VEDA AUSTIN on Water as Source /317
Photo of water that has crystallized into various botanical-like formations; courtesy Adobe Stock.
This week, guest Veda Austin invites us to consider and grow closer to water – as both a preciously vital and often overlooked life source. Veda’s work researching and making art with water has allowed her an intimate look into water’s role on Earth and within our lives. Water is our companion, and more than just companion, it is what makes us. We are continually obliged to water, and it to us, as we are in an interdependent relationship with it. Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?
Ayana and Veda walk between magical and corporeal realms. How does connection with water deepen our connection to the world as a whole? How does water and its cyclic nature invite us into interdependence and reciprocity? Veda reminds us that we are a “fluid, intelligent body of water, minerals, salts and consciousness.” Water provides the tides of our lives. Reverence for water should inspire a reverence for ourselves.
“Water is not a resource. It is source.”
Photo of Veda Austin
Touching on her healing journey, art, practice, and methods of working with water as collaborator, Veda highlights curiosity, closeness, and tenderness as guiding principles. Continually on a learning journey, Veda’s work shows what is possible when water is seen as source rather than as commodity. This episode reminds us of the wisdom we inherently hold alongside the grand scale of that which we have left to learn.
Veda is a water researcher, public speaker, mother, artist and author. She has dedicated the last 8 years observing and photographing the life of water. She believes that water is fluid intelligence, observing itself through every living organism on the planet and in the Universe. Her primary area of focus is photographing water in its ‘state of creation’, the space between liquid and ice. It is through her remarkable crystallographic photos that water reveals its awareness of not only Creation, but thought and intention through imagery.
♫ The music featured in this episode is "The Memory of Water" by Strong Sun Moon/Camelia Jade and "Divine Surrendering" by Doe Paoro.
Episode References
The Fourth Phase of Water by Dr. Gerald Pollack
Water Codes by Dr. Carly Nuday
Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
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For The Wild Podcast is an anthology of the Anthropocene; focused on land-based protection, co-liberation and intersectional storytelling rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth and consumerism.