Transcript: VEDA AUSTIN on Water as Source /317
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Veda Austin.
Veda Austin I believe that water is not a resource, but it is source.
Ayana Young 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.
Well, Veda, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. I'm really looking forward to and interested in seeing how our conversation flows with this topic of water and all that will come from it.
Veda Austin Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
Ayana Young Well, gosh, there's so much to ask you, but I really want to ground this conversation in reverence for water and our relationship to it rather than just going over specific water research, although I'm really also interested in that as well. So just wanting to kind of preface us with that. And I also want to read something from your website where you explain, “Water is our constant companion. From the moment we are conceived, it is always with us. Even upon death, it is water that evaporates from the physical, rising upwards into the heavens.” So, yeah, speaking of reverence, and water as not only as a life companion but as a life force, I'm just thinking of the ubiquity of water across life through the water cycle, the way water passes through the oceans, streams, air, and earth, to our bodies, and back and forth and so forth. And I guess I'm wanting to start with a question of, you know, how does intensely focusing on water remind us of our interdependence and interconnectedness within the world?
Veda Austin Firstly, I don't think that we can separate ourselves from water, and that is because we are bodies of water, and we see ourselves when we look in the mirror as a very solid kind of looking person, but we only ever a cut away from leaking, or an emotion away from leaking, or a toilet break away from leaking, or an exercise away from leaking. And yet, even though we look at the entire world through the lens of water, because our eye’s lens is 99% water, we forget that there are tributaries, and streams flowing through our body, just like on Mother Earth. So one of the first places that I start, when I go into schools and talk about water to children, I say to them, “If your skin was invisible and your organs were see through, what would you look like? And how would you recognize your parents?” And when you think about that, the way we recognize our loved ones tends to come back from the way in which they sound and the way in which they energetically feel. And I think that as far as our connection with water outside of our body goes, I believe that water is not a resource, but it is source, and that we're all flowing back to the ocean of bliss. I think that all life holds water within it.
So in many ways, I think that water is always observing itself, always in search of itself. I think that all bodies of water are really in search of themselves. They are observing themselves from every perceivable perspective, even when we are looking for life. on other planets, we're always looking for water. But the interesting part is that we say that there is no life without water, but in fact, not many people are willing to say that water is alive or living. It's interesting because when you look back at ancient and you look at Indigenous cultures, you see that there is a very different relationship that they have around water in nature. In fact, the Maori word, my dad is Maori, which are the Indigenous people of New Zealand, the word we have spirit is wairua, which means two waters, the physical waters and the spiritual waters. And I believe that there are these two streams within us, of the physical and the spiritual in relation to water.
Ayana Young It's really interesting to think back and imagine a time when, culturally, our connection and our reverence and our understanding of water was so much more–I don't know if authentic or holistic, or I don't know, I'm trying to find the word. But I wonder if, in your reflections, you can look back in history and see where there was a break in, I don't want to say our culture, there are so many cultures, but clearly something has gone really wrong when we see how water is so disrespected. I guess where my mind is going right now is thinking about fossil fuel extraction and the toxification of water and dumping into rivers and streams, and even drinking poisoned water as if it's natural. So I know at some point in our human history, however many of our cultures shifted into this complete other worldview, and I guess I'm just wondering if you've noticed, when that switch started to happen, or why are we here?
Veda Austin Well, I mean, there's been a clear change in our language, which is indicative of a clear change in how we treat water in a more physical sense. So quite some time ago, there was a different word that we used for water, we didn't call water ‘water,’ we called water ‘the waters’, and there was an idea that the waters were in fact, like a body of water, physical manifestation of water body, so there was this reverence with the word the before it. Then in Roman times, when they made and built plumbing, the word ‘the waters’ turned into water, as we started to observe that water takes away our waste and we began to perceive it in a slightly different way, or actually a very different way. Then as time goes on, so often, now we tend to do this very reductionist kind of way of, looking at science quite often, just the letters H2O, it's been reduced to H2O and so the only word that I can think of off the top of my head, where the waters still applies to a sacred body of water, is when someone's water breaks when we say her waters broke, when she's about to have a baby. And so it's quite interesting when you look at how we use water, rather than use it for a sole purpose of drinking, bathing or cleansing. When people started to see that it would take away effluence they began to also visually perceive it differently, because we are such visual beings, and you know, that quote “seeing is believing” is very real for most people. That idea that water can also be full of effluence kind of started to make a shift, even though we knew that we needed it to survive, there was this kind of visual that we had, where things just made a slow decline in the way in which we respected it. But that's not obvious in all cultures, but that is one area where a lot of industrial level, just industrial kind of changes started to happen, even though it made things more kind of “sanitary,” but there's probably other ways in which we can actually do things in the world. And I think that more and more people are now beginning to realize what some of those things are.
