WHAT HAPPENS
WHEN YOU SPEND TIME BY THE OCEAN...

Some people seek it out: some do not expect it, and are awed when it happens: and some become so attached to it...they buy houses and move here: we are talking about the comforting, mystical and naturally intimate feeling of being by the ocean, and the state of mind to which this can lead.

And why might this be?

Well, you can ask our guests, and they will confirm this feeling of well-being, but as to why this might be...well...there are many theories, one of the most interesting of which, should you be curious, was presented to us by a visiting neurologist.

You can start with the fact that we were born in water...(at least all of us here were, and we assume you were too!). This leads to a receptivity, a longing if you will, a comfort to being by the ocean, reinforced by the resonance of the waves on the shore with our actual brain rhythms. Thus does that rhythm recapitulate or echo the sound of the beat of our mother's heart when we were in utero, and our brains tend to settle comfortably into an alpha rhythm, the sort that some folks who like to meditate spend a lifetime trying to achieve.

We see this effect frequently at Oceanstone, often in the form of a guest who explains, breathlessly, where they have been on their vacation, what they have seen, and what their itinerary is for the next week, and who, on the following day appears for morning coffee quite dazed, comforably rested, and who goes on at great length about the glorious colors of the sunset, the soundness of their sleep, and their "unexplained" feeling of well-being. And who then books another night.

Some people are permanently changed in a very positive way by their visits to Oceanstone: some return to the seaside again and again for the life giving sustenance it offers. Others take home the invaluable lessons learned at the ocean's edge about quiet time, about living mindfully in the moment, about contemplation, meditation. For we, all of us, have the answers to many of the riddles of our everyday existence inside us: we have only to sit quietly long enough to hear what they may be...

Ours is a world stuck in fast-forward. Come. Sit on our shore...

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