Skip to main content

Notes from the Pool: Something to splash about

Getting to the pool recently has been something of a luxury.  Swimming once I've made it there has been blissful.  It's permitted reflection aplenty, and most recently, I noticed thinking later that afternoon (for I try to swim at, or shortly before, lunchtime) about the constancy of swimming for me in recent years.

It wasn't ever thus.  I returned to the water after a long gap some years ago, after a very difficult and frightening event which prompted several significant life changes, from which I needed to heal.  Intellectually, I knew I didn't want to rely on pharmacotherapy.  Intuitively, I knew that swimming would help.  I have swum ever since.  Up and down.  Down and up.  I've swum when things have been going swimmingly, and I've swum through tough times.

"The water is your friend. You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move." 
Aleksandr Popov

I swim to get away from my thoughts and back into my body.  The weightlessness I feel in the water is unparalleled anywhere else in my waking experience.  The silence is soothing, and this is where I find clarity borne of the single focus I have when I'm immersed:  it's me, my self, and my breath.  Life in the fast lane is suddenly really very straightforward.  Swimming is maintenance for my soul and wellbeing.  I return to the pool, weekly at the very least.  With these benefits guaranteed why wouldn't I?

Routine and ritual feature in my life.  Neither scare me today.  Recovery, like swimming, is about maintaining and sustaining.  Just like meetings, I don't always feel like going, but go I do as I know I'll feel better once I'm there.  Just as with recovery, my swimming practice has little to do with how far, or fast I go - it's about checking in, with the water, and with myself. 

There's no need for me to make splashes.  I don't go for anyone but myself.  My stroke tells me all I need to know about where I'm at - the time it takes me to settle in, and get into 'the zone', establishing a breathing pattern and a rhythm.  The degree to which I'm conscious of those around me, and the way I move through the water confirm or deny my success. 

Swimming can be fluid and easy, if I let it be, allowing me to glide without effort or, I can make it hard for myself, battling and pulling myself through the water rather than joining it, and becoming at one with my environment.  It's all about where my head is - physically, in terms of my alignment in the water, and metaphorically.  Swimming is my retreat and my refuge.  I go to the pool to recharge and reconnect, replenish and recentre.  What does your pool look like?               
"H2O: two parts Heart and one part Obsession."
Unknown 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Table. Apple. Penny.

Whilst there were several places I might have been that morning, I wouldn't have been anywhere else.  The practitioner from the Memory Service arrived promptly.  I liked her instantly.    Mum was nervous.  I think I was a little, too.  It's been a difficult year.   "It's Friday, it's the fourteenth of December and I'm at home..."   No problems there.  CAMCOG, or the Cambridge Cognitive Examination is a thorough assessment tool used to assess the extent of extent of dementia, and to assess the level of cognitive impairment.  The standardised  measure assesses orientation, language, memory, praxis, attention, abstract thinking, perception and calculation.    "Table.  Apple.  Penny."   Three everyday items that were introduced at one point, and then referred to again later on.  Again, Mum was able to recall each.      I am reminded that the...

Glass half full? Glass half empty? Or perhaps the glass is broken

I am, constitutionally, a glass half empty gal.  I will always first acknowledge what I don't have, what I have lost, and what it is that I am seeking.  I tend to overlook my strengths, concentrating only on those bits of me that are underdeveloped or weak.  I refer to myself as a realist, but in doing so compliment myself and insult those who genuinely are simply realistic.  My modus operandi is to identify what's not working and acknowledge this before seeing more clearly what functions perfectly well.  This has its place: I edit others' written work pretty well.  My fastidious attention to detail serves me, and the author.  Accuracy counts, for me and I have an excellent memory.  I can remember a great many of my sessions with clients verbatim.  Even this asset is something I can, and do, diminish the true value of, by concentrating on 'I should have said...' or 'why didn't....  occur to me during the session?' Earlier this we...

Joan Miro: Emotional Art

"Painting and poetry are like love; an exchange of blood, a passionate embrace, without restraint, without defence.  The picture is born of an overflow of emotions and feelings." Miro, The Farm 'La Masia' (1921-22) I learnt a great deal about Miro on a recent visit to the Tate.  I learnt a great deal about a lot more too. Miro wanted to discover the sources of human feeling.  He described his method of creating poetry by way of painting, using a vocabulary of signs and symbols, metaphors and dream images to express definite themes he believed to be fundamental to human existence.  The exhibition displays his sense of humor and lively wit.  His chief concern was a social one; he wanted to get close to the great masses of humanity, and he was convinced that art can only truly appeal when it resonates with roots of lived experience.  "Wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly.  Courage cons...