Ayana Young Yeah, I could see how the shift of language really impacted the way that we thought of water and it's sad to see how far we've come from being in right relationship to water, and, and I think even considering the words “holy water,” and how there's a differentiation for people between water that's holy and water that's unholy, I guess I wanted your perspective on this. I think where my mind goes is if all water is holy, would we then treat water a lot differently? Considering that it is all interconnected? And it seems almost impossible to separate water from waters?
Veda Austin Well, I would suggest, then, I mean, a few, if you just apply that then to people is that, you know, we kind of carve out people who we term as holy and say they're holy. But those holy people will often remind us that that so are we and I think that one of the things we do in the world is we put labels on stuff, we're really, really good at that, to make us feel safe in an environment which might feel unsafe if we had no boundaries. And also, I think that, you know, we are in a very kind of, there's a lot of polarity. So when we say, you know I hear people all the time saying, you know, this water is, you know, terrible, you have to only drink this kind of water and this water is that and this water is this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's some physical aspects to the fact that there are certain waters that are, unfortunately, not able to be drunk, because on the whole, you know, people have put so much chemicals and waste into the water, and we haven't figured out other ways to kind of, you know, make water the “clean.” It's all about being clean. This term of holy is all about being cleansed and being clean, you know, and I think in some ways, this is one of the things that's almost problematic, because there's this idea that we're unclean, there's this idea that we need to be cleansed. There's always this idea that there's something wrong with us, and this is just such a big thing throughout the world. So we're always trying to get better. We're never somehow perfect. I think that these, as you do your own inner work and your own journey into becoming a kind, good person, that includes being a kind good person to yourself.
A big part of growing older and getting wiser is about beginning to actually like yourself, and being comfortable with the reflection that you see in the mirror, and not being so critical, not being so dualistic and not being so just kind of thinking that there's always someone better than you. Because really, I mean, that idea that we're all connected, it's so cliche, unfortunately it's just thrown around, not many people really sit and think with this idea that we are connected. But if you consider that by molecular count, not by volume, we are 99% water, and that there is evidence out there to suggest that water, and I've done this and various other people have done different tests where you can have tap water, which crystallographic structures–so basically my area of expertise is in crystallography, I have discovered a technique of short term freezing, whereby I'm able to see very specific patterns in water and photograph them. And so tap water has a signature pattern and that is a very disordered, broken kind of icy pattern, whereas spring waters signature pattern tends to look like hexagons and a star shape with these kinds of ferns that come off each arm. And when you put tap water beside spring water and you leave them overnight, what happens is that the tap water improves and begins to look more like rainwater, which has a signature pattern of kind of like a fan with a slight curve to it, which is a big improvement. So it's improved by sitting next to the spring water. But the spring water structures begin to also improve and you start to see more hexagonal patterns or you start to see other various patterns which I've identified as to be healthy. And so both improve.
I think that that is the nature of water is actually that of being the observer, the observer aspect is more of the spiritual, I think in the physical, the aspect of water is also extremely influential in a positive way. So that its nature is to improve things. I think across the board, the natural nature of water is to improve things. And so we are, we are bodies of water. When we come into this idea of holy water and people being blessed, then I think there is a very real aspect, I'm not saying that holy water isn't real, but I'm saying that I do think that it would be really, really nice if we could realize that we are all holy water, all of us, and that within these bodies of water, we have choice, so there comes free will. But if you took away the aspect of our personality, we are holy bodies of water. Undoubtedly. Then that takes away this concept of good and bad, that's a bad person, that's a good person, if you took their personality away. If you took that away, then they are bodies of water. We are very, very quick to even talk about how much we've dealt with, we've damaged this, we've stuffed the environments, and everything's terrible, and, you know, all we hear is bad news. It's like, where's the good news? And the good news is there is actually good news. Firstly, we are a living, breathing, sacred, divine body of water and salt and memory. We are an ocean with a memory. I think that that's so beautiful, because when we look back at our life, everything is a memory. Right now, in this moment, the beginning of this podcast is now a memory. We're creating memories. And when we leave this body, one of the greatest gifts that we leave for everyone else is a beautiful memory in the heart.
So I feel like there's a lot of perception that everything is stuffed, and that somehow reflects inward onto us as people, and I think that one of the things that water keeps showing me, reflecting to me, is that, actually, you know, we're beautiful in so many ways. Yes, there are things that we could do better, but I think that we know that, and so it's now more about just doing them. So we talk a lot, a lot, a lot, but we're very aware of what needs to get done, and there are people doing amazing things out there to help clean up the oceans, to help do things, to help people get clean water to drink. You know, I know those things are actually going on. I speak to those people daily. So in my world and my perception, there are things that are actually happening that are incredible, to make things better. I think there are holy bodies of water, doing very holy things every day, including the mothers and the fathers out there that are raising their children, including the people that are going to a job they don't like because they have to feed their children or their families or themselves and they just don't know another way out. And that is what they have to do. Or all of the people that have lost their jobs over the last few years because of the craziness of the world. Everybody, everybody has this–all of the feelings and all of the emotions and all of the experiences that we have had in this world are also memories now, but they are very sacred, those memories, because they help us to shape the future, because we base how we view the world on those memories. But we can also make new ones.
That's the most amazing and beautiful part about us being human about being alive and being able to think because we can make new memories every single moment. And in any, in any moment, we can change our life with a change of perception. So, I've been in many different cultural environments where people have used holy water to bless and use it as blessings. In India, I’ve spent a lot of time there, the water that bathes the feet, because the feet are considered to be sacred, especially from a saint or guru, as they may call them, and that type of water is said to be able to heal people, if you put it on wounds, or if you drink it, all kinds of things. So, you know, in different, more religious, and Christian ways, there's holy water, you know, for baptism and these kinds of things. But is that the intention that's in the water that's making the difference? Or is the water already holy? I think it’s the fact that we just start to attach our good intention into the water, that is already holy, and that just makes it all the more special to us because our life is such a perception of life.
I just think that if we could really see ourselves the way that water sees us, even tap water that has just got so such a different kind of structural imprint, water is so grateful, that tap water is so grateful when we just hold it to our heart and give it love, that it changes structurally to look more like spring water. I've seen some of the biggest structural changes of which I look at as an energetic state of health in water, the reason I say that is because tap water chemically doesn't change, but it structurally changes and it structurally changes the most when human consciousness wraps that up and it's in our love, and so what we see is an absolute sign that even the tap water is grateful for affection. When I asked a whole bunch of children if they were to set an intention, what would it be? Every single one of them said the same thing, and I spoke to them at different households so they weren't all together in a bunch, they all said to be kind to people and I think when you just boil it all down, just be kind to each other, be kind to ourselves. I think that holy water is an embodiment of what it is to be kind.
Ayana Young That's really beautiful, I just have been getting completely lost in your stories and feeling really moved and I want to continue meditating on baptisms and ritual bathing and the importance of submersion and even being in water before birth, with you. It feels like we're starting to touch on these themes and maybe even hear about your own healing journey with water.
Veda Austin There's a lot to unpack in all those topics. So, you know, one of the things that I say about immersing yourself in water is that when you're in the bath, and you lie back, and you even put your head or your ears under the water, one of the first things that water reminds us of is our breath and our heartbeat, when your ears are underwater, that what the water reminds us of, is that kind of noise we would have heard in our mother's stomach. It is a very primordial kind of sensory feeling of being submerged in water, because you really do hear that innate intelligence speaking to you, because we don't think about the fact that our heartbeat is beating, unless we really go into a meditative space and focus on it. In fact, we're on autopilot most of the time. So when we're actually immersed in water, water reminds us of the things that are working within us that we are not even able to hardly stop, for example, in this tends to always happen publicly, you know, when when your tummy is making all kinds of noises, and gurgling, and digesting food. And, we can't stop it. And it often happens when someone's speaking and it's really quiet and your tummy is just making noises, and it's like, there's nothing you can do to stop that. Outside of holding your breath, there's not much you can do to stop breathing, because you're gonna start breathing again, sooner or later.
There's all of this intelligence, making our body work and we don't tend to think about the fact that we are this fluid, intelligent body of water, minerals, salts and consciousness. If you pardon the pun, if you boil it down, those are the things we are made of, that are actively working to keep us alive in this physical body. So I think it's quite interesting, this idea of, if it comes back to me again, to how we perceive water, and if we perceive bodies of water as holy, then we need to also perceive our own body of water as holy, and what is even the definition of holy? We can get into that later.
My personal healing journey, I'll try to do a shorter version, because otherwise it's going to be kind of a long podcast, but I was in a horrendous car accident 24 years ago or so. We went under a seven ton truck, rolled twice, and the driver died immediately. Over the course of 20 years, I had eight surgeries, and on my eighth surgery, which was a bowel surgery, because the seatbelt had crushed all my internal organs and broke my collarbone and I had internal bleeding and all kinds of stuff. So the doctors found that I had had some complications, and they found that during the anesthetic, my body had developed these blood clots in my lungs, and they wanted me to be on warfarin for however long, potentially the rest of my life. I was in my early 20s then and I really really didn't want to have to do it. I didn't want to take warfarin, it didn't feel good for me. So the accident was in my early 20s, so this part was like 20 years later and so I felt very much in resistance to taking blood thinners, but you know, they said you have to do it or you'll die. So I did for around about three or four months and then they did an x-ray, they found that the clots had gone, and they were encouraging me to continue to take the medicine, but I believe everyone should have a choice as to what they do with their own body, and for me personally it didn't feel in alignment with what I wanted to do anymore. So I believed that my body could heal itself and that I could do it naturally. So I became the kind of guinea pig of my own health in many ways. And you know, I've already lived a fairly healthy life, I didn't drink, or smoke, or take drugs, and I've been vegetarian since I was eight. So I was really quite surprised that this actually happened. But when you have had, you know, eight surgeries, that's a lot of anesthetic, so these things can happen. So I ended up speaking to a medical doctor friend of mine, who also practiced Ayurvedic medicine, and he said, you know, why don't you try drinking a natural, emphasis on natural, high alkaline water that might help to stabilize your body.
