Diving into a sea, forest or book helps creativity

Like many other people who have been trying to figure out how to deal with the problem of modified or lean diving for the last year, if I were reading this note on a weekend morning, I would probably expect to find some examples of how to maximize my vacation dive. , other than in a hamam in Turkey, to which I have no access, or to climb a great mountain, there are none in my proximity, and I do not plan to travel to find it, nor to walk in a dense forest.

The paradox is that, to immerse ourselves in our vacations, we really want to transport ourselves abroad. If we consider the exterior as the opposite of the immersion, the exterior would be what we part with to immerse ourselves in a book, in a game, in a television program. However, we could say that now the exterior is the new horizon for immersion. Take, for example, the massive spike in bicycle sales, or the fact that everywhere we see people walking. These are activities that we use to get out of the pandemic bubble and dive — somatically — into another dimension. The idea of ​​immersion, not just as an activity of diving deep, but emerging from one reality to enter another — something quite different from escapism — is a compelling paradox.

“We are porous beings, in constant exchange with the outside, our vulnerability is constantly exposed.

The coronavirus has made us aware that we breathe the air of others, the virus has overshadowed the illusion of separation ”, says the architect and author of

(the architecture of the bathroom), Christie Pearson, in a conversation I had with her.

In his book he explores the spaces designed for the bathroom, in different cultures, and the effect they have on us.

He maintains that "water dissolves the border, it helps us make space tangible as a sculptural material."

We use the word immersion when, motivated by a desire to connect with ourselves, with others and with the world, we immerse ourselves in an atmosphere, not only of water, it can also be that of other spaces, such as a garden, a fountain or an architecture. “When I come out of the bath, I want to feel transformed,” Pearson writes, “to emerge renewed, like the goddess Hera in her annual spring bath at Kanathos, or Aphrodite in the sea, or as close to it as possible. In a sense, I want to be born again ”. Spa is the acronym for

when we bathe we regenerate ourselves.

The attraction to beaches, swimming pools, ritual baths or children's water games has to do with our desire to connect, these are places where we can be with others, in interactions very different from any other. The beach, Pearson tells me, “is the meeting point between water and land, it is the liminal space where the becoming of something new is possible, it is a place that symbolically transports us to another spatial and temporal dimension, to another substance. , invites us to cross a threshold ”. An immersion in the pool or sauna, as a pleasure exercise, puts us in contact with the power of our own rhythms. We bathe and immerse ourselves in these rhythms, both social and biological, we experience them directly, "like a theater of vital relationships," notes Pearson in his book. We found our strengththe times intertwined with the world in perpetual transformation, but, above all, the origins of creativity. "It is known that Archimedes, from his bath, discovered the displacement principle, from which the study of hydrostatics is based, on which he shouted eureka!".

Forest bathing, or

in Japanese, is the practice of being among trees for its intrinsic health benefits. "The forest houses a lacy enclosure that filters the light and fragments it into spikes of light," says Pearson. We walk through a forest and it envelops us. Plants embody the most intimate and elemental link that life can establish with the world. "They are responsible for the constant genesis of our cosmos", proposes the philosopher Emanuele Coccia in his book

in which he succeeds that "our world is a plant fact". It is in front of the world and nature that we can truly think. “Imagine being made of the same substance as the world around you”, Coccia proposes, “being of the same nature as music, a series of air vibrations, like a jellyfish that is nothing more than a thickening of water. You would have a very precise image of what immersion is ”. And he concludes: "Life is always and can only be immersion" —we experience it, for example, every time we swim. He defines the atmosphere as "the quintessence of the world", understood as the space where the life of each one is mixed with the life of others. "We project ourselves into the space closest to us, and from that portion of space we do something intimate."

David Dorenbaum

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