Prenatal Life and Aquawareness: two schools of embodied awareness (a complementary note to “Beyond Aquawareness”, 2025)

Giancarlo De Leo, fuorimag.it, 2025

Prenatal Life and Aquawareness: Two Schools of Embodied Awareness 
*A complementary note to “Beyond Aquawareness” (2004–2025)*

### Abstract

This paper proposes a conceptual parallel between prenatal life and Aquawareness as two “schools of embodied awareness” grounded in liquid environments. Prenatal development is described as a first school that prepares the organism to “come to light” – to inhabit air, gravity and social space – through sensorimotor learning in amniotic fluid. Aquawareness is presented as a second, intentionally designed school that uses water to refine dual awareness and then re-apply it to ordinary “dry” life. Recent work in developmental neuroscience, embodied cognition and body memory provides a framework that makes this analogy not only evocative but theoretically robust. [1][2][3]

***

### 1. Introduction: From amniotic water to conscious water

In 2004, an introductory text on Aquawareness suggested that the first perceptions of our existence arise “with closed eyes, immersed in amniotic fluid”, and that this fluid constitutes our first interface with the world and our first experience of boundaries. Two decades later, *Beyond Aquawareness* (2025) explicitly returns to that prenatal imagery, proposing Aquawareness as a threshold rather than a final destination: a practice in water that prepares us to live more consciously on dry land. [4][5]

The aim of this complementary paper is to articulate, in a more technical language, the analogy that underlies both texts: 
– prenatal life as a school that prepares us to come to light, 
– Aquawareness as a school that prepares us to bring refined awareness back into ordinary life. 

This analogy can now be reconsidered in the light of recent findings on fetal sensorimotor development, embodied approaches to perception, and the neuroscience of body memory. [1][6][3]

***

### 2. Prenatal life as a school for coming to light

#### 2.1. The liquid medium as formative environment

Contemporary developmental neuroscience increasingly portrays the womb as an active sensorimotor niche rather than a passive container. The fetus moves within amniotic fluid, and each movement generates a pattern of tactile, proprioceptive and vestibular consequences: changes in pressure, shifts in posture, oscillations and rotations. These sensorimotor loops are now understood as crucial for the early organization of brain and behavior. [6][7]

Touch is the first sense to become functionally relevant: cutaneous receptors appear on the face and then progressively cover the body during the first and second trimester. Through spontaneous movements and self-touch, the fetus explores its own body and the uterine walls, gradually differentiating “what belongs to me” from “what belongs to the surrounding medium”. [2][8]

From this perspective, amniotic fluid is literally the first interface with “the world”: not yet a world of objects, but a world of forces, pressures, resistances and supports. The prenatal environment thus provides a liquid school of physics and embodiment long before visual experience begins to dominate after birth. [1]

#### 2.2. Body schema and minimal self

These early sensorimotor experiences contribute to the emergence of a primitive body schema: a non-conscious, dynamic model of the body’s shape, position and possibilities for movement. Studies on fetal and newborn behavior support the idea that coordinated patterns of action – such as bringing the hand to the mouth or adjusting posture in response to uterine constraints – are not random reflexes, but structured behaviors that anticipate postnatal skills. [6][8]

The neuroscience of body memory suggests that such early configurations form the basis of what has been called the “minimal self”: a pre-reflective sense of being a body in the world. This minimal self is not yet narrative or conceptual; it is a felt continuity of sensorimotor experience that binds the organism to its environment. [3]

In this light, the metaphor of prenatal life as a “school for coming to light” gains theoretical grounding. The fetus is already learning how to inhabit space, how to negotiate boundaries and how to regulate its own states within a responsive liquid medium. The transition to birth – into air, gravity and light – can be seen as a change of regime in a process of embodied learning that has already begun. [1][6]

***

### 3. Aquawareness as a school for ordinary “dry” life

#### 3.1. Recreating a liquid learning field

Aquawareness deliberately recreates some of the key features of the prenatal sensorimotor niche, but does so in a conscious, adult framework. In water, the body is again partially freed from gravity, globally supported, and continuously engaged in a dialogue between movement and fluid resistance. The boundary between body and environment becomes soft and negotiable, and small adjustments in position or breath produce large experiential changes. [5][9]

