Vision Spa Retreat

Spring water: a useful online database

Not long ago, a colleague suggested that it would be good to have a user-friendly map of mineral springs in the US.  Right on cue, I came across FindaSpring.com, the 'first extensive online database of springs in the world'. 

Health rebels Heidi and JS Ohlander teamed up with health strategist and motivator Daniel Vitalis to produce this participatory database of spring water sources.  If your favorite spring is not on it, you can go ahead and submit whatever interesting information you have along with location data.

In addition to the directory they are building up there, you'll find a valuable list of questions and answers written from personal experience, research and passionate interest. Here are just two informative examples:

• What is the best way to ascertain the quality of water from a spring to determine if it's safe to drink or not?

• Is there a possibility of tapping a spring out? Should I be concerned with the amount of water I gather at my spring?

That last question is something that has concerned me in my own water quest, especially in promoting the restoration of water to its once revered position in spa culture.  I have a feeling that if we really valued water, as the creators of this springs database do, we'd take good care of it.  Quote: Now is the time to reclaim our water! 

Explore the springs database here

 

Drawing up water for spas: is it sustainable?

 

Early last year, in an article entitled Putting the water back into spa, I expressed my sadness that the spa industry in general might be tending to focus on wellness without water.  This shift is certainly partly related to economic factors.

There are obvious challenges for spas in providing safe water in abundance without incurring heavy financial costs and without further exacerbating increasingly evident problems regards our water resources in general. 

To many, a statement like the one below from that article, might seem quaintly naive at best.

Can we imagine a spa industry that has something more than an economic motivator?  A spa culture that models personal, communal, and planetary health?  Spa with water flowing from its heart.

The latest Spa Business Digital Edition, issue 1, 2010, describes some heartening developments that indicate that economic and environmental issues can come together.  In Alternative water supplies (spas using groundwater ), Emilie Filou presents four examples of spas celebrating and valuing water.

Beauty and Harmony: an interview with water advocate Barbara Harmony

 by Sara Firman, May 2009 for VisionSpaRetreat.com

Venus, as Botticelli portrays her in the renowned painting of spring called Primavera, is the moist, florid, green lusciousness of life on earth.  It's an Ozark early May weekend with rain dripping from a forestful of trees all around the cabin where I live.  When yesterday's phone conversation with Barbara Harmony (also in an Ozark Cottage surrounded by green lusciousness), upon which this post is based, came to a close I asked Barbara what she had planned for the rest of the day: 'I'm going to enjoy the rain,' she said cheerfully.

Barbara has inspired Vision Spa Retreat, partly because she's been a strong and effective Advocate for Water Quality and Bioregionalism over the past 30 years.  Her home and her inspiration for all those years has been Eureka Springs, a spa-resort town, deep in the Ozark hills of Arkansas.  Barbara is a Lifelong Learning Coach, Minister, and Astrologer.  You could say that Vision Spa Retreat's tag-line 'water consciousness for personal and planetary health' is personified by Barbara.

Breaking the bottled water habit

Please join me in this pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit. It's easy for me since I'm not in the habit and I also have access to rural well water that tastes delicious. But it's one way that as a society we can really make a difference.

Everything we consume has a climate impact, but manufacturing and trucking water bottles to homes with clean tap water seems particularly wasteful. The Beverage Marketing Corporation reports that Americans consumed 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006 – nearly 9 liters per month for every man, woman, and child.

Manufacturing all those bottles requires 900,000 tons of plastic, the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, and emit more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Trucking around all those heavy bottles emits even more greenhouse gases. 

Beyond the climate impact there’s the massive waste – 86% of water bottles aren’t recycled -- and water bottling is also, ironically, a very water-intensive endeavor. The Pacific Institute tells us that it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water!

Just click on the image below to sign the pledge or learn more ...

Creative secrets of water

Learn surprising things about water, why it is so important to us and what we can do to help it in this time of ecological crisis. This is how Iain Trousdell, Co-Founder and Keynote Speaker for The Healing Water Institute in New Zealand, begins his inspiring and informative series of emails about water. I've been subscribing to this for the past several weeks (they come weekly) and think it is an excellent way to get acquainted with 'some of the amazing secrets of water' and to become aware of the enormous challenges it/we face. Iain's style is upbeat and hopeful while still making clear that we can't take water for granted.

So, I'm choosing to get this section of my blog flowing by encouraging you to sign up for the free Water Ecology Education Program by clicking here now. [Update 24 July 2011 - this program is no longer available but a series of excellent articles on water can be read here: articles from Healing Water Institute.]

I'll continue to promote those who are making waves, the keepers of the water, and more here. If you are doing such work or know of anyone you'd like to see mentioned, please let me know. For the waters!