So I thought, “Wow, if I only have to drink water, then that can't be that hard. That sounds pretty good.” So I started drinking lots of different types of alkaline water. And in New Zealand, even our rainwater, on the whole, is around about 7.2. So it's slightly alkaline. So alkaline ranges from 7.1 up to like 12, and then from 6.9 all the way down to 1 as acidic, and 7 is neutral, and distilled water is meant to be neutral. So I did two week trials drinking alkaline water from various different springs around New Zealand, and I didn't change my diet, I didn't do anything different with my skincare or makeup or anything. So I didn't notice any huge changes in the beginning, different waters just felt kind of hydrating. But again, we don't see the workings of our body because we just see the skin. So we don't really know other than what's going in and what's coming out.
So eventually, someone said to me, because I had a wellness center, and someone said, “Look, I know this old guy, he has got his own private water source. It's a 9.9 pH straight out of the ground, it's a spring, and he's only giving it to cancer patients, maybe he'll give you some.” So he gave me a month's worth of water to try after I told him my story and within three days, I noticed a huge change in bowel motions. It's obviously a topic a lot of people don't want to discuss, but it's such an indicator of your internal health and after having so much bowel surgery, it was very relevant to me. So I noticed a really positive change there. So many people in the world are sitting on the toilet trying to push out a pebble for an hour, and they're grossly dehydrated, in fact it's now estimated that nearly 100% of people are actually dehydrated on some level in the world, which seems extreme. But where are we getting our hydration from, you know, I think that we can also look at what we're eating. So you can of course drink water, but there's this idea of what kind of water you're drinking, quality of water. And you can look at eating, the fourth phase water, which we can get into–fourth phase is more of a gel plasma like water that you can find and watermelons, that you can find in coconut water, that you can find and cucumbers, and aloe vera, and all these kinds of things that are more of a plasma and very hydrating for you. So there are lots of different ways to be hydrated. Hydration is almost like a whole nother topic.
So after, I think it was around day 10 I noticed all these bumps coming up along my arm and jaw that were really painful. And there was one really angry area which just looked, I put my finger over it and it was sharp and sore, so I ended up getting some tweezers and as gross as it sounds I was like digging around in there. And I pulled something out that was green and sharp, and it was a little bit of green glass. And over the course of day 10 and 12, 27 pieces of green glass came out of my arm and jaw that had been in my body for you know, 20 years because the man who had died in that car accident he had a nightclub, and in the back of the car where these crates of Steinlager beer and those beer bottles were green, and when we rolled, they smashed one particular side of my body and the other side got more windscreen. So I realized that you know this, this is amazing, this special spring water that I had been drinking was literally purging glass that had been embedded in my body for 20 years out. And I was very curious how that had happened. So I started trialing other people with this water, who were coming to my wellness center and who wanted to participate. I, very methodically, took down all their details and saw them every week and weighed them and did all kinds of stuff like over a period of eight weeks with them, and each person had some very positive result, if it was someone very, very healthy, it gave them that incremental improvement in energy that really high performance sports people really are looking for all the way to everybody's eyesight improving, to people's memories improving, to fertility issues improving, to weight loss for people that needed to lose weight, to all different manner of ailments, even depression.
So I noticed such a marked change with every one, like what makes this water so different? I started to be curious about its properties, the first place I looked was basically analyzing what the water was, what it had. So obviously, it had a high pH, but it had a high bicarbonate, it had silica, it had various minerals, it had a different kind of texture, even though it was very smooth, it was very, almost a little bit viscous. It had a negative charge, which means it had a negative ORP, which meant it was basically healing you rather than oxidizing you. There were lots of really interesting things about it. And I went down the very sciency road of trying to figure out what made it different, but I think that there are these kinds of medicine waters all around the world, and they're not in every single place, but they are dotted around the world often one of the telltale signs of them is that they have dissolved hydrogen in them. And so this water did have a little bit of this dissolved hydrogen that you could tell. So there was definitely something special about it. But I started to think, “Well, I think there is more to it. Like, what else? What am I missing?” You know, I'm looking at this analysis, but all I'm looking at is what the water holds. You know, what if I take away all of the things that are on this big list of what's in it, and look at the water itself. So that's kind of what I was talking about a bit earlier in a very rudimentary way, which was like, if you take away the personality, what are you left with? Of a person I'm talking about. And so, you know, it's interesting, because when I started to look at water as an energy, what water holds seemed different.
