Most people know we “should” drink plenty of water, but many struggle to make it happen regularly.
Let’s look at how water flows through you, connecting you to nature so you can express your vitality.
Last month you learnt how breath and vapour are the circulating spirit of your vitality.
What about dense material – food and water?
When you bring food into your body, you receive:
Energy + Material + Spirit = Life
In Chinese medicine, the “Spleen-Pancreas” digestive organ energy system “transforms and transports” “food-Qi” throughout your entire being.
Food entering the body needs to be physically broken apart, and then transformed.
Western science says your body creates enzymes to chop food into molecules that your body can use. These molecules are taken to every cell of your body and put to use. For example, complex carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars that cells use for energy. Proteins may be broken into amino acids – the “building blocks” of the body.
So… food enters your body and it’s changed into something else – it’s changed into you!
As far as we know, water enters the body, circulates throughout, flowing within all tissues and cells, and then leaves your body relatively unchanged. The kidneys will use water to add waste products to it as it leaves the body, but the water itself doesn’t get transformed.
It simply flows through you.
Water is the dynamic vechicle that helps your body to process continual changes. These changes come from the environment outside, as well as from your internal environment.
In this way, water comes into your body from nature, flows through every part of your body, then flows back to nature.
Think of how rain falls from the clouds, into streams, rivers, then the ocean, to be evaporated up to the clouds again – the ecological cycle of water.
In a similar way, water is flowing through plants and animals – through living forms – in what we could call the biological cycle of water.
You are connected to every river and ocean, and in fact every living being on Earth, through your body’s connection with water.
Think of a creek that’s normally been flowing. If the flow slows down, what happens?
The creek loses its vibrancy. The water grows stagnant. Mosses and algae start to proliferate. All of the life forms that relied on that creek are affected.
In the same way, if water is not flowing through you at a healthy rate, then your whole system becomes sluggish.
To the contrary, when your body can rely on a steady flow, then it can “plan ahead” and use its innate intelligence to operate all your functions at the ideal rate.
Water is the conduit of physical life. When it’s coming into you at a regular rate, then your body can relax and perform all vital functions on time. You’re open to receiving exactly what you need, at the right time, because your body is prepared for it.
When it’s time for food, all of the necessary preparations can take place, allowing you to have a healthy appetite and to look forward to receiving food with all your five senses.
When it’s time for sleep, all of the closing-down functions can happen on time, so that you feel sleepy and weary and looking forward to rest, ready to receive the energy that comes from stillness.
Flowing on time means being ready to receive whatever nature is offering you in that moment.
If your body can rely on a certain rate of flow at all times, then it’s very easy to send toxins and by-products “downstream” to be transformed by nature.
On the other hand, if the flow is unreliable, the body’s letting-go ability slows down. It gets stuck and sluggish, and things that you don’t need become stored within you. It’s like biological clutter!
Water allows you to let go!
We’ll cover this next week – stay tuned!!
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine can help you if you have issues such as
Contact us to find out how we can help.