New Articles for 2010
The Healing Power of Water: The Real Fountain of Youth
By Shirley Runco
Water is an intimate part of who we are as physical beings. It keeps us clean, it nourishes us and our food supply, and is a wonderful source for recreation. It warms us, cools us, heals us; it has and gives power, beauty and softness. Drinking enough pure water every day can keep us healthy and prolong our lives. It is one of the most plentiful, perfect and useful essential substances that we have here on Earth. And yet, many of us ignore it, waste it, pollute it and rarely value it.
Finding underground water is the essence, the source, the soul, and the origin of dowsing, which can be defined as communication with one’s high self, or the world of spirit, using a tool (a pendulum, an L-rod, a Y-rod, a bobber) or your physical body, with a desire or intention for an accurate response to a statement, a question, or a request in regards to information, inspiration, ideas, or for help in some regard. Dowsing is an easy way to determine if you are drinking enough water each day for optimum health.
Speaking of dowsers, in 1991, the Water for Humanity (WFH) Committee was established within the American Society of Dowsers to provide funding for the development of dug or drilled wells and other aspects of water resources and recovery worldwide in areas of critical need. The second purpose of WFH is to demonstrate the use and practical applications of dowsing, and to establish credibility of the dowser's theory of "live" water. The members of the WFH Committee judge and vote on each individual grant request. The size of the grant depends upon the particular situation and number of beneficiaries. In general, the grants are in the range of $500 to $5,000 (US). The general funds go directly toward actual well construction and pump installation. It is expected that the beneficiary communities would provide local materials, security, transportation and unskilled labor, as well as some percentage of the overall construction costs. Community participation in construction must provide training of individuals in well and pump maintenance, as well as establish a pump repair fund in order to insure the sustainability of the project. For more information, and/or to make a financial donation, please visit www.dowsers.org.
Now, back to you: your physical body is a water machine‚ designed primarily to run on water and minerals. Every life giving and healing process that happens inside of your body happens with water. Your body instinctively knows how and strives to sustain youthful longevity‚ and in its every effort water is the key.
Did you know that your body is made up of over 70% water, that your blood is more than 80%‚ your brain over 75%‚ and your liver is an amazing 96% water? Is it no wonder that we need to drink enough water every day to stay healthy and energized?
The function of every cell in your body is controlled by electrical signals sent through your nervous system from the brain. Your nerves‚ in reality‚ are an elaborate system of tiny waterways. If the fluid inside your nerves thickens due to dehydration‚ or is contaminated with synthetic chemicals or toxic heavy metals like lead‚ the vital signals can get distorted. Many experts now believe that the distortion of these signals may be the root cause of many degenerative diseases and neurological illnesses like attention deficit disorder‚ chronic fatigue syndrome‚ anxiety‚ depression and even Alzheimer‘s disease.
Proper digestion and nutrient absorption depend on a healthy intake of water. In order for your body to get the nutritional value from your foods and supplements‚ you must consume plenty of good water. Since sugars and carbohydrates are absorbed more rapidly‚ even a slight degree of dehydration can cause you to get the caloric intake without the nutrition from the foods you eat. When you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Thirst can also masquerade as hunger. When you feel hungry, try drinking a big glass (or two) of pure water and wait 15 minutes. You may be surprised to learn that your hunger disappears. By drinking water an hour before rather than during a meal, your digestive enzymes can work full strength. How about drinking a glass of water while you’re preparing your meal or just before going out to eat in a restaurant. You may just find yourself eating less. If you’re sweating, exercising, in extreme heat, or even “green around the gills,” be sure to replenish your fluids.
Symptoms of being under-hydrated vary, but can include low-grade headaches, fatigue, dizziness, irritability and more. Remember that caffeine and alcohol dehydrate the body. For every cup of coffee, black tea, soda or alcohol you drink, you need to drink one glass of water to just “break even”. Herb tea counts as water, though green tea, while containing much less caffeine than black tea or coffee, still has caffeine and can contribute to dehydration in some people. When you are feeling fatigued or hungry try drinking a glass of pure water instead of a soft drink or a cup of coffee. Your body will love you for it and respond in a healthy way.
