Water Underground: Woman Under Umbrella in the Pool, Fig Tree Buds, Rain, Men, Women and Watsu

A woman with dreadlocks brought a black umbrella into the warm pool today under which to soak. I was amused, having never seen this before at Harbin Hot Springs. She kept her dreads dry while soaking at one side of the pool. {Most people are naked in the Harbin pools}. Then she went to the front corner of the pool, away from the stairs, and the umbrella rested comfortably in the corner on the two sides of the pool, and she soaked underneath, as if under the roof of a little house. :)


*

The fig tree over the warm pool which lost its leaves in November is showing green, pointy buds now.


**

Harbin is verdant and there are a lot of people there in the middle of winter. The winter rains have finally come, but it isn't that cold, - just wet, gray and dreary. And the pools are warm. It seems the California sunbelt has had about 11 months of dryness, with around 21 days of rain (some very light), only. The plants have adapted over generations, but the very little rain this past year raises significant fire risks for the summer.


***

Watsu {water shiatsu} has emerged at Harbin as a kind of nurturing, healing and softening practice, ~ as a way for people to connect and reconnect. Harbin continues to seem to me to originate from the freedom-seeking movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, where, to generalize grossly, men grew their hair long, and many women seemed to aspire to become kinds of earth mothers. Counterculture seemed to explore, as an ideal, the changing of male gender roles, especially, but also has seemed to continue, on the whole, to perpetuate 'familiar' gender roles, although there was and has been wide-spread experimentation and exploration of life possibilities vis-a-vis gender since. (And ...)

But men and women at Harbin seem to become more masculine and more feminine, in fascinating ways, accentuated by Harbin's clothing-optionalness, where some sexuality is 'in the air,' - from the pretty calm space which the pool area and Harbin (and the 'relaxation response,' I think) give rise to. Harbin's openness and milieu can give rise to deep, freedom-oriented energies in people, in novel ways. And even though Harbin seems to me still somewhat 'traditional' in its countercultural, masculine and feminine roles, Watsu, as practice, and as an unique, social constellation, which began at Harbin about 27 years ago, harmonizes and softens everything, especially ways of being together in the pools, and especially between men and women. And people dance together in the water ... :)

Watsu {water shiatsu} emerged partly by people playing around in the warm pool, mostly naked. Men would float women, women would float women, men would float men, and women would float men, and from that Watsu developed into a form, with its own school, and with a variety of developments since. So, while gender roles can be familiar at Harbin, Watsu brings people together, harmonizes them, and is also a way many Harbin residents also make their living. And creates, as a dance between people, a kind of ease and oneness, in the moment.

Oh, Harbin ...

Watsu is such a beautiful practice, ~ made possible and given form by the hot water flowing from deep underground filling into the Harbin pools, and by a bunch of hippies over the past 40 years exploring movement and being together.