Connecting with our Water Element: A Cacao & Gong Journey

28 Feb

This is the fourth ceremony in a five-part series in which I guide you through a shamanic cacao and gong journey to meet each of the five elements. If you haven’t yet worked with Earth, Air or Fire, I’d invite you to begin there. Today, we journey to meet Water.

Water is everywhere. It makes up roughly 70% of the human body, and 70% of the surface of our planet. We are, in the most literal sense, a mirror of the Earth’s water. When we poison her waters — and we have, in so many ways — we feel that in our own bodies. And when we tend our relationship with water consciously, that too moves through us in every direction.

Across every culture that has mapped the sacred, water is treated with reverence. The River Ganges in India, the River Nile in Egypt — sources of life, sites of ceremony, conduits of the divine. Ancient Greece gave us Poseidon; Rome gave us Neptune. The Inuit have Sedna, the goddess of the underworld, who lives in the ocean. Water holds mystery, power, and the capacity to both nourish and overwhelm.

This ceremony uses the Neptune and Sedna gongs specifically — instruments whose frequencies resonate with the deep, fluid, oceanic qualities of this element — to take us into a direct experience of what Water has to offer us.

What Is the Water Element?

In the Mayan medicine wheel, Water lives in the South direction — the place of flow, the warmth of the noon sun, the passion to do our work, and the spirit of Snake, who is considered the mother of all waters and the source of all life. Snake teaches us how to shed our old ways as she sheds her skin, to cleanse, to evolve, to move with the rhythms of the Earth.

In Ayurveda, water is associated with the sacral chakra and represents our femininity, sensuality, and creativity. In the Mayan chakra system, this same energy governs sexuality, healing, fertility, transformation, and knowledge. Across both traditions, water is the element of feeling — the realm of emotion, of what moves through us, of what we have the capacity to hold or let go.

Water represents our adaptability — our ability to flow. When our water element is in balance, we move through life with ease and grace, responsive to what arises, neither forcing nor resisting. We are like a healthy, clear-running spring.

Water In Balance and Out of Balance

One of the most helpful ways to understand where your water element sits right now is to ask: What quality of water am I?

A healthy, bubbling spring — clear, moving, vital, nourishing everything it touches
A stagnant pond — still, heavy, perhaps murky with things that have not been able to flow or release
Ice — rigid, locked, unable to move or be moved
Boiling steam — overheated, pressurised, energy bubbling over without direction

None of these states is a failure — they are simply information. If you recognise yourself in one of them right now, that recognition itself is the beginning of the healing. Water ceremony gives us a direct encounter with this element so that we can understand, in a felt sense, where we are in relation to it and what might want to shift.

Water in the Body

We are water. Our blood, our lymph, the fluid that cushions our joints and carries nutrients to every cell — all of it is water. When we are well-hydrated, our cells communicate clearly, our bodies detoxify efficiently, and we feel literally more fluid in our physical experience. When we are dehydrated, everything becomes a little more stuck, a little heavier, a little less responsive.

The gong frequencies in this ceremony are particularly powerful for shaking up and shifting water within the body — loosening what has become stagnant, supporting the lymphatic system, and creating the conditions for a deeper cleanse. I always recommend drinking plenty of water after a water ceremony, to flush through anything that has been mobilised.

Some questions to sit with as you come to this ceremony:

How well are you hydrating — not just with water, but with rest, nourishment, and things that genuinely replenish you?
Where in your body do you feel flow, and where do you feel stuck?
Are your emotions moving freely, or are you holding something that needs to be released?
What would it feel like to let yourself be more like water — soft, adaptive, responsive?

Water as Sacred: Cleansing, Ceremony, and Reciprocity

Human beings have used water for spiritual cleansing since the beginning of recorded history. Baptism, blessing, holy water, ritual bathing — the instinct to bring water into ceremony is universal because water does something to us that goes beyond the physical. It cleanses the energy field as well as the body. It carries away what we are ready to release. It blesses, and it renews.

In this ceremony, part of our work with the Water elemental is to explore our reciprocal relationship with water — not only what we can receive from it, but what we can offer in return. The question I hold in this part of the journey is: How can I support the cleansing process that water needs right now, both within me and within our planet? This might look like a practical action — reducing plastic use, conserving water, choosing cleaner products. Or it might be a spiritual offering, a change in how you consciously relate to the water in your life. Let water show you what it needs.

The Ceremony: Meeting the Water Elemental

After cleansing our energy field and calling in the seven directions, I guide you into the lower realm — our inner landscape — through a real place in nature you already feel connected to. We travel there as a tiny light of consciousness, carried by a golden mist, before descending through a portal into the lower world.

At the bottom of that descent, the five Elementals are sitting together around a fire, waiting. Water steps forward — perhaps appearing symbolically in a form that means something to you personally — and leads you to a private space within the cave to commune. This is your time to have a real conversation: to ask for healing, clarity, advice, or transformation. Or simply to experience the quality of water’s presence and receive whatever it wishes to offer.

Water is a powerful and varied energy. It may manifest differently for everyone — some will experience something very visual, others more kinaesthetic or emotional. Simply allow whatever wants to come through, without analysing it in the moment. Your left brain can make sense of it later. During the journey, let your shamanic brain — the feeling, sensing, perceiving part of you — lead.

The Role of Cacao and Gong

Ceremonial cacao is optional. If you are new to it, know that it is very safe — a gentle, heart-opening medicine with beautiful chemistry. It raises oxytocin (the hormone of love and connection), supports serotonin and dopamine balance, and improves circulation to the heart and brain. Even a small dose of 10–15 grams can create a profound effect. Those on high doses of certain medications, particularly antidepressants, should keep their dose lower; and if you feel full before your cup is finished, trust that and stop. Mama Cacao is subtle and powerful, and she will meet you exactly where you are.

The Neptune and Sedna gongs bring the deep, fluid frequencies of the water element directly into the body. Their sound is oceanic — vast and moving. Together with cacao, they create the conditions for the kind of theta-state dreaming where the Water elemental can speak to us most clearly.

How to Prepare for the Ceremony

A few practical things will help you arrive in the best state:

Drink plenty of water before and especially after this ceremony — the gongs will shift water within the body, and you will want to flush through anything that is mobilised
Prepare your ceremonial cacao before we begin, so you are ready to drink as we call in the directions. If cacao is not right for you, plain water or tea works well.
Choose your place in nature beforehand — a real place you feel connected to, somewhere peaceful.
Create a comfortable, supported space and have a blanket nearby
Use good headphones or speakers to receive the full depth of the gong frequencies
Have a journal to hand — write as soon as you return, before the experience fades
Hold your intention lightly — come with a question if you have one, or simply an openness to receive