When I looked at this body of water that had helped heal me and so many other people, I saw this aspect of this water as a very nourishing, medicinal energy. And as you go through and you get to really experience being with different bodies of water, and you don't focus on all of the things that they're holding, whether that is tap water, because the tap water is holding so much, but if you kind of imagine that, you know, you hear this idea of holding space, so people holding space for people, and I didn't really understand what someone holding space really meant, I mean, I'd heard the term but I hadn't really felt that. But I was in Kansas last year, and I was on this breathwork course with a guy called Andrew and his partner Michelle, and there were like 50 or so people in the room and Andrew was holding space for every single person there, and when he came in, he just stood there and I could feel him there holding space for me and I was going through some some pretty emotional stuff and just knowing he was there holding that container really, really made a difference to my feeling of safety. And I felt so safe to express in that container he had presented and so I think of water in its energetic state is kind of like being, holding space for whatever it has to hold. And I have so much respect for our municipal tap water because it is having to hold all the shit. Whereas the spring water just gets to just be in this beautiful pure state, it doesn't hardly have to use energy very much at all to hold space. Whereas the tap water has had so much interaction with the world, with the material world, that it's holding so much space for us.
So I have a very different view, because I've really sat with these different bodies of water, with the ocean water in different areas where the beach, you know, where it comes up and laps up at the beach, each one is so different energetically, each one is holding a different space for the world. And there's in between, it's interesting, just as a side note that the word sand is a mix of sea and land, and it's this interesting place where the water is in between it's like, on the land, but still part of the sea. And it kind of comes into these spaces that I call the subtle realms or the in-between spaces, and that's very interesting to me, because when I freeze water, it's in the state between molecular chaos and molecular order, between liquid and solid. In between spaces, I always say the secrets are in the subtleties and I feel that this is a very true statement that the in between places, the in between realms, and the in between worlds are really where all the magic is. And Arthur C. Clarke says that magic is only science we haven't understood. So I feel you know that that I think I've covered quite a bit of territory and hopefully I've answered that question
Ayana Young Wow, I have been enthralled the whole time you’ve been speaking, and yeah I'm just amazed and thinking back through my relationship with city water, suburban water, spring water and the different flavors, tastes, and textures it's left on my skin and just really being grateful for water, the fact that it can even pipe, get piped into a home. I mean, like all these memories kind of flooding in me of my relationship with water as you've been speaking and I'm totally floored by what you've shared about your own healing journey. I'm really fascinated and something that you mentioned that I think I've been personally interested in, as well as maybe collectively, is this issue around our dehydration. And it's really fascinating to hear how many people are actually dehydrated, and then I kind of link that back to water scarcity issues on the Earth and how we hear these things like peak water and, in a lot of places that there's so much drought, and that the rivers have been cut off and turned into these concrete tunnels and water being stolen from somewhere to irrigate somewhere else or, you know, multinational corporations coming in and buying water for other countries. And so I almost, when I think about our personal dehydration, I think of these collective global issues that we're facing around water scarcity and imagining that maybe they have a type of, maybe even a psychological connection for us, like I wonder if that's impacting our dehydration or and potentially why, you know, of course, we can say, “Oh, we're eating salty foods” or maybe though there's reasons there too. But I guess I just want to explore this with you a bit more, this personal human dehydration with this idea of the earth being dehydrated.
Veda Austin Yeah, I think it's firstly, a complete illusion that the there is water scarcity because I don't know if you've heard of this thing called primary water, but there is more water held within the Earth’s mantle than there is on the surface of Earth, and it’s drinkable water. Whenever I talk about primary water, or other people have talked about primary water, they are very often taken offline. The reason for that is you have to have scarcity to create value. What is interesting is that we're so quick to jump on the bandwagon, bandwagon because we just don't know, we don't know if something is real or not real. The only real way you know is if you experience them for yourself, I've personally spoken to a man who was, he's passed away now, but he was creating how to dig for primary water and drill for primary water. It is a very real thing, and it is accessible, and if people knew about it, they might not be so afraid. We are being fed fear and fear is dehydrating. What we need to do is hydrate our minds, hydrate our hearts. That's where real hydration comes from. We're so focused on the physical, we forgot that our spiritual body needs hydrating, that our subtle body desperately wants attention. You know, when we get sick, it's usually but not always, but usually, the third level, it's usually coming from an emotional body not being heard or those things are being kept in sight and not spoken out. Or there's just this pain that's not being released. And that then leads into a physical manifestation of sickness.