Basic swimming, floating meditation and related practices are not framed merely as techniques for efficiency or fitness. They are proposed as experiential laboratories: situations in which the practitioner can observe, with increasing clarity, how bodily sensations, emotional states and environmental conditions co-vary. In other words, water is used once more as a training medium – not this time for the emergence of a first body schema, but for the refinement of a mature embodied awareness. [10][5]

#### 3.2. Dual awareness as a mature echo of prenatal integration

A central construct in Aquawareness is dual awareness: the capacity to sustain simultaneous attention to internal states (interoception) and external conditions (exteroception and context). Practically, this means feeling breath, heartbeat, muscle tone and emotional climate while also perceiving pressure, temperature, space, sound and the presence of others in the water. [10]

In prenatal life, integration of internal and external signals is largely implicit: the fetus “learns” how internal states (e.g., movement, autonomic changes) and environmental conditions (e.g., uterine pressure, fluid dynamics) are coupled, without any reflective awareness. [6]
In Aquawareness, a structurally similar integration is revisited at a higher level of complexity: the practitioner learns to *notice* and *modulate* the coupling between internal and external, cultivating a conscious, flexible relationship between self and environment. 

Seen in this way, dual awareness can be interpreted as a mature echo of the prenatal integration between body and liquid world – not a regression, but a second turn of the spiral, in which what was once implicit becomes available to reflection and deliberate practice.

***

### 4. From water to world: transferring embodied competence

Research on body memory and embodied cognition indicates that sensorimotor practices can reshape how the brain binds sensations, actions and meanings, with consequences that extend beyond the specific training context. Coherent, repeated experiences of regulation, safety and integrated sensing in one environment can generalize to other situations. [3][11]

Aquawareness uses the aquatic environment as a privileged training ground for such experiences. In water, practitioners can: 
– experiment with letting go of excessive muscular control while maintaining safety; 
– explore boundaries (depth, distance, fatigue, fear) within a responsive and forgiving medium; 
– develop a felt sense of self-regulation through breath, posture and micro-movements. [5][10]

Once stabilized, these patterns can be transferred to “dry” life. The same dual awareness that in water tracks breath and pressure can, on land, track breath and social tension; the same sensitivity to boundaries in the pool can become sensitivity to relational or ecological limits. The school of Aquawareness thus aspires to prepare not better swimmers alone, but more embodied, regulated and relationally aware persons in their everyday environments. [12][9]

***

### 5. Two schools, one grammar

The analogy between prenatal life and Aquawareness can now be summarized in a more technical form: 

– **Prenatal life** constitutes a first, involuntary school of embodied awareness in a liquid environment. Through sensorimotor loops in amniotic fluid, the fetus develops a body schema, a minimal self and basic regulatory patterns that prepare it to “come to light” in air, gravity and social space. [6][2][1]

– **Aquawareness** constitutes a second, voluntary school of embodied awareness, again in a liquid environment. Through intentional practice, the adult re-enters a medium that supports global sensing, boundary negotiation and regulation, in order to refine dual awareness and then “come to light” again – this time in ordinary life, with a more integrated and responsible way of inhabiting the world. [5][4][10]

In both cases, water is more than a background. It is an active partner in the formation of how we perceive, feel and act. If prenatal water prepares us for our first emergence into the world, Aquawareness proposes a conscious return to water as preparation for a second emergence: from automaticity to awareness, from fragmentation to a more coherent, embodied presence in everyday life.

