The healing arts in other countries are far advanced of those now being practiced in the United States. This past year, as an aquatic therapist, I was invited to travel and study with a group of American health practitioners to witness and experience highly effective techniques of hydrotherapy that are both ancient and modern.

In June I participated in a course at the Toskana Therme in Bad Salza, Germany, called Dreams and Rituals in Healing Waters. In November I traveled to Russia with the People to People Ambassador’s Program to study the traditional use of warm mineral waters for physical and psychological rehabilitation.

My experiences there have deepened my awareness of what can be created here in mid-America, and have increased my desire to bring this vision to fruition.

In Germany the word spa means “taking of the waters.” The approach there is therapeutic and intended for healing and expanding the mind and body. The spas serve all social classes of people, are family oriented, and are fun, and thoroughly transformational. The Toskana Therme, built in 1998, is an exceptionally-engineered architectural feat of beauty, incorporating sacred geometry, light, sound and glorious pools of natural warm mineral water. One of the more advanced aquatic techniques practiced there is Wassertanzen or Water Dance. Created in Germany in 1985, it is an underwater massage that has elements of Aikido martial arts, dolphin movements, rolls, inversions, massage and dance.

Other therapies transcended the merely physical benefits of stretching and relaxation. Once the body and mind have been brought to greater levels of health and vitality, one can begin the process of moving to higher frequencies, where one can experience different dimensions and achieve new states of being. During the course, we slept and floated nightly in the warm (95 degree) mineral water while various lights, sounds and frequencies were projected. This process created harmonies within each body and mind that activated collective dreaming, an activity which is a deliberate attempt to seek guidance and counsel from the Divine. Collective dreaming gathers individual dreams and melds them into a larger unified vision that reflects a higher purpose or goal. Ancient tribal hunters used it to assure success in the hunt by first gathering and sleeping with their heads together at the center of a circle. This arrangement allowed each member’s dream to form a collective vision that orchestrated each person’s role in the actual hunt. One of the stated purposes of the spa in Germany was to help clients achieve such heightened states.

In Russia things were very different.

There I visited spas in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Novgorod. Hydrotherapy was offered in various hospitals and clinics housed in ancient buildings that dated back to the Czarist period. Family members would often move into these facilities along with the patient in order to be close to their loved one. Doctors and other medical practitioners were treating patients with a range of illnesses and disabilities both physical and mental. The key to their success in rehabilitating patients was the use of natural, warm (body temperature) mineral water during the initial phase of healing. The buoyancy of the warm water allows the body to de-contract after experiencing a traumatic injury or illness. Because the patient is relaxed and soothed by the temperature and pressure of the water, patients are freer from pain, and therapists can stretch and manipulate the body far more than they would be able to do on land. Additionally, the body absorbs the minerals in the water that promote healing. The medium of water seems to magnify the energy for healing. The Russian doctors with whom I spoke said that such hydrotherapy, if done exclusively at the beginning of rehabilitation, reduces the overall recovery time by 50%.
The effective use of hydrotherapy in Germany and Russia
to treat illnesses as far ranging as arthritis, autism, post traumatic stress syndrome and cerebral palsy, and the use of hydrotherapy to promote higher states of consciousness, as it did in the course I took on collective dreaming, have convinced me that such methods of alternative healing can be realized here in mid-America.

I believe that the process of de-contracting, promoted by the nurturing effects of warm mineral water, when combined with the therapeutic effects of detoxification, can produce optimal healing. I have been invited to return to Russia to teach a method of rehabilitation I call Cocooning that incorporates these processes.

The Saint Louis Aquatic Healing Center, where I am the Founder and CEO, will be joining with F.R.E.S.H Renewal, a non-profit retreat center that is offering their facilities with beautiful surroundings and natural mineral water for this project. F.R.E.S.H. Renewal is located in Augusta, just 30 miles west of St. Louis. My hope is to reach out to the baby-boomers, and especially to military families and those returning from Iraq.

If we can build the desire in our community to create a one-of-a-kind aquatic healing and retreat center that offers traditional and cutting edge therapies, then the ultimate benefits of hydrotherapy will soon be available here. As 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporations we are dependent on charitable contributions for our continued success and growth. We have a phased growth plan for expansion and will execute each phase only after sufficient money has been raised. Our Open House is scheduled for June 11, 2005. If you would like to learn more, or help in any way, please call 314-432-5228, and ask for our building program.

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