Drinking warm water especially in the morning flushes the kidneys and helps in moving your bowels. Warm water stimulates the glands on the walls of the stomach and prepares the stomach for food. Drinking warm water after every meal detoxifies the body and improves your digestion.
Pay particular attention to the first half of your day, especially if you start the day with coffee or black tea. Start drinking warm water as soon as you wake up to avoid afternoon fatigue or headaches, and frequent nighttime trips to the bathroom.
Our energy level is greatly affected by the amount of water we drink. It has been medically proven that just a 5% drop in body fluids will cause a 25% to 30% loss of energy in the average person... a 15% drop in body fluids causes death! Water is what our liver uses to metabolize fat into useable energy. It is estimated that over 80% of our population suffers energy loss due to minor dehydration. An increased intake of healthy water will help metabolize and shed stored fat resulting in more energy and less fat.
Detoxification is probably the single most important component to long-term health, and one that relies almost exclusively on an adequate intake of good water. Water is our body‘s only means of flushing out toxins‚ the key to disease prevention. In our industrialized‚ chemical society‚ we are exposed to literally hundreds of harmful substances daily. Our air‚ our foods and everything we touch contain traces of harmful chemicals. Unfortunately we can‘t keep toxins from getting into our body‚ but we can help our body to get rid of them by drinking plenty of healthy water. The more water we drink the more we allow our body to purify itself. Almost all degenerative disease is the result of toxins building up in our body. For more information on the healing benefits of drinking water, please visit www.watercure.com.
An adequate intake of water helps ease common complaints, including:
Headaches: Since 75% of your brain is water, headaches can be a signal that your body is dehydrated (and potentially even constipated). Lay off that ibuprofen (which is bad for your liver) and stay hydrated.
Stubborn Fat: Water is nature’s appetite suppressant and also helps your body metabolize fat. Often when people are dieting, they don’t boost water intake enough to support the liver’s work in metabolizing fats. And, metabolized fats must be eliminated with plenty of fluids.
Back Pain: You wouldn’t think hydration would have much to do with your back, but the disks along your spine are filled with fluids, mainly water, and they act like shock absorbers. When your fluid levels drop, your disks struggle to support your upper body, causing stress and pain.
Immune Disturbances: Your lymphatic system breaks down toxins before passing them into the blood stream for disposal. Low water intake disturbs lymphatic fluid flow, taxing your immune system and increasing infection risk.
High Blood Pressure: Since your blood is almost 85% water, blood volume depends on your water intake. When your body detects a drop in blood volume from dehydration, it closes less active capillary beds in order to fuel more active areas. When vessels close, they cause muscle tension. Water soothes hypertension by increasing blood volume and thus reducing tension.
Joint Pain: Water lubricates and cushions joints between your bones. When your water intake is low, friction between cartilage surfaces increases, causing swelling that leads to aches and pain.
Sluggishness: If you’re sluggish, good old H2O can help. Without enough water, your cells aren’t exactly motivated to tango. Water also helps flush toxins out (like MSG, food colorings, too much alcohol, and even allergens).
Bad Breath: Saliva helps clean your teeth of bacteria and keeps your tongue hydrated. If you’re hydrated and your breath still smells bad, dental floss could be your new best friend. If you floss and your breath still repels people, you may want to clean up your diet and focus on digestive health. But for now, start with drinking a lot more water.
Charlie-Horses: Water makes for oxygenated blood, which makes for oxygenated muscles. Muscles with no oxygen create lactic acid and thus cramps. Drinking water delivers oxygen to your muscles. And, if you drink a lot of coffee, you may need to replenish your electrolytes as well as your fluids.
Remember to drink more water if you’re exercising intensively or in the direct sun for long periods of time.
The way to determine how much water you need daily is to take your weight and divide by two, and then drink that many ounces per day. Please do not drink it all at once! Spread it out through the day 8 ounces at a time. I drink sparkling mineral water throughout the day as an aid to digestion.
Water gives out an energy that is detectable because of the research from Masaru Emoto of Japan with his thousands of photos of frozen water crystals from every source imaginable showing a different “face” depending on the source and input to the water, in what he calls the “law of energy.” He has proven that water responds to our thoughts, our intentions, our prayers, and to programming.