***

### References / Essential bibliography

**Fetal sensorimotor development and prenatal embodiment** 
– Craighero, L., et al. (2024). *An embodied approach to fetal and newborn perceptual and sensorimotor development.* Discusses the role of the uterine environment and sensorimotor loops in early development of perception and action. [1]
– Turini, G., et al. (2018). *Fetal Origin of Sensorimotor Behavior.* Explores how spontaneous fetal movements contribute to the construction of early motor patterns and a primary body schema. [6][2]
– Review on *Fetal movements: the origin of human behaviour.* Provides an overview of studies on continuity between fetal movements and postnatal motor competencies. [8]

**Sensory development in utero** 
– Overviews on *sensory development in the womb*, focusing on the maturation sequence of touch, vestibular system, taste, smell and hearing during pregnancy. [13][14][15]
– Works on *early sensory experiences and prenatal development*, showing how the uterine environment is a rich and structured sensory context rather than a neutral condition. [16][17]

**Body schema, minimal self and body memory** 
– Koch, S. C., et al. (2023). *The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances.* Reviews different levels of body memory (procedural, interoceptive, relational) and their neural bases. [3][18]
– Articles on the role of the body schema in development, linking early sensorimotor experiences to the construction of bodily self and social competences. [19][20][21]

**Embodied cognition and infancy** 
– Theoretical and review papers on *embodied cognition in early development*, emphasizing how perception and cognition emerge from situated action in specific environments. [22][11]
– Work on the “corporeal turn” in infancy research, treating fetuses and infants as agents already engaged in an active dialogue with their environment. [11]

**Aquatic environments, regulation and transfer to daily life** 
– Clinical and educational texts on the role of water as a regulatory environment (reduced gravitational load, global support, uniform sensory stimulation) and on the use of aquatic practices as training for self-regulation and awareness. [5][9]
– Articles and materials from Aquawareness on basic swimming, dual awareness and “on dry land” applications, articulating the passage from practice in water to everyday life. [10][12][4]

Citazioni:
[1] An embodied approach to fetal and newborn perceptual … – PubMed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38843762/
[2] Fetal Origin of Sensorimotor Behavior – PMC – PubMed Central – NIH https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5974044/
[3] The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual … https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10043453/
[4] Beyond Aquawareness – Fuori https://www.fuorimag.it/beyond-aquawareness/
[5] aquawareness: Home https://www.aquawareness.net
[6] Fetal Origin of Sensorimotor Behavior – Frontiers https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurorobotics/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2018.00023/full
[7] An embodied approach to fetal and newborn perceptual and … – IRIS https://sfera.unife.it/handle/11392/2550437
[8] Fetal movements: the origin of human behaviour – Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dmcn.14918
[9] Back to basic swimming https://www.aquawareness.net/back-to-basic-swimming/
[10] How does Aquawareness help in developing a dual … – Fuori https://www.fuorimag.it/how-does-aquawareness-help-in-developing-a-dual-awareness-in-the-water/
[11] Babies in the Corporeal Turn: The Cognitive Embodiment of … https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11304376/
[12] Mission, objectives… and beyond: routes, trails, horizons https://www.aquawareness.net/routes-trails-horizons/
[13] [PDF] Sensory Development in the Womb https://sensorybeginnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sensory-Development-in-the-Womb.pdf
[14] Early Influences on Development of Sensory Perception and Eating … https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11602616/
[15] Womb with a view: Sensory development in utero https://utswmed.org/medblog/sensory-development-utero/
[16] Prenatal Development – Early Sensory Experiences – Families for Life https://familiesforlife.sg/pages/FFLPArticle/Pregnancy-Prenatal-Development
[17] Exploring Your Unborn Baby’s Senses: How They Develop in your … https://belliestobabies.co.nz/resources-sharing-my-knowledge/exploring-your-unborn-babys-senses-how-they-develop-in-your-uterus
[18] [PDF] Review article: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF BODY MEMORY https://www.excli.de/index.php/excli/article/view/5877/4493
[19] the body scheme in people of developmental age: disorders … https://ojs.gsdjournal.it/index.php/gsdj/article/download/481/pdf
[20] Importance of body representations in social-cognitive … https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8240485/
[21] The role of bodily self-consciousness in episodic memory of … – Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43823-2
[22] The Development of Embodied Cognition: Six Lessons … https://www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2010-2011/Smith/6lessons.pdf