Cultivating Healthy Water
Today I’m sharing the first article in a four-part series on elemental wisdom I wrote in collaboration with the master astrologer and psychotherapist, Debra Silverman. Debra always starts off teaching her students about the four elements because it’s the foundation upon which all understanding of astrology is built, and because she’s witnessed what an extremely effective model it is for understanding human nature and cultivating compassion for both ourselves and others.
At its most distilled, Water represents the realm of feelings, Air is the intellect, Earth is practicality, and Fire is energy. Becoming aware of how the four elements manifest within us, and learning to balance them and bring forth their best qualities, can be a powerful tool for wisdom, healing and self-discovery. Our four-part essay series will guide you to do an internal inventory of the elemental characteristics within yourself, and you can do it without needing to know where your ten planets are located or the configuration of your unique natal chart.
Personally, Water is my most challenging element. My life as the daughter of two Holocaust survivors started off in the deep murky waters of overwhelming terror, pain and grief. My parents never spoke about what happened to them and their families when I was a child, but the emotional energy in our home was thick, dark and secretive. The primary way my mother showed love and attempted to protect me was through extreme and constant worrying. She had no place of calm refuge within herself to offer her children, and I never felt safe being alive in this world.. Most of my life was spent running from fear; low-grade terror was my constant companion.
A huge part of my healing journey has been learning to slow down, accept and feel all my emotions, care for myself with loving tenderness, and to find a place of peace within that I can access regardless of whatever is going on outside.
Debra has taught me how common it is for people who need to cultivate more healthy Water to somatize our pain. We become experts at avoiding and repressing our difficult emotions, but they’re still stored in our bodies, and our bodies never lie. For me, it took a major health crisis to finally devote myself to changing my entrenched self-destructive patterns and make caring for my physical and emotional body a top priority. I am still a beginner in all of this, and I anticipate that it will be a lifelong undertaking bringing countless rewards.
Debra explains that Water is where our memories and ancestral history are held. “Water is the emotional body that can carry hurts and disappointments long after events transpire. The proper use of Water is to feel and process our feelings in real time without dragging the past around—to learn how to release and forgive. Healthy Water allows us to laugh and cry easily, ride our emotional waves with inner calm, be of service to our families and the world without sacrificing ourselves, and reclaim our joy of being alive.”
I will be sharing Parts II, III and IV of this series (Air, Earth and Water) after the holidays, but if you don’t want to wait, Spirituality & Health magazine will be posting one every week on their website. Now, let’s dive into water!
