Mother Water – from our showers to the seas, is the embrace we require to contain our nervous system when it experiences intense shifts of fight/flight/freeze/fawn. Just as children run to their mothers for hugs and kisses when life gets hard, so can we trauma survivors run to Mother Nature’s element of water to hug us.
Water is about flow, and frantic emotions require movement, remove the looping and numbness, and require expression to unplug the stagnation. Whether it is bursting rivers or calm lakes, we can use water to find the window of tolerance between overwhelm and shutdown.
Try This Practice:
Pick a water element. The shower is a great, everyday resource. The lakes and seas connect us directly to Mother Nature’s life force. Even if we dip our toes in the colder months and return to warm baths at home, I recommend finding a local stream to visit regularly.
Put as much of yourself under the water and stay until your body tells you to go, not your mind. Connect where the water meets your skin, with your focus, and let the sensation of touch rise to your awareness as the water flows over you. If there is a troubling spot you want to ease, let the water embrace it directly. Move your body in the water – feel your fingers through the waves or your toes as the shower droplets hit them.
Then sit and enjoy.
You may find emotions or body sensations rise to express themselves. Ask how it wants to do so. If your mind starts to ruminate, put it in the water and draw your internal energy towards your trunk. Embrace every good thing that comes to you and let it build as an internal resource to use when you are outside of Mother Water. Our cells are a memory, as this practice slowly shifts our baseline from survival to contentment.
Matriarchal Healing
Matriarchal healing is returning us to the laws of nature, rewiring us back to wholeness. Her life force, along with our instinct and intuition, aligns us with the integration of life rather than survival. Our patriarchal world divides us away from our natural resources, both externally and internally, to force us into either becoming drones for their production, dissociated for their power over us, or weak for their ease of control. Matriarchal healing returns us to our innate power given to us by Mother Nature. When we restore our strength and wisdom, we can no longer be harmed by patriarchy’s strings. We build our own pathways of living and find balance in our lives with a new identity.
