11 Jun The sea of peace and trust

’Look,’ says Hugues, ‘I’ll show you.’ He walks into the water. To his left and right, jagged red rocks jut out of the water.
We are on the coast of Brittany. This stretch of coastline is known as the Côte de Granit Rose.

When Hugues is waist-deep in the water, he bends his knees, pushes off, and disappears underwater, stretched out full-length. I can make out his body amidst the rocks; he seems to be floating. Every now and then, his hand reaches out to a rock and gently pushes it away. He looks just like a long strand of seaweed, drifting and undulating underwater. Then he surfaces again. ‘Now you!’ he says with a laugh.

Hugues is an actor, just like me at this time. We rehearse with our group in Brittany, in an old warehouse. It’s a half-hour walk from there to the beach. After rehearsal, we often go down to the sea.

All the air out of the lungs
Hugues explains that before going underwater, he first lets all the air flow out of his lungs. Then, the body sinks down naturally. If you do nothing but spread your arms and float, the sea water begins to play with your body.

Now I, too, am standing waist-deep in the water. I am surrounded by massive, hard red rocks. Calmly, I exhale all the air from my lungs. I lower myself and push off. My body sinks. It takes a moment to adjust; the water is moving more powerfully than I expected. It pulls me toward one rock and pushes me toward another. Gradually, I get used to the swell. I follow Hugues’s example and try to relax my body completely.

Friendship
The sea has struck up a friendship with me and begins to frolic with me. It pushes and drags me, spinning me around. It sends waves coursing through me. I push off with my hands and feet whenever I get too close to the rocks.
Then I surface again. ‘Awesome!’ I shout to Hugues. But he has already moved on. I stay there for the rest of the afternoon. I have discovered something new.
It becomes the source of inspiration for what I will later call the sea of peace and trust.

The sea of peace and trust
In the vocabulary of *De StressOntknoping* (The Stress Unraveling), the “sea of peace and trust” is a key expression. I often refer to it as the foundation of our state of being. We are frequently swept along by the waves of existence—feeling happy or excited, startled by something, or thrown off balance. We can become so accustomed to a certain restlessness in our bodies that we view it as our normal state: a bit of tension here, a touch of unease there. But when we let go of resistance, dare to feel our emotions, and allow life to play gently with us, we can return time and again to our foundation: the sea of peace and trust. We can do this even when the waves rise high and threaten to sweep us away.

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch