There is an interesting story in In Search of the Miraculous. Gurdjieff is speaking about the Stop Exercise.

“I will tell you of one case in my own life. It was many years ago in Central Asia. We had put up a tent by the side of an arik, that is, an irrigation canal. And three of us were carrying things from one side of the arik to the other where our tent was. The water in the arik came up to our waists. I and another man had just come out on the bank with some things and were preparing to dress; the third man was still in the water. He dropped something in the water, we afterwards found out that it was an ax, and he was feeling about on the bottom with a stick. At this moment we heard from the tent a voice which called ‘Stop!’ We both stood stock-still on the bank as we were. Our comrade in the water was just within our field of vision. He was standing bending down towards the water and when he heard ‘stop’ he remained in that posture. One or two minutes passed by and suddenly we saw that the water in the arik was rising. Someone perhaps a mile away had opened a sluice to let water into the small arik. The water rose very rapidly and soon reached the chin of the man in the water. We did not know if the man in the tent knew that the water was rising. We could not call out to him, we could not even turn our heads to see where he was, we could not look at each other. I could only hear my friend breathing. The water began to rise very rapidly and soon the head of the man in the water was completely covered. Only one hand was raised supported by a long staff. Only this hand was to be seen. It seemed to me that a very long time passed by. At length we heard: ‘Enough!’ We both sprang into the water and dragged our friend out of it. He had been almost suffocated.” (ISM 355)

The word arik is “a tertiary irrigation canal or irrigation ditch in Central Asia.” IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE IN REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN HISTORY AND MODERN STATE, note 1, p.10. (Tashkent 2020)

There is a tremendous picture of an arik, spelt aryk, at this site: https://www.album-online.com/detail/en/M2YzNTkwMA/sergey-mikhaylovich-prokudin-gorsky-irrigation-canal-aryk-murgab-estate-central-alb10621880 The photograph was taken between 1905 and 1915, bringing it right into the period when Gurdjieff may have had the said experience. That photograph, which is much finer than the one I have reproduced here, is for sale. But there is something idyllic about it.

With this word, we have a Central Asian word, used by Gurdjieff. How did he learn it? He may have meant someone from there, or the story may be as he told, and he heard it on the spot. This ties in, however, with another fact: that Olgivanna Lloyd Wright saw him moulding a bust of his Mongolian teacher. She was in Tiflis, when she met Gurdjieff, and in one of their first meetings he “threw a lump of clay on the table before me” and told her to sculpt her own hand. Then, “I sat at the table mournfully looking at the clay while he worked on the bust of his Mongolian teacher.” (From Crna to Taliesin: Black Mountain to Shining Brow, The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, 34-35)

What would be most interesting is evidence for the use of the Stop Exercise there. However, there is a shortage of evidence for esoteric religious practices in Central Asia at the turn of the 19th/20th century.