Learn About Aqua Therapy

Sandy Friedland is an aqua therapist and she teaches how people can exercise in water.

Sandy: Being in the water and doing what I do is totally ecstasies. You’re totally out of your body because you’re being floated in warm water. It’s very nurturing and it reminds you of the womb. And all your postural muscles can let go because you’re not working gravity. So because of that you can be moved and you can allow yourself to be taken by the currents. I was born and raised here by the water. I got my wings driving down Lincoln Road. I mean I grew up here before Lincoln Road was a mall. The life guards on Sunday would come and do water shows and stuff like that and I was like fearless, you know I would jump off anything. So I learn how to dive, I learned how to work in the water and then I started exercising in the water myself. For the most part for the last 20 years I’ve been doing body work which is totally creative. And in my field I went from being a student to being a teacher to have written a book, to teach others know teaching others had to teach. Male: Where are we heading though? Sandy: We’re heading to the Stander where I’m going to throw Sarah in the pool and demonstrate my water modality, MDMA. I’ve developed a specific type of application of body work using water as a modality, and I call it MDMA or multi Demetral Movement Arts. I love it, it’s ballet. It’s like doing tai chi you know with something in between my hands and then your body is an extension of my movement. And then your movement ripples to my body. It’s very intimate. I love it. People break in to smile when I’m taking them to certain positions because you can’t get enough position on gravity. That’s why you’re floating. I have access to your body, sometimes I sit on the steps and hold somebody’s arms and then take their sacrum or the lower back and pull them and do this kind of movements you know. And then they just floating up your above me or I can take people and twist them around my body, open the whole front of their body. It's ballet. I love doing it. Most people live outside by their bodies. You know they live like from here up and they drag their bodies everywhere they go and so my goal in the work is to make people conscious in a where, who they are And to listen to the signals to come from an inside out.