Hydration and The Nervous System: When My Body Finally Let the Water In

A Note on This Hydration Series

This series I’ve written grew out of a simple observation I’ve seen repeated over and over again:

People are trying.

They’re doing the “right” things. And something still isn’t landing.

This series isn’t about better habits, stronger discipline, or more effort. It’s about noticing what happens before those things work, or don’t.

Across these four blogs, I explore hydration, nourishment, and care not as behaviors to perfect, but as experiences for the body to receive. That receiving is shaped by stress states, past experiences, and the quiet expectations we carry long after we stop thinking about them.

Rather than asking, “What should I be doing differently?” I write to invite a different question:

"What state does my body need to be in for this to integrate?"

Hydration, often overlooked, is foundational. Water is the primary medium through which our bodies receive information from the environment, and it is the substance we are largely made of.

Taken together, this series looks at how effort without access leads to compensation, how intake differs from assimilation, and why resistance is often a form of intelligence rather than failure.

They aren’t meant to instruct or convince. They’re meant to create enough space for you to notice what’s true in your own experience without shame, urgency, or pressure.

You can read them in order, or wherever you’re drawn. Each one stands on its own. Together, they point toward the same quiet truth:

When the conditions are right, the body already knows how to receive.

---

When My Body Finally Let the Water In

For years, ever since I moved my clinic into its current space, I thought the water tasted off.

Not unsafe. Not contaminated. Just not quite right. There was something about it that my body never fully trusted, even if I couldn’t have explained why. So I adjusted. I bought large water jugs and refilled them every few weeks at the grocery store, hauling them back to the clinic so my clients, students, and I would have water that felt clean and nourishing.

It mattered to me. And for a long time, I didn’t question the effort.

But over time, that quiet compensation became tiring. Not dramatically, not in a way that demanded attention, just a “ping” in the background. A small, ongoing task my body never quite stopped tracking.

Several weeks ago something in me reached a threshold. I didn’t feel frantic or fed up. I just felt clear.

I started researching more reliable options and ended up buying a countertop reverse-osmosis machine, a vortex carafe, and electrolyte drops. None of it was cheap. But the decision didn’t feel indulgent or obsessive. It felt perfectly right, settled and more like a matter-of-fact something I deserved. Like something that had already been decided internally, and I was finally acting on it.

Almost as if my body had been waiting for me to catch up.

The Water Wasn't The Problem

The first surprise came after everything was set up. The water in my clinic is actually quite healthy. The machine confirmed it. Once filtered, it was nearly pure. So the story wasn’t that the water was bad. That alone made me pause. I felt a little silly for all of the water hauling I’d done over the years. But it felt good to know that now the water was going to be even better.

The second surprise mattered much more.

Hydration is a Nervous System Issue

Not long after, I had a session with a colleague. As part of the work, she checked something we call deep hydration - not just whether someone drinks enough water, but whether their system is actually able to receive and integrate it. This is how we observe hydration and the nervous system as linked. It was out of balance for me.

That caught my attention. I drink water. I care about hydration. This wasn’t about neglect. As we explored it further, the underlying stress became clear. My system had been holding a belief that the water wasn’t fully trustworthy. Not dangerous, just uncertain. Even though I had managed around it responsibly for years, part of my body never fully relaxed.

What struck me wasn’t that the belief existed. It made sense. I moved earlier this year, and I don’t particularly love the water at my new place either. My body had been tracking that change quietly and accurately. The stress wasn’t “the water is bad.” The stress was having to stay alert.

It wasn’t a conscious thought I was repeating, it was subconscious - a bodily expectation that had quietly organized how I received.

Once that belief was acknowledged and integrated, something shifted immediately. I could feel it. The water didn’t just taste different, it landed differently in my body. There was less holding, less resistance, more ease. And I felt a sense of relief knowing that what I’d invested in would now land.

This experience clarified something I see often in my work: hydration isn’t just about how much water we drink. It’s about whether the body feels safe enough to let it in. Often, our ability to integrate nourishment is tied to how regulated we are -whether the body feels safe, settled, or on alert.

And sometimes, even when regulation is mostly there, something else is shaping how we receive.

Experiences and beliefs, especially early or repeated ones, can shape that safety in ways we don’t consciously remember. I’ve worked with people whose relationship with water was quietly shaped in childhood by messages about toughness, discipline, or deprivation. One client realized that since early adolescence, drinking water had been associated with weakness or inconvenience, not care. Their body had learned, over time, not to prioritize it - not because it didn’t need water, but because receiving it didn’t feel permissible.

When patterns like that settle into the nervous system, they don’t respond well to rules or reminders. The body doesn’t need more discipline. It needs an update.

The same dynamic shows up with food, supplements, rest, even care itself. People try harder, spend more, optimize endlessly and still don’t feel nourished. Sometimes the thing that is meant to nourish us feels like pressure, or something we’re “getting wrong and need to better.”  Often, the issue isn’t effort or quality. It’s receptivity.

Water makes this especially visible because it’s immediate. You can feel whether your body welcomes it, tolerates it, or resists it.

I’ve worked with people who avoid drinking water, who say it doesn’t help them, they don’t like it, or that it feels unpleasant in their body. Sometimes all it takes is a brief moment of slowing down, of noticing expectation, sensation, and response and their relationship with water changes. Not through discipline or force, but through permission and awareness.

Once the body no longer feels like it has to manage or brace, it often wants the water.

That's what happened for me.

When The Body No Longer Has to Brace

I didn’t just improve my water setup. I resolved a long-standing loop of compensation. And once my system trusted the source, it finally allowed itself to receive the benefit of what I had already been providing.

What I appreciate most about this story is how clearly my body communicated and how patient it was. It didn’t demand or escalate. It simply kept offering information until I was ready to respond.

Sometimes growth doesn’t look like adding more practices or trying harder. Sometimes it looks like noticing where we’ve been compensating, and choosing, finally, to stop.

Sometimes the shift is repairing the relationship: with water, with nourishment, with care itself. And once that happens, the body usually knows exactly what to do.

---

Try This: A Simple Practice for Hydration

The next time you drink water, pause for a moment before taking a sip. Notice the water in front of you.

Ask your body quietly: “Are you willing to receive water right now?” No answer is required.

Take one small sip and let it move at its own pace. Notice what happens. Does your body soften, stay neutral, or resist?

There’s nothing to fix. This is simply information.

Sometimes hydration improves not because we drink more, but because the body finally feels safe enough to receive.

---

Final Reflection About Hydration

Hydration isn’t just about how much water we drink. It’s about whether the body feels safe enough to let it in. Blog post by:

Sara McRae | Creator of HigherCx™ Wellness practitioner, teacher of Touch for Health, and guide for recovery from Long COVID, trauma, and the Void State.

Exploring resilience, energy, and conscious integration.