Dear Reader,
Today I learned a Russian breath-work technique called “Reduced Breathing” from my Indian-American doctor. She directed me to breathe only through my nose, one hand on chest and one on belly, with only my belly moving. My eyes drooped shut, as I followed her direction to take in only a sip of breath, so light that it didn’t disturb any of my nose-hairs. “This is breath control. What our ancestors called Pranayam,” my inspiring doctor said; “it allowed sages to meditate naked in the Himalayas.”
Instantly, I recalled all the sages I met during my travels along the river Ganga. As a social ecologist, activist, and embodied leadership coach, I have longed to understand how their ancient wisdom might be relevant to a science-backed citizens’ movement for clean air and clean water.
Today, it seems clear. A Harvard Public Health study called sleep “the latest casualty of the COVID-19 crisis.” How can we take meaningful action on social and ecological equity without our nightly dose of what Keats called “forgetfulness divine?”
The breath-work my doctor has been teaching me since October has, slowly but surely, in conjunction with several other changes, significantly improved my sleep. But, for much of the pandemic, I, and many others I know, have struggled to sleep well. Now that I’m sleeping better, I feel more capable of launching this monthly newsletter. While launching a newsletter is hardly grounds for “superhuman-ness,” it’s my best effort to share my love of the river and what I learned from it with you, my community.
Ganga, the trauma-healer, has inspired my interests: how can we collectively heal trauma (which can show up as poor sleep)? how can bodies of water help us wake up and approach our lives with a new consciousness?
In 2020, a few weeks before the pandemic, Aleph Book Company in India published my book Superhuman River: Stories of the Ganga. It’s about a series of journeys I took from source-to-sea over ten years to understand how India’s “dirty, sacred” river is changing in the age of climate change.
Last year, an Indian newspaper asked me about the title Superhuman River. I said, “Directly, it means extraordinary or exceptional, which the river clearly is. More deeply, it means having power beyond that of humans, which the river clearly does. Most deeply, however, it means having a nature superior to that of ordinary humans. This last one is hardest to grasp and it’s the one I give most attention to.”
In the book I write, “It certainly shows capacities and powers unimaginable in a single person, but I believe that the Ganga can help us better understand our own superhuman status.” What could I mean by that? I mean that, “now, in an age of climate change, we have the power to impact the earth and its future in ways unimaginable before.” So we are called on, by the Ganga, to get good at being superhuman. The book, and now this newsletter, is about the Ganga calling us to that new task.
I pose the question in my book of what can happen if “we venture beyond blame-games,” and try to find what of the sacred is left to reclaim in and around the Ganga and the ideas of the Ganga—from a spiritual, irreverently reverent, but not religious perspective.
In 2017, an Uttarakhand court conferred upon the Ganga the status of a “living human entity . . . with all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities.” By 2018 however, this status had been suspended. Here the change in vocabulary, before it was reversed again, raised a massively important question about the aggregate, systemic benefits of “a strict-liability language,” as Quinn put it in his recent article about the redefinition of racism in the U.S. In future, I would like to see the courts revisit the Ganga’s “living human entity” status. This status should be granted so that we humans, who have become superhuman compared to the river, can be held liable for damaging the river’s integrity. I would also like to see the courts address a specific question: How does legal recognition of the river as another human being redefine our rights, duties, and liabilities toward this person?
While my book focuses on the outer journeys I took, my hope here is twofold. First, I want to invite some of the people I met to share updates about their work so that my readers can stay connected to the Ganga, no matter who or where they are. Second, I will touch on my own inner journey of trying to get good at being superhuman (via breath-work, bodywork, and more), in hopes of provoking my community of readers’ own responses for being more present in their bodies, and with their water bodies.
My hope is that this newsletter can support you to build tolerance for a wider range of sensations and emotions so that you can more fully embody your commitment to social and ecological equity. In order to do so, I’d like to hear from you—my readers.
What role does holy water play in your life? And, what would you like to read about next? Updates from people living and working along the Ganga? A deep dive into the Ganga’s role in informing contemplative traditions? Stories from the scientists and sages I met?
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