this blog to find out the rest of the story…
