I’m sure I must have written about these two things before. Yet these days a rarely mention them in conversation. Not least because my water drinking practices have become precarious, as in I have fallen out of the habit.
I intitially started writing this article from the view point of hydration. I’ve writteen about the benefits of drinking water for years now even though my own water drinking habits have fallen by the wayside recently. I still think that drinking water is important and we are all entitled to have a slump in our self care. Especially when feeling means healing. Especially when we have to give ourselve time to process what is going on and not just push through… that’s really important too not maintaining a routine that is destroying you emotionally. For many of us that dopmine hit is just a little to tempting…
I didn’t start drinking water regularly until I was well into my twenties, up until then water was just tastelss stuff that came out of the tap. I’d been raised on coca-cola and cordial. My teeth are proabaly still paying the price forty years on. Clearly sugar addiction was a formative part of my youth which could tell you a lot about almost anybodies health journey over the latter half of the twentith century. Even now I’m engaged in a period of sugar dependency. I guess a global pandemic and a bit of personal trauma will do that.
Water on the greater persepective is 85% of who we are. It is what we are made of. It is the primary composite part of the planet that we live on. It’s fuels the majority of life. Our relationship with water defines who we are, as it is what we are made of. It is our life force energy. We can’t survive without it. So when I write about water now it moves beyond how we consume water. It’s about how we relate to it. How we honour it. The moon moves the ocean as it moves us and yet these days this relationship is often treated and mythical rather than factual. We have become seperate from ourselves.
Sleep is caught up in survival, rest and trhiving. If you can’t sleep there is not way you can survive. My brain at least really can’t deal with the pressure. Sometime I wish it was different and then I think about the delerium, mania and dread that covers my days if I don’t get enoguh sleep. Being rested is far more important than being fed in my dreams of wellness. Where would I be with our sleep . Where have I been without sleep half mad, unregulated, strained and cracking.
General conversations about sleep these days too seems to be informeed by its scientific function rather than it’s ritual purpose. To rest, to sleep to dream. These day you are far more likely to read an article on the benefits of good sleep for productivity rather than for soul growth. Even in the bible dreams are highly referenced as both insightful and prophetic. That sleep is a powerful place in which to connect to our truth. To swim in our subconscious and find the answers to all that plagues us.
Sleep for me will always be one of the most direct routes to healing. I love to sleep, it feeds me in ways that I have only very recently come to fully undersand. Since I graduated as a Sangoma sleep has taught me the most about my spirtual journey and how the expectations of society have drawn me away from my calling as a dreamwalker. The we can move beyond and outwith this world through our dreams and find answers to our deepest questionings.
The article was written to accompany the trauma wise circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.
