In your past visits to pools, you might have seen people floating on their backs – content and at peace – as if on a cloud. Maybe you thought, “I wish I could do that.”
But before we get to floating on your back, let’s come back down to earth and consider where you are in your swim journey. What circumstances brought you to this point and what thoughts and feelings might impact where those circumstances lead you.
Circumstances start with a basic truth but along the way, your thoughts and beliefs might change how you see that basic truth.
Remember your body is your body and those physics don’t change on the fly. The physics of water will also not change. It’s important to understand the physics of how your body and the water work together before trying the back float.
In this episode, I’ll explain how these two interact and provide you with four important pro tips for the back float.
Slide 1:
Floating the great mystery. To float provides images of lightness, ease, contentment, no work surrender.
Slide 2:
When I hear someone say, “I wish I could swim” with a far off look and whisp to their voice it evokes this image of floating… ‘being on cloud nine’.
Slide 3:
Other times someone will say “I wish I could swim!” with a lilt of joy and excitement. This gives me the image of someone jumping into the water and popping up smiling or falling back into the water in the old commercial image of ‘Nestea plunge’.
Before we talk about how to back float we must first understand the thoughts that go into floating. Whatever your thoughts are will influence how you feel which in turn will guide your actions and give you your results.
Slide 4:
I started today with the image of the results….lightness, ease, contentment, no work, surrender.
Now let’s go back to the beginning with the circumstance
The circumstance is the physics between YOUR body and the physics of the water. I say it like this because every person has a different body and it will have slightly different proportions from one person to another. This is totally neutral and the only body you need or can know about is your own. It is not about copying any other person because well it is a different body.
Slide 5:
The physics of the water, unlike our bodies, has the same principals no matter what is put into it. (side note when I say what you put into it I mean things like people, toys, boats, etc. If you dissolve something into the water like salt it will change the physics properties).
So in the context of learning back floating it is about understanding the interface between your body’s physics and the waters. And to see this relationship as totally neutral. There is no good float or bad float there are just different floats. This is an important note because when we see an image we often assign the idea that it is good or bad. The right way that I should also be or the wrong way that I want to prevent myself from being. These items go into our next step which is our thoughts.
Slide 7:
If you have the thought that I should be horizontal to the surface of the water, but can never seem to do this, then how do you feel?
Slide 8:
Do you feel the desired results of lightness, ease contentment? Or do you feel something else that produces an undesired result?
For most people new to swimming or even people who are not new, but have never stopped to examine the foundation of their swimming they think they should be horizontal to the surface of the water and when they are not they are wrong. This produces a feeling of frustration, anxiety, fear, confusion, distrust, mystery. Then the actions and results line right up behind these feelings to support them.
Slide 9:
To start back at the beginning with circumstance. This is a neutral place. Your body and the water have physical properties that interact.
A thought you can have is I wonder how these properties interact when I lie back with my face looking up?
The feeling this could bring is curiosity, interest, and discovery!
The actions are to lie on the water without judgment, just observation
The results are information, learning, trust
Slide 9:
Now your brain may have checked out when I made this proposal. It may have said WHAT YOU WANT ME TO WHAT…ALARMS, ALARMS!!
Slide 10:
To learn you must be able to remain present to the experience. So only lie back on the water as much or as little that you can feel what is happening. Or in other words, you don’t have your brain firing all alarms.
Here are a few pro tips:
- Wear a nose clip so it will be ok if your face goes underwater
- Start in very shallow water that you can say yes it would be just fine for me to lie on my back on the floor of the pool (see tip #1)
- Very very few people’s feet float. This means if you are in shallow water your feet will be on the floor. This is fine. Notice that your chest is not on the floor.
- Hold your breath and come up with you want to breathe again, just like you do for front floating. It will make it simpler to learn
Watch Episode 12 Below:
Healing Fear in Warm Water
If you’re like many adults, you’ve been frustrated or embarrassed that you weren’t free to swim “like everybody else.” Half of adults can’t swim, like you! We meet them all the time. They’ve tried every system, including the traditional programs, with no success.
Since 1999, we’ve helped hundreds of adults overcome their fear and discomfort in water with our proven system built on the 5 Circles Teaching Method. The Miracle Swimming system uses the nuts and bolts of mindfulness to address the root of the problem and will transform the way you feel and think about water for the rest of your life.
