Five Element Series Part 7: Water Element

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.

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, because emotion is energy in motion, and what we don't let move stays stuck in us. What we resist, we strengthen.

In the body, water is the fluid nature of things. When it's deficient, we're dry: stiff joints, dry skin, thirst, a wiry sleeplessness. When it's in excess, we're waterlogged: heavy, sluggish, cloudy, sentimental, full of regret, aching in the joints.

The remedy for excess water isn't to fight it. It's to surrender to it. 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. Blending with the watery nature instead of resisting it is what makes us more compassionate, with ourselves first and then with everyone else.

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.

If the water has pooled into a heaviness that won't shift, fire balances it. That's the previous post. This one asks for something slower: staying with the water while it moves.

I wrote a book about that. The first chapter is twenty-eight minutes, read in my own voice. Enter your name and email and I'll send it to you.