Five Element Series Part 7: Water Element

This essay uses water as the five-element tradition’s language for depth, sadness and longing. It offers a way to explore experience through attention, movement and stillness.

The water element is the deep one. Its emotions are not fire's. Fire is hot: rage, excitement, hunger. Water is subdued: depth, mystery, longing. It's the emotion of dreams and the subconscious, and it comes out of nowhere and returns to nowhere.

I had a client who never wanted children. Then, in her late thirties, out of nowhere, she could not let go of the idea that she needed to bear a child. That is the water element. It wells up from underneath the plans.

Making room for the feelings we put aside

Watery feelings are the ones we override first. Sadness doesn't help anything get done. Longing has no deadline. So we keep moving, and the feelings stay where they are, it can be difficult to notice what we feel while we keep ourselves busy.

In this tradition, water also gives us an image for fluidity and heaviness in experience. These images are a way to explore what we notice, rather than a way to diagnose physical symptoms.

In this way of practicing, we can meet the feelings associated with water by giving them room. In practice that means connecting to the fluid quality of the vinyasa: movements that are smooth, round, continuous, the opposite of fire's staccato. It means smooth transitions between the inhale and the exhale, using the breath as an access point to what we're feeling, our needs, fears, pains, and desires. The practice is to give these feelings some attention, with kindness toward ourselves, rather than treating them as an interruption.

And sometimes the feelings sit too deep for movement to reach. Then stillness is the tool. In stillness we take ourselves out of the rush long enough to be with what's underneath it.

The Fire article explores a more active quality in practice. Here, I am interested in something slower: staying with a feeling without requiring it to change.

Try this: Before you move past the feeling

Think of one feeling you have been putting aside so you can get on with the day. Choose something you can spend a little time with now. You do not have to begin with the hardest thing.

Let your breathing stay ordinary. Where do you notice the feeling in your body? There might be heaviness in your chest, pressure behind your eyes, or something you cannot name yet. Notice its quality without trying to make it move.

If it feels useful, make a small, slow movement with your hands or shoulders. Notice what changes and what doesn’t. You can also remain still. Neither response has to produce a release.

What happens when you give this feeling a little time? Do you become impatient because it is not helping you accomplish anything? That demand is worth noticing too. You can return to the day without making the feeling disappear first.

If you would rather be guided through noticing a feeling, listen to Feeling the body from the inside. About 10 minutes, guided in my voice.