How to Read Water

recorded webinar

What if the most radical act in a distracted world is simply learning to notice?

Tristan Gooley has come to see water not just as a container, but as a subject — a living intelligence that holds clues and patterns, memories and meaning. In How to Read Water, he draws on Indigenous and ancient navigational wisdom — from the Marshall Islanders’ wave-reading to Polynesian ocean currents — to show how water has long been revered as a communicative, sentient force. These cultures remind us that water is something we’re in constant dialogue with, not merely something other beings live beside or inside.

In this live conversation, part of advaya’s Wisdoms of Water course, Tristan Gooley joins advaya to explore questions like: How can water — in its flows, shapes, and signals — become seen as not just something we passively live alongside, but something we are in constant dialogue with?

This conversation will move between science and spirit, from how you can measure the size of raindrops by the colours in the rainbow, to wayfinding in the open sea, to why water puddles stick on a windowsill. Just as Astrida Neimanis teaches us to feel our bodies as part of a planetary hydrocommons, and Bayo Akomolafe invites us into the mythic undercurrents of Yoruba water spirits, Gooley brings water down to earth again — his approach grounds the poetic and philosophical in the scientific and practical, revealing a quiet activism in the act of observation.

Join us for a conversation that brings together natural navigation, deep attention, and the everyday reminder that: the world is speaking, if only we remember how to read it.