So being able to start looking at this concept of hydration, you know, we are always like, always looking at like, How can I fix myself? You know, how can I heal myself? And I think it's really helpful, if we can look into who I am? Who am I? What am I? Firstly, you know, physically, you are water, minerals, salt, and consciousness, and that means you are made of three immortal things. Water doesn't die, we love to label things, as I've mentioned, water, we sometimes call it dead, because it's polluted, because it's gone through the municipal system, because it lacks structure, because it's denatured as we might call it, but actually, you know, water is the only thing we see on the world that doesn't die, it will always go into one of its states, it's not only liquid, it can evaporate into a gas, you know, it can be a solid, and it can be a type of gel or plasma. And there are so many layers to each one of them. There are over 300 types of ice alone.
We genuinely just don't see ourselves this way. So water literally is always in one of its stages, that's it, it doesn't actually die. Salt is really another interesting one too, because we are not, you know, distilled water within us, we are salt water. If we lack salt, we can have things occur in our body that look very similar to dehydration. We start to get like a fuzzy kind of memory, we can feel various different kinds of things going on with us, and so often it's a lack of good salts. And by good salt, I'm just talking about salt that hasn't gone through a chemically cleaned process, it’s still got its minerals with it. So when you put salt into water, it becomes a liquid crystal, it loses its cubic bonds and it has an electrical component. When water and salt come together in this way, they create a liquid crystal because salt is essentially a crystal. So we are liquid crystal bodies of water and so when you let the water evaporate, you'll see that the salt crystals are still there. They didn't go anywhere. In fact, when you are cremated, the ashes that remain are actually salt. So you can't even burn the salt. So we are salt and water, and these two things in the world do not die in the way we imagine death. On top of that, we have consciousness and science still struggles with that, at all, completely, because you can't kind of take consciousness of the equation when you're studying consciousness. So it's a very difficult kind of aspect to fix and so it becomes a kind of quantum entanglement. So it's a very difficult part to just kind of like somehow take away. So there's also that, and then minerals kind of go into that aspect of the Earth. So that is a slightly different thing. But you know, we're very, very much in the realm of nature, we are a nature body. And so, you know, we have this big concern about being healthy and well, and I think it's, it's a very, very important piece, because if your body isn't, well, you don't get to enjoy the world.
I mean, I've experienced that myself, it sucks being sick, I couldn't eat food for an entire year, because every time I did it was like being in labor and then I'd have to just vomit and vomit until there was no food in me and all I could do was just basically have liquid food. And it was horrible, until I had my first bowel resection. So I remember just trying to find joy in other things. And I also realized how much energy I could get from water and light alone, and that really helped me to become very, very grateful for the things of which we are, you know, the water, light, salts, these basic things are so amazing. So, you know, we come into wanting to be healthy, well, I think that also then comes into having a healthy attitude, having a healthy outlook, having a purpose. So often, you know, we're looking for happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness, we understand happiness in a very temporary way as human beings. I think it is more realistic to not make happiness your goal, but to make purpose your goal. Because happiness has a lot of ebbs and flows. Whereas having a purpose, it gets you up in the morning when you don't feel like getting up, because you have something bigger than you to get up for. Even if you're feeling sad, purpose keeps you going. And if you're happy and you're doing your purpose, then that's great too, but there's something deeper with having a purpose because there is this meaning behind it.
There's a book, it's a very powerful book called Man's Search For Meaning, and it's exactly that, by a man named Viktor Frankl who was in the Second World War and he was a Jew and went through some just horrific experiences in the Holocaust, and he helped so many people because he realized that purpose was more powerful than looking for happiness, it can help you through the times which are the most difficult in your life. And I think that water itself has purpose, its own spiritual purpose, and I think that is a really important piece to wellness, is to find what your purpose is, and to work, work towards joy in their purpose. So it's not working towards happiness and joy as such, but there is joy in getting up and having something to get up for, there is definite joy in that. Any parent will tell you that. I have three children, and three doctors told me I would never be able to have children based on the amount of scar tissue from my car accident. So I had a child for every doctor that told me I couldn't because I hate being told what to do, and being a parent is hard, especially when they're young and you have to get up like three, four or five times a night and you know, settle them and all of this stuff. It is hard. And you don't feel like doing it and you're grumpy because you're tired. But it is the best, most like, incredibly purposeful job in the world. And it gives you a sense of purpose, even though you really don't like it, but you can even shift that attitude and think, you know, this is incredible that I have this opportunity when so, so many people don't, to be able to hold a child in my arms and love it and care for it and do all of those things.
