The healing properties of the Sardinian sea

The sardinian sea has an energy of its own, good for mind and spirit

calming place

Water and specifically the sea have healing properties, both on our minds and bodies. Spending time by or on the sea is healing, calming and it somehow drags you into it’s own energy and rhythm. It gives our overactive brains a rest – restores us. As Isak Dinesen so poetically said in her quote: The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

I have always loved the sea. Maybe my soul understood the healing properties of it and somehow always dragged me to it. When my intuition brought me to Sardinia I found an alluring and healing sea here too, albeit very different than up North.

Somehow I thought the Mediterranean would not smell as fresh as the sea up in the North, somehow I imagined the Mediterranean to be less like a sea and more like a ‘lake’. But oh no, how wrong I was. The smell is fresh, even on warm, stuffy days. It’s salty, very salty compared to the North Sea and it smells of freedom and nature. It is a smell you want to breath in deeply into your lungs. It both revives you and grounds you and makes you feel free and in tune with nature around you.

The colours of Sardinia

One of the most amazing things about the sea on Sardinia are the colours. The Sardinian sea is clear, taking colour from the surroundings, both from the sky and the bottom of the sea. The colours are all shades of blue, green and the mix of the two; turquoise, all inviting colours. Sometimes white is thrown into the mix in the form of waves turning into foam. This mixed with the gorgeous pale colour of the sand on the beaches makes for an ever fascinating colour palate. Due to the clear water and the lack of sea weed or subsurface growth you can see many meters below the surface. You can see the sun glitter deep down to the sandy bottom where the movement of the water has made wave marks in the sand. Sometimes when the sea is totally calm it’s like kayaking on clear glass giving you a glimpse of a world you’d only see if you went diving. The world and landscape under your kayak is as fascinating as the shore you paddle along. It’s colour therapy, all these blue shades are calming on the mind an spirit, yet inspiring and creative. I also worry slightly what will happen if I one day will see a HUGE fish (of the undesirable type)!. I’m sure it’ll give me a fright! When you have such a clear view of the sea under you it’s like being in an aquarium.

The beaches

I have seen beaches I never thought I would ever see with my own eyes. Holiday poster beaches. Like the ones hanging in the travel agents’s office. Or those seen in holiday brochures, exuding calm relaxation and inviting water. It’s like you can smell the sun cream and feel the feeling of sun warming your skin. Sardinia has lots of beaches of all kinds, there are white sandy beaches, rocky beaches, beaches with small stones. Beaches with sharp, pointy stones, painful to walk barefoot on, sometimes with slippery short, green seaweed on them. Other beaches with round stones, rubbed into smooth perfection of the millions of waves and neighbouring stones hitting and grinding them. There are beaches with piles and piles of washed up sea grass or little dead jellyfish. Making a happy breeding ground for tiny, little, pesky flies in the late summer. I have also found a beach by the old tuna fishery with sea-glass shaped into a smoothness you’d never though glass could transform into. Picking these pieces of glass is another form of therapy. Showing how something seemingly broken and crushed takes on a special beauty and transformation of it’s own after being rolled around and battered for a while. Just like people really.

tiny treasures

One of the biggest surprises was the beach that at first glance looked like it was just a breach with brown and grey, coarse sand. But by closer inspection this sand turned out to be tiny little cone shaped seashells with intricate markings and patterns. Lots of them! Bending down to notice that was like discovering a true treasure trove.
It was a reminder to me to always look twice. What at first sight might look like something uninteresting – a closer inspection reveals it to be precious things.

On a philosophical note I guess this is something we can say about many things in life. Always look twice and treasures might well reveal themselves where you did not expect them to be. Sometimes it’s just a matter of looking harder or changing the perspective slightly. But no matter what, a trip to the sea is always good for the soul and mind, just spend long enough to tune in.

Here’s a link to a post I wrote about why I like kayaking on the Sardinian sea: The 10 best things about kayaking on Sardinia

Lots of love,

Bee

PS: the featured image is from Caprera (North of Sardinia)