Asking the Question: Are There Benefits To Living A Life of Water?
The Questions We Will Begin to Explore About Our Personal Connection to Water
Let’s talk about swimming.
I’ve been lucky. I learned to swim from a very young age, taking lessons when I was three or four years old. In fact, I barely even remember the lessons. There is just a hazy memory of a test that involved diving to the deep end of the community pool and picking up pool rings. I can’t remember exactly how the test worked, but I think I passed.
Needless to say, swimming has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Throughout my youth, I can recollect spending days at the beach playing in the ocean, trips to the lake with friends, and entire summers spent swimming in my friends’ pools. I often look back on those memories with nostalgia and an aching fondness.
In recent years, I’ve found myself spending less time in the water and have started to lose touch with the activity of swimming. To be honest, there hasn’t been a real reason for my aversion to the practice, more just a lack of desire to seek bodies of water or spend time at the local community pool.
Yet, over the last few months, I’ve been able to spend more time in and around water, specifically the ocean. These few moments have felt like an absolute privilege, fleeting seconds of immersive happiness that are a reminder to myself, and my biological being, of the incredible benefits of this childhood practice.
As I’ve started to investigate our connection to nature, I’ve started to wonder whether these feelings of reconnection to water are stronger in me because I grew up near the ocean (similar to our concept of place). Or is swimming and water something our bodies crave, the same way we crave certain vitamins or minerals, because it’s rooted deeper in our biological experience as humans?
My journey to understanding the answers to these questions began a few years ago during my stint working in Baja California Sur for a sustainable seafood non-profit.
Living in Baja California, I was naturally spending a lot more time around water, especially since it was the closest I had been to the ocean since leaving southern California in my early twenties.
The sea breeze was rejuvenating, the blue horizon was enlightening, and at the time, I recollect feeling like I had found some part of me that had been lost.
During that time, one of our partners for the program was the late Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist and founder of the Blue Mind Movement. Nichols had spent time in the Baja California Sur area living and working with local fisheries. He was beloved by much of the conservation community in the area, and his work was known to many in our program.
Although we never met in person, our team would chat with Nichols from time to time on Zoom, where he would provide some advice for our work and share updates on his, which was based on the concept that the ocean, and water broadly, has immensely positive benefits on our mental and physical health.
He even gave us his book, Blue Mind, where he shares decades of research that supports this stance, using neuropsychology to highlight how spending time in and around water leads to lower stress levels, an increased quality of life, and less risk of disease.
Blue Mind was my introduction to the concept of water-based wellness. Before then, I’d always viewed practices such as cold plunges and wild swimming as some sort of wellness fallacy or ancient cultural ritual. I never really took them seriously, and wasn’t open to the idea that water could benefit my mental and physical health.
But the stories shared in Blue Mind really sit with you. From cognitive studies on surfers to behavioral studies on how water affects military veterans, the book deeply explores how water can have a positive effect on our mental and physical health.
At its core, it’s not that crazy of a concept, right? 40 percent of the Earth’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast, and we are quite literally water-based beings.
It makes sense that we would crave water, and it would be beneficial to us, but it’s the extent to which Blue Mind lays out the benefits of water. Nichols' work changed my perspective on water-based wellness, and nowadays, I probably think about the book at least once a day.
As I’ve started exploring our human connection to nature more and more, I’ve also started to think deeper about the core of the Blue Mind concept.
We have such a profound connection to water, and there is scientific evidence that proves our need for water, yet it still feels like many of us are constantly trying to get back to water. We seek lakes or rivers for our vacations, water-based wellness practices have exponentially risen in popularity, and we even build recreations of natural water landscapes throughout our cities and towns.
It feels like humanity is caught in a push and pull with water, like the tides of the sea advancing and receding from the shoreline.
We crave water, want to be around water, and need water, yet we have built a world where we push ourselves away from water, only to clamor back to it again and again.
This naturally leads us to start asking the questions: What if we got closer? What if the key to unlocking our best selves lies in water, just below the surface, waiting to be found?
Asking those questions brings me back to my relationship with swimming.
Now that I’ve been armed with this knowledge, I’ve started to look back on those memories of swimming and understand the immensely beneficial effects of being around and in water.
I’ve realized that just as it did back then, swimming and being around water have a profound way of rejuvenating me, and echoing the benefits shared by Nichols and the Blue Mind movement.
Which leads me to only one course of action - it’s time to discover the true benefits of living a life of water. It’s time to go deeper.
What’s Coming Up
Thus far, we’ve asked a lot of questions about our connection to the natural world and water. We’ve asked questions about our personal connection to water, the way our society has built a relationship with water, and the potential positive benefits of being in and around water.
Now, it’s time to start finding some answers to those questions. Throughout the summer, we’ll be digging deeper into this connection with water by conducting research, experimenting, and hearing the stories of experts, practitioners, and water-lovers from around the world.
Through this journey, we’ll learn to reconnect and rediscover what it means to live on this blue planet. I’ll be working to learn as much as possible about my relationship with water and sharing everything I’ve learned with you.
We’ll also dive into some (I can’t help myself) of the issues around water, leading ideas in water-based wellness, and discuss the future of water on our planet.
Human Nature will also be running a few more events around this topic, including our monthly happy hour sessions, which will continue in June. In addition, I’m working to plan a few talks and potential workshops for anyone interested in learning more.
Thanks for joining the journey. I’d love for everyone to start sharing their own experiences, journeys, and discoveries in the comments. Also, for more in-depth looks throughout this journey, I’ll be starting to share weekly updates with research, practices, and journal entries for the Naturalists community.
Story of the Week
The story of the week comes from the BBC and writer Erika Benke, who explores the Finnish tradition of saunas and cold-water baths.
Benke’s story documents her own attempts to understand this cultural tradition and whether the practices actually have benefits for your physical and mental health. She provides an amusing look at the practice, mixed with some powerful anecdotes from locals and current research from the scientific community.
We’ll be exploring this concept and the cultural roots of it more later this summer. For now, check out the story here to learn more.
NOTE: Remember to sign up for our membership community, The Naturalists, which includes access to the Monthly Challenges, community chat, upcoming events, and more. Sign up and join our Naturalist community below.
Thanks for being here, friends. See you in the next one.
And in the words of Wallace J Nichols, I wish you water
With love,
Keegan
