I felt it one day, before I read the science. I was moving my body and building heat when I suddenly felt a current moving within me. My body was coming to life. I moved consciously, deeply surrendering, with diffuse attention to subtle sensation. The more I surrendered to these sensations, the more connected, peaceful and clear I became.
What am I talking about? Flow. Integration. The native state we return to when our physical and electrical bodies sync up and begin breathing together. In osteopathy, we recognize this coupling of primary (subtle, electrical) and secondary (physical, diaphragmatic) respiration as a return to a neutral state of profound connectivity and wholeness. Perhaps you recall the experience from times of being deeply in love, or connected to nature.
Language used in the fields of fluid dynamics and acoustics—resonant, coherent, laminar, entrained and harmonic, for example—can be applied to describe the equilibrium and homeostasis we feel when we are connected in this way. Many liken this state to a sense of returning home or to spiritual connection.
What’s happening? The languages of physics and mathematics describe electricity, or waveform, as the substance of all matter and all life. Science reveals that consciousness has such profound effects on waveform and the way matter behaves that the double blinding of research has emerged as a foundational aspect of the scientific method. What might be possible if instead of “correcting” for the elusive variables of consciousness and attention, we harnessed them? This is what mindfulness practice has us do, and studies on the health benefits of such practice abound.
If attention affects the behavior of matter, how might knowing this support the experience of being in a body? The science is clear: our tissues have an extraordinary capacity for electrical communication, and the coherence imparted by conscious attention powerfully supports functionality in every way, all the way down to the cellular level. In other words, conscious beings can harness attention to support the integrity of electrical communication (life) in the body.
Conscious, hydrated beings, I should say. We know that water conducts electricity, so it may seem obvious that hydrated tissues can support life better than dehydrated tissues can. It’s not a massive leap to imagine that when we are neither well hydrated nor very conscious or connected to our bodies, we walk around in relatively dull and dormant states relative to our potential. Most of us are generally less awake, less vital, and experience less harmony and coherence than we could be experiencing.
Dr. Gerald Pollack, a researcher known for describing how life requires the combination of water and electricity, is the author of “The Fourth Phase of Water and Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life.” He maintains an active laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle. One of the preeminent researchers of water in the world, Dr. Pollack is the founding editor-in-chief of the academic journal WATER and has received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Transformative Research Award in this supremely relevant area of study. His TED Talks on the subject are powerfully educational. He postulates that channels of vital energy, likened to the meridians described in Eastern healing practices, are pathways of the electricity-infused, gel-like “fourth phase” of water.
No conversation about water is complete without mentioning internationally renowned Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto and his work revealing the influence of our thoughts, words and feelings on molecules of water. In his book, “The Hidden Messages in Water,” Dr. Emoto, using high-speed photography, recorded that the form of crystals in frozen water is affected by the nature of the attention and intention directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water exposed to loving words showed brilliant, complex and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, and water exposed to negative thoughts, formed incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.
Let’s return to movement. As renowned systems analyst Buckminster Fuller described, the efficiency and adaptability of systems in nature occurs through the interplay of structural (rigid) and malleable (tensional) elements. This design in bodies—bones held in tissue–is known as “biotensegrity,” a blending of the terms biological, tensional and integrity. Another concept, “mechanotransduction” describes how movement “translates” to changes in how DNA directs the behavior of cells and even the balance of chemicals in the body. This profound aspect of nature’s power and intelligence at work in our bodies is explored in detail in the 2013 paper “Biotensegrity: A Unifying Theory of Biological Architecture: Applications to Osteopathic Practice, Education, and Research—A Review and Analysis” by Dr. Randel L. Swanson, published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.
So now we have three pieces. Conscious attention, hydration and movement. How do we connect the dots, access and integrate these profound areas of knowledge, and apply them to everyday life? I think of conscious attention as the secret sauce to both building power and creating coherence in the body. I think of water as the conductor and movement as the pump that keeps it all going. It’s these three elements in combination that determine health or not-health, life or not-life.
I invite you to notice in this moment where it is in your body that your attention is drawn. As you connect, notice if bringing your diffuse attention to the smallest nuance of life expressing itself within you causes the sensation to magnify or shift. This is not about effort or trying to create an effect. It’s simply about resting in curiosity, receptivity and a willingness to be present with what is.
Notice if you can yield to some amount of fluid motion. Imagine what life might be like if such receptivity were happening all the time.
Moving forward, as you bring attention to hydration as a life-giving practice and perhaps pursue the biologically compatible approaches to hydrating that appeal to you, see if your experience of bringing attention to sensation in your body shifts in any way. My suspicion is that becoming present with what is will begin to feel easier and more natural.
This is research we can each perform, moment by moment, in our own individualized way. It’s science that could be considered a radical act of activism on behalf of personal health, communal health and the health of the planet.
Michelle Veneziano is a family physician and adjunct clinical professor at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. She lives in Forest Knolls.