Ebb and Flow: Connect with the Patterns and Power of Water by Easkey Britton

On 11^th April my book Ebb and Flow: Connect with the Patterns and Power of Water is released. Over the coming week I’ll be writing a series of blog posts to celebrate the release of Ebb and Flow and introduce you, the reader, to some of the topics I cover in the book. 

A bit of background, I’m a surfer, writer, artist, film-marker and marine social scientist, with a PhD in Environment and Society. A life-long surfer, I was taught to surf at the age of four, and now channel my passion for the sea and surfing into social change. My promotion of female surfing in Iran is explored in my TEDx Talk ‘Just Add Surf’ and the award-winning documentary Into the Sea. I am also the author of Saltwater in the Blood (Watkins, 2021).

Ebb and Flow was written as a response to our disconnect from the waters of our world, especially the last ‘wild’ waters that exist. The book is a reflection of the bodies of water I have come to know and is deeply enriched by the words and wisdom of many others who are all, in their own way, keepers, protectors, healers and bearers of water.

So much of this book is about how we might learn to simply be, fully inhabiting our own watery bodies so that we are better able to listen to the world around us and receive the message water has for us. My hope is that we will come to understand our interdependence with watery places and beings, and to sense and feel the aliveness of these connections. To feel that we too are water.

Like the flow of the water cycle, renewing our relationship with water is a cyclical tale of rhythm and movement; giving and receiving; inhalation and exhalation; ebb and flow, with water at the beginning and end of every cycle in life. The story of our lives begins in water. From this point onwards, our contact with, and immersion in, water has a powerful ability to alter our perspective and introduce us to a richer and more sensory way of knowing. That is what I hope you will begin to feel as you read this book.

Restoring our relationship with water is essential if we are to heal the waters of the world and, because we are water, heal ourselves. Ebb and Flow offers ideas and practical ways to engage with the patterns and power of water, for the benefit of our health and the health of water. These practices are themselves invitations to deepen attention through stillness, movement and reflection.

Our connection with water in all its forms is central to us as humans. I have found that if we can deepen the meaningful ways in which we interact with water environments, water can, in return, offer us profound experiences of healing, renewal and connection.

To hear more from Easkey, pick up a copy of Ebb and Flow: Connect with the Patterns and Power of Water (Watkins, 2023) and Saltwater in the Blood: Surfing, Natural Cycles and the Sea’s Power to Heal (Watkins, 2021).

Find out more at Easkey’s website easkeybritton.com