Aquawareness

Our first perceptions of being in this world are experienced with eyes closed, immersed in amniotic liquid: this fluid material provides us with our first interface with reality, the first contact with the dimension of feeling, the first as yet undefined but clearly felt sensation, the perception of enviroment – the experience of limits, through which the embrio of our future identity develops.

In water, we begin to design our confines with the external world, and to perceive together our corporeal being, rediscovering the buried traces of those primordial experiences signifies the re-evoking of the first sunrise, and the first horizons lived as human beings: it means a return to the expression of the original language of our being.

Aquawareness is not directed at scientific research, nor as a preparation for competitive swimming, nor professional training, nor at creating a eugenic space for seeking of well-being through abandoning oneself to, and embracing the water. Neither do I aim at the development of fitness with the help of the particular motricity which water gives. And I certainly don’t intend it as a plain and simple swimming course. While it can include and convey something of all the pre-stated, its specific purpose can perhaps be described as connecting itself to those very primary perceptions we considered earlier. It seeks to represent a type of archeological research into our own Being, the research into a way of feeling ourselves, of perceiving own physical nature, of being in our own bodies, and being in this world, which is both ancient, and different, stange and familiar…strangely familiar, and yet strangely forgotten.

To reinvent our own balance just like our own motricity, to listen, thanks to the generosity of the water, the more subtle vibrations that our body resonates to, to rediscover the rhythms of natural breathing, and to design in water the passage of a creative gestuality which connects lightness to security, can maybe for us represent the only way in which daily experience and the desire for greater personal liberty, finally flow into oneness through awareness in water.

Giancarlo De Leo