Swimming is 80% in the mind and only about 20% physical skills.
With that said you must do the mind work 100% to be able to produce the physical skills.
Definition of Swimming
Let me backtrack for a moment and define swimming. Swimming is: moving from here to there with comfort and ease getting air and rest when you want.
The key is comfort and ease. Comfort and ease come from the mind, not the body. The body lets us know where our mind is when we notice and feel that there is not comfort and ease in it.
Take walking. If you were to get up and walk across the room right now for most people you would have comfort and ease to just do it. Perhaps you would have to stretch out some creaky body parts if you have been slumped at your computer for a long time, but in general, you would not be worried about getting through a doorway, around the table, between the kitchen island and the other countertop. You can more or less walk where you want to be walking to navigate space.
Calm, Comfort, and Ease
This is about your mind starting at calm, comfort, ease. This is the feeling you have from your body and the skill of walking would be easy…perhaps even mindless.
Now if your mind was suddenly presented with a cliff or large drop off you would have new thoughts of caution, danger, wariness, anxiety…
This thought would show up in your body, not as comfort and ease but tightness, rigidness, tension.
Suddenly this walking thing you have spent so many hours mastering is now difficult. Have you lost the skill? No, you have lost the thought that created calm.
Listen to today’s episode to find out how to apply this thought work to your swim practice.
Watch Episode 15 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.
