By Beau Flemister

Several years ago, an independent film was showing at the now closed Varsity Twins Theater in town called What the Bleep Do We Know? It’s an insightful documentary, sort of a Quantum Physics 101 for the movie-going masses. Of the many speakers it featured and followed throughout the film, a scientist by the name of Dr. Masaru Emoto shared some interesting (and even considered controversial) scientific findings. He was conducting experiments with water. Well, actually frozen water.

Intrigued by the fact that the face of every snowflake that has fallen to Earth is unique, like a fingerprint, he began taking photographs of frozen water crystals under a microscope. Purer water from moving mountain streams and rivers displayed more beautiful, symmetrical water crystals in the photographs, while tap water from the city of Tokyo (sanitized with chlorine) displayed warped, assymetrical crystals, if any.

Seeing a difference in the ice crystals based on the water source piqued Dr. Emoto’s curiosity and he experimented with exposing the water to other things. His first round of experiments featured music. He literally put a glass of water between two speakers and played a variety of music, from Beethoven to heavy metal. After freezing the water and photographing the samples he noted that symphonic music exhibited ice crystals with attractive, proportioned shape, while heavy metal music displayed ice crystals of fragmented, broken shapes.

Most famously, Dr. Emoto began to wrap messages around glass cups of water before freezing them with phrases such as “love and gratitude,” or “thank you” in various languages. The water samples displayed brilliantly shaped crystals when exposed to positive phrases. He conducted the same experiments with negative phases and snapped photographs of ugly, fragmented and deformed crystals to phrases like, “I hate you,” “Do it!” or “You make me sick.”

Whether one believes that humans can communicate with water or if water can communicate with us is debatable. But maybe what Dr. Emoto was trying to show through the results of his experiments is that water is alive and reacts in some way to positive or negative forces. Humans start out life as fetuses composed 99 percent of water. As adulthood is reached, the human body is 70 percent water. If we were to die of old age, we’d still be 50 percent water.

“In other words, throughout our lives we exist mostly as water,” reflects Dr. Emoto. The way we affect the water, or blood, in our own bodies further affects our state of mind. For example, moving, flowing water in rivers and streams, or well circulating blood in the body, is always healthier than stagnant, trapped water.

If one does take the findings of Dr. Emoto to heart, that water reacts positively to soothing music, language and forces, then consider this: how are we, as surfers, affected by the water that we spend so much time in? Surfers choose to spend their lives interacting with the ocean, all over the world and at any given time zone on earth. Are our thoughts, emotions and the music we speak positive and supportive while we float in the aquatic element that gives us so much joy? To many surfers, the ocean continually offers an inexplicable form of healing. Conversely, can we, in some way, return this gift?

Sources
Emoto, Masaru. The Hidden Messages in Water. Beyond Words Publishing, Inc., Hillsboro, OR, 2001.