The Sea Effect

I have massive white coat hypertension - at the mere sight of a blood pressure machine, my head starts swimming, I feel rising panic and the readings are wild. This is not good. It has meant that over the years it has been very difficult to get an accurate reading. I remember one GP from many years ago, in desperation sending me with the machine to sit in the dark under the stairs to try and calm me down (it didn't work).

 

On Friday March 27th I'll be 62 and I thought it was high time to find a way of managing this, then on my instagram feed, an ad popped up for a constant monitor worn like a watch. I read about it, scrutinised the reviews and decided to give it a go. Apart from the 4 sessions of calibration, there's no horrible noises, no arm crushing and no stress. It takes a reading roughly every 45 minutes and I've found myself fascinated by the fluctuations.

 

For as long as I can remember I've felt better by the sea, I'm soothed by the sound of the waves, the movement of the currents, the patterns in the sand and the smell of seaweed. I don't need to be in the water, I spend countless hours on the rocks just watching. It has often felt like a need, I'm drawn to it, I've always lived near the sea - in Fife, in Edinburgh, in Lewes and in Cyprus and now closer than ever in Harris where I live on a peninsula off a small island so there is sea on 3 sides.

 

When my mother died I found myself craving the sea and on the worst day, when I felt engulfed by grief, I stripped off down to old grey underwear as I strode down the beach, walked in and swam. I barely noticed the cold. As I emerged from the sea I felt all that overwhelming distress ebb away. It was a turning point. Cleansing.

 

Since getting the wrist monitor I've been checking the effect that sea gazing has on my blood pressure. Over several weeks I've watched both the diastolic and systolic drop within minutes of arriving on the beach. from a general level of 140/90 to 125/69. It drops rapidly and then stabilises and remains low for as long as I'm by the sea and then gradually rises again over a period of hours. 

 

I've read research about the benefits of being beside the sea, the 'blue mind', the effects on soothing the nervous system through quieting the flight or flight mechanism that seems to dominate daily life. There is something so meditative about watching the waves, that familiar rhythm, the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, the way the light plays on the movement of the water. It is utterly restorative. It offers peace and quiet and now I can see the actual physiological evidence for myself.

 

We draw the sea into our products for their amazing skin and hair properties, we weave them through almost all of the Harris edition creating rituals that bring the sea to you - freshly scooped sea water in the Cleansing Multi Mask, Fucus ground into the exquisite Timeless Beauty Serum, Sugar Kelp in the Blemish Resolve Cream, Fucus in the Isle Mist and the Harris Rose & Rockweed Shampoo and Body Bar.

 

We use a whole range of seaweeds to print onto Harris Tweed to make the most beautiful shawls - wearing one feels like being enveloped by the echo of the sea, with shells and beach finds pressed into the fabric too.

 

I love that even if you can't come to us, we can come to you, to bring you a little island peace in every pot, jar and bottle.

 

Sea Chapel

A M Havinden

 

This week; the sermon is salt

and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

 

quickens the blood. unseen, underfoot

deep notes of wrack and weed wind

 

ankles. we raise our voices

in bright blasphemy, in shock and defiance

 

a hymn of human-scale endurance, 

how great and small we are;

 

how outrageously alone, how far

we've come, suddenly, from shore.