Flow State
Connecting with nature via local waterways can promote good health and peace of mind.
Melanie Smith has built a career by connecting people with local waters, all in pursuit of better health, clarity, and peace of mind.
Smith owns Miss Melanie Yoga and MMY Paddleboards in Ottsville. A certified yoga teacher for 12 years, and former social worker for the state of New Jersey for 10 years, Smith honed her craft in the specialty world of aquatics with a Master Trainer designation in standup paddleboard yoga.
“My parents always lived on a creek, so I grew up playing in the water,” Smith recalls. “I wanted to be a surfer. I was teaching mindfulness and yoga, and paddleboarding, yoga, and mindfulness seemed a great combination because they all do the same thing—bringing a sense of calm and presentness.”
Smith leads classes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that convene at waterways including the Lehigh River, Lake Nockamixon, the Delaware River, and Spruce Run Recreation Area in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. For those who might question the combination of yoga and paddleboarding, Smith says it’s a natural fit—“like chocolate and peanut butter.”
“It’s very fluid,” she says. “It actually makes a lot of sense once you get on the board and play with yoga poses because you become more attuned to the fluidity of the water. You’re going to build strength and stamina because you’re taking your practice from a stable surface inside to an unstable surface.”
Safety is always paramount; Smith emphasizes that not all yoga poses are appropriate for a paddleboard, and all students must take an introductory lesson to learn the basics of paddleboard safety before hitting the water.
While fitness benefits abound, including enhancing one’s on-land yoga practice, Smith also notes more intangible benefits to practicing yoga on the water.
“It’s so calming to the nervous system to just sit and float and be present in the moment,” Smith shares. “It’s so good for the prefrontal cortex of the brain and calms down any tensions or stress; it washes it away. For me, it makes me value the places that we’re in all the time and the beauty of the nature that we have. We’re not separate from nature—we’re very much a part of it as well.”
Karl Russek is the conservation director with the French & Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust, headquartered in the Chester County community of Devault. He, like Smith, treasures his connection to the local landscape.
“I grew up in a mining area where all the water was heavily polluted, so it really informed my career choice,” says Russek, whose career also involved work in finance for other environmental projects. “At this point in my career, I wanted to come back to working in the landscape where I live to help preserve what is really a treasure for folks in this area.”
Russek is responsible for working with municipalities, landowners, and funders to protect the landscape in northern Chester County. He recently took over the position from Pam Brown, a long-time conservation leader in the area.
“Protected areas along the water tend to be quiet places that enable people to slow down, cut out the noise, and appreciate the natural systems that work hard for us that are all around us that a lot of people don’t even really notice,” Russek says. “There’s a reason kids gravitate to playing in creeks—some people like me never grow out of that. People are naturally drawn to the water because we need it to survive, and I think at some basic level people understand that, whether consciously or not.”
Peaceful Places
Kapil Nayar, LPC, a staff counselor and adjunct faculty member with Villanova University, meets with students daily to work with them on concerns they may have. Nayar, too, believes in the value of time spent by the water.
Kapil Nayar, LPC, a staff counselor and adjunct faculty member with Villanova University, meets with students daily to work with them on concerns they may have. Nayar, too, believes in the value of time spent by the water.
“There are large bodies of research indicating the direct correlation with the more time we spend in nature the more mental stimulation, neurochemically, we receive and transitive benefits,” he shares. “There are many benefits to spending time by the water. There are a multitude of mindfulness moments—being present, slowing down, focusing on our breathing, and having stimulation of our senses that benefit us, mentally, emotionally, and even physically as it triggers a positive response in our brain. It is through our sensations being flooded, no pun intended, that we heal.”
Beyond open skies and fresh air, Nayar says time in nature provides a respite from the hectic world around us, in which our lives are inundated with stressors and distractions.
“I would argue that technology impacts our body inversely to that of nature,” he says. “Things like anxiety, depression, and even insomnia all have been indicated to be linked with the overuse of technology—not to mention loneliness [or] isolation, which our surgeon general has announced is our newest current plague. Conversely, basking in nature seems to … stimulate neuronal reactions that seem to balance us, bring us positivity and peace, and, further, heal us.”
Russek agrees, noting that spending time in and around local waterways “really helps ground folks to get a better sense of where we all live. It’s too easy to focus on what see through the windshield and on the phone versus these natural systems all around us.”
Preserve and Protect
Russek characterizes the Philadelphia area, including the collar counties, as “truly blessed” with abundant natural resources, including lakes, rivers, and other waterways.
Russek characterizes the Philadelphia area, including the collar counties, as “truly blessed” with abundant natural resources, including lakes, rivers, and other waterways.
“Those were part of the reason this area was settled by Europeans in colonial times,” he says. “Despite centuries of industrial activity and agriculture, despite significant suburban development over the last decades, these are still exceptional watersheds that provide clean water and a host of other important services.”
One such service: flood control.
“Watersheds with less pavement or development absorb water and release it more slowly,” Russek adds. “These areas become important tools for resilience in the face of changing precipitation patterns due to climate change. We’re getting more water, more intense rainstorms, so we need healthy watersheds to mitigate some of that impact.
“These waterways do a tremendous amount of hard work for the folks who live in the area,” he continues. “Waterways in suburban Philadelphia generally drain into the Schuylkill, the Delaware, or the Brandywine, at least on the Pennsylvania side, where they go on to become a source of drinking water to millions of people. In addition to that, healthy waterways serve as important educational and recreational locations.”
In Pennsylvania, nature and humans have long coexisted in relative harmony, thanks in large part to local waters.
“A lot of our protected landscape along waterways is not just an experience with nature but history as well,” Russek says. “We have a number of old mills, canal locks, etc. Most of the settlement, even pre-European, was along these waterways so it really is a walk through history.
“A lot of our trails that are quite popular in the Philadelphia area are along waterways,” he continues. “Where decades before, these areas were considered mere drainage, more and more people are now accessing these resources.”
Russek concludes with some advice for anyone who is interested in having a closer relationship with their local waters: “Start where you are—what watershed you’re in, what your local creek is. Helping people understand where they are in their watershed is an important first step.”
Photo by Marty DeSilets
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life magazine, August 2024.