Dynes measures the surface tension of water. The concept of “dynes” comes from Dr. Alex Correl, a Nobel Prize winner, who stated that a secret of life is to feed and nourish the cells and let them flush their waste and toxins. He found that if you can provide the appropriate nutrition for a cell and remove the waste material, it will never die. Water is the medium. Ordinary water has a surface tension of 73. If the water you drink has the ideal Dynes level of 45-48, nutrients will get into the cells efficiently and waste and toxins will be taken out efficiently. As we age, our cells hold less water, so our skin wrinkles.
A wonderful way to program your water is to hold your hands over it while saying, “Please bless this water with the water prayer, 877 and 3-3-3-3. Bless this water, clear this water, program this water with love, gratitude, peace and harmony and harmonize with my energy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
For those of you who do not like the taste of water you might want to try the following: fill a cobalt blue glass bottle with your blessed water and place in the sun for a day. You could also place a quartz crystal in the bottle. I can almost guarantee that you will start enjoying your drinking water and not have a problem drinking a glass every hour.
The following event is an example of the caring that many dowsers have for our planet and the water that surrounds us. On Saturday, February 19, 2005, under the auspices of Dowsers Doing Good Deeds, seven dowsers got together to do a prayer service and energy clearing at Yosemite Slough, a body of water that connects to the San Francisco Bay in southeast San Francisco.
The land was partially composed of tons of rubble that had been dumped there from the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. During World War II, a large military shipyard was built along the slough. After years of negotiation, the Navy finally handed the shipyard over to the City of San Francisco, leaving behind multiple toxins, which disturbed the flora and fauna of the area. In addition to the military pollutants, several small industries dumped chemicals and garbage into these waters. Organizations such as the Audubon Society, Arc Ecology, and Green Action have taken Yosemite Slough under their wing; but while wealthier areas of San Francisco that had also suffered from military dumping have been cleaned and made safe, Yosemite Slough, which is located in the poorest area of the City, had largely been ignored by government agencies. Recently the Military agreed to an extensive cleanup of the area, and there are plans to restore a wetlands habitat along the slough.
We fashioned our service after the water-cleansings done in Japan, inspired by Masaru Emoto (author of “Messages from Water”). Whereas Mr. Emoto has had Buddhist priests presiding over the rituals, our prayers had more of an American-dowser flavor, and we used an energy signature to enhance and strengthen our prayers. We had an energy-signature banner to place at the site of our prayers, which we left behind. This banner works similarly to Tibetan prayer flags.
We started the prayers with the following: “We call to the guiding angels of Yosemite Slough and the spirits of all living things who visit and live here. Thank you for joining us as we come together in sending our love to Yosemite Slough. We ask you, Dear God, Creator of All Things, to shine your loving light upon Yosemite Slough, cleansing her, transforming all unhealthy elements into elements of vibrant life, vitalizing her, and blessing her waters, her environs, and all of her flora and fauna with ultimate good health and well-being. Amen.”
Several people offered their own healing prayers for all the waters of the planet. We then took a couple of minutes to chant Hu (pronounced like the word hue) to bring natural balance to the slough and to accelerate her healing, followed by a silent meditation as we all sent our individual messages of healing to the slough.
Then, to keep the energies going infinitely, three of us had blessed items to throw into the slough. We closed by giving our thanks to each other and to all the helping angels and spirits of the land that joined us in the service.
On dowsing the energy levels of the site, we found that the slough had no aura before the clearing process began. We are happy to say that Yosemite Slough now glows with an all-encompassing, healthy aura and continues to this day to do so.
The following is something that is easy and fun to do: put a glass of water on a table somewhere in your home. Tell the water, "I love you" and "Thank you". At the same time, briefly visualize that all the water on Earth is connected. Your love and thanks will be sent out to all the water on Earth through the water in the glass.
How about imagining the following when you are touching the water coming from a faucet. The vibration of your love and thanks is overflowing from your heart and going through your palms into the water that is going into the drainpipe. Your vibration will go through the flow of water through the drain, into the nearby rivers and finally enter the ocean. The vapor from the ocean will build clouds and then the water will fall down as rains onto various parts of the world. In this way, the vibration of love and thanks that has originated from your heart will be transmitted all over the world through the water network. As a reminder of the importance of expressing your love and gratitude put a thank you sticker on all your faucets.
“If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water.” -- Loren Eisley
