Living Water Exercises is a set of gentle, flowing healing movements that follow Jesus's teachings, improve physical health, awaken us from the death of depression, and our minds into still waters. When the apostles received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost strangers heard them speak to them in their native tongues. The apostles behaved so strangely that many of the bystanders thought they were drunk. Many modern churches are founded on experiences of the Holy Spirit. The founding Quakers received their name from physically quaking with the Holy Spirit. Likewise, it isn’t unusual for members of Pentecostal Churches to go into ecstatic trances. However, Jesus said: “He who believes in Me, from his innermost being, will flow rivers of living water, welling up to eternal life” . So rather than shaking, falling on the floor in a trance, or speaking in tongues, through these simple exercises, we experience the Holy Spirit as our Lord teaches us, powerfully yet peacefully flowing like water from our innermost beings, which then gently swirls and flows around us, creating the movements. It is like, as Genesis and Revelation describe, we are in the middle of the river of the Holy Spirit, being carried by its current, moving our bodies, arms and legs.
Each of these exercises is an expression of a passage from the Bible, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in the Bible’s mysteries. Just as God created the world in seven dyas the Living Water exercises consist of seven exercises, done seven times, each, seven days of the week, There are seven exercises each day, performed six times each which make the number “777”: the threefold perfection of the Trinity. Just as God rested on the seventh so do these exercises.
Jesus’s teaching about Living Water is found in St John’s Gospel, and you will notice that these exercises focus on passages from the gospel of St John and the Book of Revelation (both of which are attributed to St John). This is so that Jesus’s Living Water teaching is placed into the wider context of St John’s theology. John was a young fisherman who was a disciple of John the Baptist before being called by Jesus. He was there right at the start of Jesus’s ministry, walking with Him along the dusty roads and watching Him preach and argue with religious leaders. John witnessed Jesus performing miracles and ate the bread and drank the wine at the last supper. Jesus invited John to pray with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, followed Jesus into the courtyard close to the trial, and witnessed His crucifixion at the foot of the cross. In his gospel, he is called ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, and at the last supper laid his head on Jesus’s breast. Perhaps it is because of their closeness that while the other gospels tell us what Jesus did, St John tells us who Jesus was. Jesus sent out His apostles to preach the kingdom of God; heal the sick; relieve mental illness; raise people from the mundane world, and unite humanity in loving kindness. Similarly, these gentle exercises bring us into the presence of God, improve our physical health, lead our minds into still waters, and when practised in a group, they, too, bring us together in loving kindness.