Part 1: Schauberger

Tools and rituals for water-intelligent living, distilled weekly.

The Water-Intelligent Living Series

This week, I bumped into someone in London I had met briefly one morning in January 2024 in Marrakesh, during one of my Water Wellness Sabbatical trips. On Friday, she sat three seats down from me in a London room.

What a surprise!

She told me about her dream pivot: leaving the city to become a forester. Living in forests. Taking care of them. Horseback riding. A life shaped by trees and blue skies rather than meetings (we were on an elevated floor in a London glassbox talking about this).

I had already planned to dedicate this first note in the four-part Water-Intelligent Living Series to Viktor Schauberger and his concept of living water, the book that started my Water Wellness Sabbatical in the summer of 2023, and of which that Morocco trip was part.

Schauberger said, “Forests are the home of our water.”
If we lose them, we lose water.

Born in 1885 into a family of Austrian forest wardens, all he wanted was to spend time outdoors. Over time, his attention shifted from trees to streams. He noticed that springs dried up when vegetation was removed and returned when it was restored.

Today he’s often called the water wizard. Many modern “water energiser” technologies that rely on vortexing trace their ideas back to his observations.

His mother used to say, “If you are feeling sad, go and watch the water. You will feel better.”
So he did.

He watched how water moves. How it curves, coils, and disappears underground, only to return. Water is constantly moving inward, spiralling, cooling, and regenerating itself.

He argued that healthy drinking water should behave as it does in nature. Water left undisturbed in its natural movement builds vitality and carries life force. Water forced through straight pipes does not. To him, that was dead water.

As hydropower and industrial systems expanded at the time, he warned that disrupting water’s natural movement disrupts the balance of nature, and, by extension, our own health. What we call culture, he believed, often destroys nature and, in doing so, ourselves.

Chemical disinfection was a symptom of our collective destruction of nature, not a solution.

I started my water sabbatical in July 2023 with a book on Schauberger’s principles, just before beginning my PhD at Oxford that October. From bathing in spring water and alpine lakes, reading Schauberger, to entering a rigorous, engineering-dominated language of managing resources, but integrated! (IWRM) and designing nature-connectedness in handbooks.

Few of us welcome challenges to firmly held belief systems.
Schauberger’s ideas felt refreshing precisely because they do.

His core idea was simple: mimic nature instead of correcting it.

That summer, I travelled through Germany, Switzerland, and the Italian Alps, staying in places supplied directly by mountain water. Locals would always say proudly, “This isn’t just tap water. This is health from the tap!”

And that’s the point.

Water was never meant to be an industrial product.
It was meant to move, and for us to notice.

— Clouds

Stop disrupting your biology.

The One Thing You Should Know

The German Umweltbundesamt tracks substances that end up in water and don’t belong there. On its list of relevant pollutants, there is only one fragrance: Galaxolid (HHCB).

That matters, because it is EVERYWHERE.

It’s in your hand soap.
Your shampoo & conditioner.
Your laundry detergent.
Your fabric softener.
Your all-purpose cleaner.

Anything that smells “fresh”, “clean”, or “long-lasting”.

Every time you shower, wash your hands, or do laundry, a tiny amount goes down the drain. One rinse doesn’t matter. Millions of rinses, every day, do.

This week: Do a fragrance audit.

Check what in your home can be fragrance-free.
Your hand soap, for sure.

Start there.

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