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A B M P m e m b e r s e a r n F R E E C E a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / c e b y r e a d i n g M a s s a g e & B o d y w o r k m a g a z i n e 61 THE BIRTH OF WATSU Having always been a child of water, Dull remembers his time spent on the shores of Washington's Puget Sound during his youth. "My family always had a place on Whidby Island. We fished, played in the sand, built sand castles, and made dams. My biggest memory is chasing gulls." There is a gentle fondness in his voice as he recalls these days by the sea. The framework for all that came later in his life seems to have been built in those castles in the sand. After the closing of his favorite hot springs at Skaggs, and with Zen shiatsu now in his pocket, Dull found Harbin Hot Springs. He found a new home. And it found him. Dull began teaching Zen shiatsu at the Niyama School of Healing Arts located on-site at Harbin. There, he found the creative outlet, and the bodies, for his work. On the weekends, you could find Dull in Harbin's warm pools. "One night, someone floated me in the pool and I experienced this wave; it was very strong. There was a rising up into the light, and I wanted to take others to that place. That's where it started." That was Watsu's first spark. The meditative, heart-centered calling of that moment was the piece that informed everything else for Dull going forward. The creativity and the quest for inner knowledge that had guided the poet decades earlier was certainly at play as Dull put all the pieces together in the warm Harbin pools. He knew that in the energy of the body's movement in the hot springs, the stretches of Zen shiatsu would be able to reach a whole new level of depth in the body. As he began working with his students in the pool, and uncovering and