Watsu at Travaasa Austin with Laura Srygley

Joining the Travaasa® Austin team, Laura Srygley is a Certified Watsu® practioner and a member of the Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association, Association of Bodywork Professionals and is nationally certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. In addition to traditional Watsu®, Srygley is also trained in an adaption for special needs clients, Waterdance and Healing Dance.

‘Wow’ is such a simple word, requiring such little effort to say, yet expresses so much: wonder, pleasure, thrill, surprise. That’s the most common word that I first hear after someone has experienced their first Watsu session.

I am always impressed by the sentiments people express after their first watsu session. One elderly woman told me that she felt like she had been to paradise and back. Others describe the feeling of being carried through the clouds by an angel, feeling that I was ‘painting with their body through the water’, each of their cells laughing with life, divine, primordial, sacred, heavenly, celestial, seaweed moved by the ocean currents. They talk of trust—in another person, in themselves, in the universe, They talk of being transformed into a dolphin, a mermaid, oneness with the water and—almost every day—I hear someone say something like ‘that was the most amazing experience I have ever had in my life’.

What’s so amazing about Watsu? It provides sensations that you rarely encounter anywhere else; floating weightless, our body immersed in warm water, surrounded by silence, hearing only the sound of our heartbeat, moving with so much grace, and with so little effort. We have not had this feeling since we were in the womb, but Watsu evokes the deep and primal memory still in us somewhere.

Now that our bodies and minds have developed, we have so many references and memories, thoughts that come and go, images and colors that we recognize. In this state of relaxation, this recognition and newness is often awe-inspiring.

Our bodies and cells are at least 70% water. Even our bones are largely made of water. It’s no wonder, then, that when we get the chance to reconnect with the water that we are made of, the water that we began in, we feel so at home.