Udara

Water Healing

By Martina Reinbold

Imagine yourself being floated around in warm water with relaxing sounds of music that comes from underwater, feeling the soft sensations of the water on your skin as your body is being moved around, allowing you to drift away into a deep state of relaxation and to forget about your everyday life.

Water Healing is a form of bodywork performed in a 35 degree (95 °F) warm water pool at Udara. There are only a few places in Bali where you can get this experience, so it is a unique opportunity to receive a session during your stay on this island. The private session with one of our therapists combines elements of massage, joint mobilization and stretches. While you passively receive the session floating in the water, the therapist will support, move and hold your body. Moments of stillness alternate with rhythmical flowing movements, which free the body in ways impossible on land.

The fact that warm water has healing and relaxing properties has already been known since thousands of years. Since ancient times in Rome or Greece, Thermal Spas have been around as places to cure stiffness in the joints, relax muscles as well as improve metabolism and circulation. In various places around the world you can also find a new generation of warm water relaxation as floating tanks such as at Ubud Float Garden (https://ubudfloatgarden.com/) or Solace Float in Canggu Berawa (https://www.solacefloat.com/). These floating tanks are capsules filled with highly salted water where you can experience an amazing sensation of weightlessness as you float on the water surface. Whether you lie around in a Thermal Spa pool or float in a tank for relaxation, both can help you relieve stress and enter into a deeply meditative, relaxed state.

Water Healing goes further than pure relaxation. Many of our guests were quite surprised on the effects of a session and shared that they had never experienced such a profound journey in any other form of bodywork. The sense of weightlessness in the water helps to let go completely and release stagnant energies on a physical and emotional level. As the body softens with the flowing movements, our whole being can soften. Especially when we are very busy in our lives, taking care of others or striving to achieve our goals, it can be a very rewarding to simply receive, give up control and nurture ourselves. It can be a blissful journey back to yourself, a precious time-out and you benefit immensely from the quiet meditative stillness and expansion of consciousness it can induce. Every person experiences these sessions in a different way. Some share that they felt completely free like floating in the universe, others feel very nurtured and comforted as if they were a baby in the womb. Old memories might surface, new creative ideas might emerge as you go on this Water Healing journey.

Aquatic Bodywork has its origins in the 80’s in California at Harbin Hot Springs, where Harold Dull, a Shiatsu practitioner, started floating people in the warm pools and discovered how beneficial this was. As he incorporated elements of Shiatsu in his sessions, he named it Watsu (=Water Shiatsu), started putting the movements and body shapes into sequences and eventually taught it to students all over the world. In a Watsu session, the receiver stays on the surface, the head supported by the therapists and the legs buoyed up with foam floats. Other modalities such as Healing Dance, Water Dance or Dolphin Dance go underwater as well. The receiver gets to wear a nose clip during part of the session and will be brought below the surface as he holds his breath for a short amount of time. Water Healing as practiced at Udara combines various Aquatic Bodywork modalities and you can choose to stay on the surface or to go below as well.

As a way of introducing you into the basics of Water Healing or Watsu, we offer a weekly group class on Saturdays from 4 to 5 pm, where you learn how to float someone and you get to experience being floated in the warm pool. You can also book a Day Spa pass which allows you to use all of the facilities including the warm and cold pools, Sauna, Steam room and warm jacuzzi.

If you like to book an individual Water Healing session, please contact our Front desk on Whatsapp +62 877-6537-7313 or email [email protected]. We are looking forward to float you around in probably the most uniquely designed warm pool of this island. Give yourself a well-deserved time out to nourish your body and soul.

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