A beautiful thing that my son said, I always remember, and when I was telling a friend, I was in the Christchurch earthquakes, which were pretty bad and several people died some years ago. And in the second one, because there were two big ones, in the second one, God it was awful, actually, I was on the phone to my sister, I threw the phone down when that quake started to happen, my daughter Shanti was like only about six months old and she was just sort of in front of the the big TV, I grabbed her–seconds later the TV smashed, I was thrown into the bookcase, I went around outside the ranch slider and looked down the driveway and the huge cracks had opened up. The newly renovated fourth bedroom had literally just started to sink into the ground with liquefaction, just slightly but still a big deal. Liquefaction is like this, what happens when the Earth and the water and the sewerage and everything all gets shaken up. It just becomes this liquid sludge that kind of covers the areas, large areas and lots of things sink down. Lots of cars were literally upside down in holes. And I was on the phone to my sister, as I mentioned, thru the phone down, gratefully, the mobile systems were still working. I rang my ex husband who was down around the corner with our son and I kind of offloaded to go and pick them up and then the traffic was so bad that he ended up taking the two little children back to the house and it took him so long to get back because it was just gridlocked. And then I ran to the school where my oldest son was and on the left hand side there were the houses, and on the right hand side there was the field where all the school children knew to meet their parents because they had all been drilled with having had so many aftershocks and from the first big one. And in the middle of the road, there was all this liquefaction, and so I didn't realize there was this car sized hole in the liquefaction on the road and I just got sunk into it. I can't touch the bottom. The liquefaction comes up to my chest, I'm screaming for help. And this guy tries to help me. He gets sucked in to the liquefaction too, like some crazy terrible, horrible comedy, and then there's someone who helps pull him out and then that guy pulls me out and then I'm like this giant mud monster to go and get my son and he's looking at me like it's just some crazy situation. Anyway, then we get home and my ex husband and the two little ones finally get back and it's kind of like oh my god, this is this is so so crazy. And then the next day, first thing in the morning, we left and I've never been back. I wasn't born there, I ended up going back up to, to my hometown and up in Auckland, but it was quite the experience.
So I had all of these things happen, and I kind of got sidetracked, but a friend of mine, the day before that whole earthquake happened, came down from Auckland, and she's a new friend. So I was getting to know her and I talked to her about my car accident, and what had happened. And my son Rama was three, nearly three, and he was like, just behind the cupboard door, like listening to our conversation, and he had never heard me talk about my car accident before and after I finished talking, he kind of jumped up out of nowhere and he jumped up onto my lap. And he said to me, “I remember that mummy. I remember the window wipers and the tires, and I came down out of the clouds, and I went like this” and he put his arm around me, “And I saved you. And when I knew you were safe, I climbed back up the ladder into the clouds.” And that really made me realize that there is so much we don't realize about our lives, and that there are realms, I believe, where souls are able to see us, and even in this case, interact with us. And the fact that I was told I couldn't have children, and then had three. You know, we talk about life being hard sometimes as parents, but when I remember my son telling me that story. And that was, you know, years before I ever had children. I knew at that moment that, you know, I was chosen by him. And by all my children, I believe, and I believe all our children choose us. It's a very special thing, you know, to be grateful in the moments where we are absolutely sick and tired of life.
Ayana Young Wow, oh my gosh, again, I was just–your stories are really riveting and I feel so present with you in these moments. And I really appreciate you sharing so much personal life experience with us. I can already tell I want to have a second conversation with you because there's so much to explore, and I just began looking back through my notes and there's a few other, maybe a few other topics we can go over while we're still together at least this time. Well, there's two things that I want to be able to touch on before we go one, the smell of rain and the relationships between life forms water fosters. And then I also want to talk about the fourth stage of water, water as liminal, waters as liquid crystal, which you touched on a little bit, explaining, but I don't know if if there's either one of those things you'd like to touch on or begin explaining to us, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Veda Austin Sure. I mean, we innately know that smell of rain because it's really caused by the water from the rain along with certain kinds of compounds and it's in plant oils and ozone and different things in the soil. So it's kind of like this certain smell, I guess it's a very earthy smell that's associated with rain and so you know, we're so sensory and we have the senses to experience all kinds of things but I think that that earthy smell of rain is a thing that most people can go “Oh yeah, it smells like rain, or it feels like rain.” We can feel it, not just smell it, there's a feeling that comes before rain happens. And it's because water recognizes itself. You know we can sense it. We can tell when it's coming. We have this kind of anticipation for it sometimes, we are nature, of course, we are more in tune with nature than we think we are, even the people that might not get out there very much or might not have the opportunity to feel as connected. Just the fact that we can even smell this earthy, beautiful smell of when rains about to happen or when, when it's just starting to spit.
