Yes, you heard me right. That is, about meditating underwater. Not completely immersed; the external breath mechanism (mouth and nose) remains above the water line, but the rest of the body is submerged. The results were a pure sensation of natural vibrancy emanating from my center. Both a bright buzz misting outward off my skin in all directions and an alive, energetic coccoon fully embracing me at the same time. Out and in at once. Balanced, peaceful.
This was a profound experience. I’ve been thinking on it since.
Aquatic aerobics or underwater physical therapy approaches require the performance of physical exercises while submerged in water. Exercising underwater is not only ideal because the H2O provides increased resistance which adds an element of weight bearing to aerobic activities, but also due to the buoyancy of water which eliminates stress on the joints from the repetitive impact of aerobic actions. So, exercising underwater, for the most part, reduces the potential for exercise-induced strains and injuries while increasing the benefits of exercise by improving the participant’s endurance, depth of breathing, and overall strength and balance. Sounds great. Please show me to a nearby, clean, uncrowded, free (or affordable) pool. Does that exist? Maybe if I remove uncrowded from my requirements. Sigh. Wink. So, I’m hypothesizing that when somatically-oriented meditations are performed with the body being underwater, some of the same benefits of performing physically therapeutic exercises underwater, prevail.
The distinction of the type of meditation that may yield these same results is critical. If the meditation is purely vision-, image-, or thought-based, I do not believe it will result in the potency of the physically-felt experience I described in the first paragraph above. It is the movement of the breath through internal body systems which take residence in the dimension of the physical realm that is primary and key to this experiment. There is a somatically-derived experience when breathing through the chakras, through the soft tissue, through a meridian, through the skeleton, that I believe is what produced the palpable vibrational therapy session this breathwork in the bath turned out to be.
The particular meditative technique I was practicing in the bath is called the Parallel Breath. I learned to work with parallel breathing from my teacher, the founder of Zero Balancing, Fritz Frederick Smith, MD. Parallel Breathing involves moving the breath energy through body tissues in geometric form. While in the bath, I was moving my breath energy specifically through each of the seven chakras; beginning at the root and moving upward to the crown. This is a meditation that I have been practicing regularly since 2014, but I have never tried it while submerged in water until last week. I look forward to continuing the experiment (to tweaking it, varying the water temperature perhaps!), to insights that unfold and to hearing back from any of you who try it for yourself!