Intro/Outro Music: 0:13

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Beth Ann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 0:34

Aloha everybody. Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Beth Ann Kapansky-Wright, and today we are going to be talking about the wisdom of water and looking at some ideas of how can we be inspired to tap into the essence of water and learn to flow in our lives and learn to just allow ourselves to move through things easily and peacefully. And if you listen to your heart magic on a weekly basis, you might have noticed that for the first time ever, I did not release a new episode this last week. I started this podcast in January of 2023. And I have never missed a week of posting a new episode.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 1:20

I've always been consistent and this past week I just ran into a wall and it came from this combination of things of being really busy with work. Right now, I'm doing the choreography for a community theater production this summer and it's been a lot of dance all at once. I've turned out so many dances and taught them in the last two and a half weeks and I'm marathon training and I'm lifing. I have my own things going on and I just ran into something where I really ran out of time and didn't want to put anything up that didn't feel from the heart and quality. So I thought I'd try something new and I gave myself permission to take the week off, and, though it's not my intention to do that on a regular basis, I feel like part of my commitment and just sharing myself with others and sharing a space of inspiration and hope and heart wisdom is to show up here and share something weekly. It was good to remember that it's okay to break our mold sometimes and to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves. So, in the spirit of that, I will be doing slightly shorter episodes for the remainder of the summer until life moves into a little bit of a calmer season.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 2:38

And all of that ties in today with what we are talking about on the podcast, and it's the idea of allowing ourselves to flow in our lives and to change, as the flows in our life might change, and to learn to lean into things and follow the direction that the river is taking us, instead of always over-efforting or forcing ourselves to go against the current in our lives. And I think that it's important to know that there's a time to effort and to swim upstream against the current, and there's a time to follow it and to lean into the flow, and so there's space for both. This isn't about doing life in one way, but it is about learning how to build the part of ourselves that knows how to be receptive, that learns how to work with the flow state. So this piece that I want to share today is called Water Wisdom, and it's from Small Pearls Big Wisdom. It's a pretty short passage Water Wisdom Lighten up, play, be like water today, for the river doesn't move, it just flows.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 3:48

Water teaches us to be less attached and move through our lives with less stickiness and more ease, clear and pure. Not allowing ourselves to get sucked in and stuck on things that aren't worth our life force, but instead finding ways to meander along using the least amount of effort, so we don't waste our energy. Carving out our path with our life force instead of forcing our life force to fit a preset path. Allowing life to move with and through us as we learn to put in less effort, allow more and become increasingly adaptive. Knowing there are seasons for rushing tides and rapid streams and seasons for gentle pools and softer laps and easy ebbs. Knowing these seasons can happen multiple times within the same month, the same week, the same day and the same breath. Trusting the ones who are meant to share in our streams will draw near, see the beauty our waters offer and release all others to seek water elsewhere, remembering the vital importance of tending to our own wellsprings and keeping them clean and clear. Water offers endless wisdom when we realize it is a living, breathing life force on our planet that is constantly modeling, guiding, cleansing, purifying and supporting us, teaching us how to be more malleable, liquid and fluid and find greater peace and surrender in our flows.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 5:27

I feel very fortunate to live so close to the water, being on the island of Kauai and in the location that I live in now. The ocean's not that far away. I can't hear it on a regular basis from my home, but in the wintertime, when the swells are really big, you can hear the ocean crashing. At night, when everything's really quiet, and that is really magical. And being able to access that and to just go stand by it or go be by the sea feels like such a gift. It wasn't always so.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 6:01

I'm originally from Alaska, so I wouldn't exactly call snow water. We have a lot of rain there, a lot of lakes, but I think there is an ease here of being by the sea and watching the tide go in and out that supports the mentality of learning to let go and learning to visualize being like the water, and that's something that I will sometimes think of if I'm feeling stressed or I feel like there's too much going on or I feel like I am over efforting or just having one of those feeling states that I'm having a lot of resistance and I know I need to just move through whatever it is that's presenting itself in my life. And so I'll think about this imagery of how can I be like water today? How can I move with more ease? How can I learn to flow through my day? How can I be like water today? How can I move with more ease? How can I learn to flow through my day? How can I breathe more? How can I not attach so much and just allow myself to be non sticky, to let go and have more of the attitude of all right, this is happening and now this is happening.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 7:09

And if something comes my way and it's a curveball or a frustration or something that feels like an obstacle in the path, to be mindful about just moving with it, moving around it, flowing over it, figuring out what I can do with that and really scrapping some of that old self talk that so many of us have, where we feel like why is life doing this to me? Or we get really frustrated because things aren't going the way that we wanted to, or things don't look the way that we wanted them to. And so I think a lot about the inspiration of water, and when I wrote this piece, which made its way into Small Pearls, big Wisdom, which for me really reads like an anthology of years worth of different works, and so it's more of a synthesis of multiple pieces that I'd written on water, and like water weaving those flows, weaving that wisdom together, and that line about the river not moving, it just flows, really made me think about how rivers don't just like pack up and go move somewhere. They can't, they just flow. They just make their way in the world and they learn to flow wherever they're at. And so I think that that's such a graceful way to remind ourselves to work with the energies of surrender, of letting go.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 8:32

The Akashic Records for the third quarter of this year talked a lot about how it is like this map ever unfolding, and that we are moving into this period right now where we don't necessarily know what's coming around the next river bend, and so the encouragement is to be exploratory, to allow ourselves to unfold as we take in the sights and we ride this river and we don't see what's coming around the bend until we're in the moment, and so we learn to respond to it in the moment. We learn to adapt to it in the moment. We learn to increasingly keep letting go of expectations Even in the moment. We learn to increasingly keep letting go of expectations Even in the moment. If we realize we're attaching to an expectation, we learn more and more how to take a breath and say right, I thought that was going to happen and now this is happening, so we're moving in this direction instead. And when we're being like water, it doesn't mean we don't have a process or feelings around our experience.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 9:31

Sometimes being adaptive and responsive is hard. Sometimes there might be a part of ourselves that kind of digs their heels in and thinks but I wanted it to look this way, this is not how it's supposed to be. We can learn to hold space for that inside of ourselves and also try and still take the path of being that gentle, meandering river and just keep moving with the flows in our life. So I feel like that's really beautiful wisdom for any time in life, but it is cancer season right now. Cancer is a water sign. On the last podcast we talked about the archetype of cancer and the wonderful energy from it that encourages us to be creative, to self-nourish, to think about what represents heart and home to us and to learn to work with our emotional flows and our intuitive flows.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 10:23

And so this imagery of how can you be like water this week, how can you move through the things in your life with less attachment, a little bit more ease. Is there anything in your life that you are feeling really sticky around right now, that you have a very stuck mindset around, that you could let go of a little bit more? These are all beautiful journaling prompts for the week ahead, and maybe also imagining just for fun if you were a body of water right now, what would it be? Would you be a gentle stream? Would you feel like a crashing ocean? Would you be a rushing river? Would you feel like a puddle? Maybe you feel stuck and so you just feel a little bit like this stuck puddle or a very still lake on a day without a breeze. What water would you be and what wisdom might you learn from that particular tributary of water and what it might have to teach you.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 11:20

So just some fun intuitive writing prompts if you want to take this idea a little bit further and do some creative journaling around it. And with that I wish you a beautiful week. I hope it is one that you can find a little bit more peace, ease and grace for your process. I will be back next week with another episode of your Heart Magic. And, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic.

Intro/Outro Music: 11:59

You've been listening to your Heart Magic with Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.