There are so many beautiful stories around rain in New Zealand, the Maori concept that they are the tears of the Father missing the Mother, because their children pushed them apart so that they could breathe, and the mother and the father came together, Mother Earth and Father Sky, they used to have no separation, they came together to make love, and all of the children were born in between them. And they were like, “No, we can't breathe,” so they pushed them apart and every time it rains, the father is missing the mother. And so his tears really create all of the different water systems within the Mother Earth. And I think that ultimately, when we sense, and feel, and smell water, we are, in fact, remembering our father, the masculine aspect. And this love, this intimate love. You know, there is this intimacy about being drenched in rain, water.
The other day, people probably think I'm crazy, but I was with my stepmom and it was absolutely pouring down. We've had so much rain in New Zealand lately, and it was really torrential and we were at a cafe and my stepmom said, “Oh, I'd love to take a photo of you. Like with the background of the rain.” I'm like, “How about you take a video of me in the rain.” And I basically ran out into this pouring rain, there were people all huddled around the front like kind of stores just waiting for it to settle down because it was full on. Within literally within three seconds, I was completely drenched. And I was like dancing around in the rain. And looking at other people like looking at me, and I'm like, we're so afraid or even getting wet. You know, and it was so much fun. And even though it was wet and cold afterwards, it gave me such a fun sense of like, such a fond memory. You know, it was such a lovely moment in time.
And the fourth phase of water is a very, very, very important phase, I believe. I mean, you can get into all the aspects of it if you look up, Dr. Gerald Pollack and he wrote a book called The Fourth Phase of Water. He's a very good friend of mine, he is actually coming on my master class in a few days and speaking, it is the stage in between liquid and solid, it's actually also starts to form in is what is beginning to freeze, but before it's a solid, which is where I've photographed my work, but it's also found in the stages of melting. And it's found within the cells, our physical body turns H20 into H302, so it has slightly different properties in that it has an extra hydrogen and oxygen atom, it is more viscous, so it's kind of more stretchy. It has a negative charge, which means it's healthy. So that's why the healthy cells are negatively charged. That’s why the Earth is negatively charged too, it has the ability to absorb more light than regular water. This is a really important piece, this area of exclusion zone, which is another word for the fourth phase of water inside of ourselves that excludes all solids. So essentially, it's like a battery with the negative charge on one side and a positive charge on the other. And the way we get rid of positive charge in our body is through urination for the most part. So it has very different qualities, and so one of the things that I found very, very helpful was when I was speaking to an Indigenous woman and she told me that she could speak to bees.
Now I recently shared the story at the annual water conference in Germany, where I was the last speaker of the conference and I was a little nervous to share the story because it's not a science story at all. But I think the way in which it was received there, were there were so many scientists and biologists and physicists that had this aha moment when I shared it. So this lady said she could speak to bees, and she would watch their hives for long periods of time and eventually, a bee came out and communicated to her and said, “We don't mind you looking at our hive, but please don't look at it for too long, because your conscious expression is putting too much light in the hive, and we'd like it to be darker.” And I think that this is a really important piece, especially within my work, because where I focus on is putting conscious expression into water prior to freezing it and then whatever I'm thinking about, I'm seeing crystallized in the imagery of the ice. And if you're putting more light into water, you're giving it more ability to actually absorb more, especially when it turns into that fourth phase water, it's storing and holding more information and I can get so much more into detail about my work and how it's evolved and how I know that there are three ways in which water communicates, they are signature patterns, artistic expression, and then something I've been working on for four and a half years that I call hydroglyphs, which are essentially ice symbols that are recognizable and repeatable, that I have discovered have specific word meanings. So for example, I have a hydroglyphs for the word creation, I have hydroglyphs for the word abundance, I have them for imagination, for completion, for chemical, so I have 36 hieroglyphs, and each hydrograph has layers of meaning, to say I have one, I have to have use the same word, influence, and frozen the water using my technique and seeing the same symbol appear at least 50 times. So it takes a very long time, but I also have seen that they have layers of meaning. So for example, the winter also means change. So there are lots of different layers of meaning for that, I can get into that another time because I've been speaking for a long time, and I'm going to need to go soon, but I'm glad we've actually been able to have this conversation because I shared a lot of things I don't often share in podcasts, so something a little different, too.
Ayana Young Well, thank you so much for sharing these special stories with us. I've been so connected to you the whole time you've been speaking and really yeah, not that I am reliving these stories with you, of course, but I feel like I've been a fly on the wall in a sense, and it's been really mind expanding and there have been so many themes that you've brought up in your responses that I wanted to ask more about but I also just sat with them like the way that you see healing on an emotional level and just there's just so much in what you've said that I can't wait to read, listen and really slow down with your words. So thank you for this time with us today and I hope to have you back on the show and continue going into more of your research.
Veda Austin It would be lovely, thank you so much for having me
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Strong Sun Moon and Doe Paoro. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.