How to Store and Drink Water the Right Way

Table of Content
1. How to Store Drinking Water at Home
2. How to Drink Water the Right Way?
2-1. Treat Water with Reverence
2-2. Drink Water with Your Hands
2-3. Drink Water at the Right Temperature
2-4. How Much Water to Drink?
2-5. Eat Water!
3. Benefits of Drinking Water from a Copper Vessel

How to Store Drinking Water at Home

Sadhguru: You need to take sufficient care of the water that you consume – not just in terms of its physical purity, it being bacteria-free and so on, but in terms of how you keep the water and how you approach it. There is substantial scientific evidence today that a thought, an emotion, a touch can change the molecular structure of water, without changing its chemical composition, and greatly alter the way water behaves within your system. The same H2O, can become poison or the elixir of life, depending upon the memory it carries. 

Life can become a real horror if certain things do not function properly and taking care of water is an important aspect of that. 

In the Yogic culture, an enormous number of systems were established in day-to-day life about how to treat water. Traditionally, people were conscious of certain things and those who are a little orthodox are still doing the right things without knowing why they are doing it. Even today, if you walk into a traditional southern Indian home, the water is kept in a certain way. It has to be in a metal pot, preferably copper, brass or some alloy of copper. Today, many people have shifted to plastic bottles and plastic purifier machines, but traditionally, people would wash the copper vessel in the night with a little tamarind and turmeric, smear sacred ash on it, then fill it with water, put a flower on top of it, light a lamp next to it, and go to bed; the next morning, they drink from that. This water will behave wonderfully within you.   

How to Drink Water the Right Way?

#1 Treat Water with Reverence 

Traditionally, in the East no one drinks water without first bowing down to it because how the water behaves depends on how you treat it. The volume of memory and intelligence that every molecule of water carries is very individual and how it behaves within you is very different. It may all be just H₂O, but it does not behave the same way. 

Just spend one moment of gratitude and reverence before you consume water, because this is the material with which you are making your life. The fact is that you cannot survive without it.  So you bow down to whatever is the basis of your survival.  If you treat these elements properly, unless you catch an infection you most probably will not need to see a doctor's face. 

#2 Drink Water with Your Hands 

The best way to drink water is with your own hands. If that is not possible, if someone gives water to you in a metal tumbler, you always hold it with both your hands and drink it. Have you seen this? Indian villagers still do it like that. It is important that before you drink water, you touch it first, allow that much time and then drink it. Then it behaves differently. 

#3 Drink Water at the Right Temperature 

Today, a lot of people drink water with three-fourths of the tumbler full of ice cubes. In the Yogic culture, if you are on the path of inner transformation and want to transform your system to another dimension of possibility, then you only drink water which is within four degrees of your body temperature. That is, your normal body temperature is somewhere around thirty-seven degrees centigrade, so you can drink water between thirty-three and forty-one degrees. If you are a student who is only interested in absorbing knowledge and not looking for transformation, you must drink within a variation of eight degrees. If you are a householder who is not interested in any transformation or learning, but just want to manage your wife or husband and children, you can drink within a twelve degree variation. Beyond that it is not considered conducive for anyone. 

It is an unpopular thing to say, but it is important that whatever you consume is somewhere in the range of the body temperature. Otherwise, it will disturb the way the water within the system behaves. I know the ice-cream loving people will scream at me now, but I am just telling you the ideal conditions. 

#4 How Much Water to Drink? 

If you do not feel thirsty and do not drink water, you will be fine. Nowadays people are carrying a bottle and sipping continuously because the marketing machines have done this to them. When you drink excessive water, especially in small sips, the body absorbs it. If you drink lots of water in one go, the body will decide how much to absorb and how much to throw out. But if you keep sipping throughout the day, the body gets deceived and tends to absorb more water than it should. Now, the delicately balanced sodium levels will drop. In the brain, dropping sodium levels will lead to swelling of the brain. The rest of the body is also affected, but it may not be so noticeable. This swelling does not mean your brain is growing. Swelling is a kind of sickness. Because there is not enough sodium, more water goes into the brain trying to supply the required sodium to keep the balance. More water in your brain means you will slosh and psychological imbalances will happen.  

When you feel thirsty, you must drink water. Just to ensure that you are drinking enough, drink ten percent more than what you actually need. If you are not the kind who is carrying a water bottle with you every minute of the day, then it is good to drink a little extra water. Then when the need to drink comes but you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can drink, it will not be an emergency. At the same time, when you are thirsty and need water but do not drink, it will cause damage to the system. It is very necessary that you must drink water when there is an indication of thirst. When the body indicates you need water, you must give it water within twenty minutes or at the most half an hour. The body will choose how much to take and how much to reject. 

#5 Eat Water!

It is not just about drinking liquid water; you must eat high water content foods. If you eat a fruit, it is nearly ninety percent water. Vegetables are over seventy percent water. Your food must have a minimum of seventy percent water content. If you eat food with very low water content, it goes and gets stuck in your stomach like concrete. If you eat dry food and then drink water, it does not work. When you consume food, it must be at least level with the percentage of water content in your own body. This is why vegetables and fruits must be a part of your diet. Fruit has nearly eighty to ninety percent water, which is why it is the best thing to consume. 

Benefits of Drinking Water from a Copper Vessel 

I have been encouraging people to use pure copper vessels because copper is one of the best conducting metals and it energizes the water. If you check the chemical composition of the water, it will not change. Only the molecular structure of the water will change. 

If you keep water in a copper vessel overnight or for about six hours and then drink it, you will see that the water will feel very different and various small ailments that people have can be just healed simply by keeping the water in an appropriate space. An appropriate space also means proper aeration and above all, your thoughts and emotions about the water, being conscious that this is a major ingredient of who you are right now. Water is not a commodity, it is life-making material. I have seen many people walking out of chronic ailments just by changing the water that they drink and how they drink.