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.

The post Episode 15: What is Swimming? appeared first on Orca Swim School.

This is your year to master swimming. 

Here are 10 tips of what it takes to really understand how the water works and to be a swimmer:

1. Presence of mind: If you swim but don’t feel calm, then you won’t call yourself a swimmer
2. Feeling: From arms and legs to the internal rhythm of calm, cool and collected 
3. Fun/curiosity: If it’s not fun don’t do it.  Life is too short. Find a fun way for you.
4. Face: Being able to take care of eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and the emotional experience of being without air
5. Being underwater: How does the water hold you in the 3 main positions and everything in between?
6. Movement: Not just forward but upside down, backward, and turning.  If you just focus on one movement you will not have the full experience of how the waterworks.
7. Changing positions: This means going from front to back, back to front and vertical.  Make them all your friends with only a change in head position.
8. Breathing: How many different ways can you EASILY get air?  Here’s an insider tip: side breathing is the last way.  
9. Being off-center: Do you know how to be worry free falling over or upside down?  This is owning the space to be in any crazy position and then easily find your way back. 
10. Love the deep: Here’s the top one.  If you do not love the deep than you do not understand how the waterworks…yet.  Loving the deep comes before learning front crawl or treading water.  

Check out today’s Episode, 10 Tips for Basic Swimming Skills to dive into these a bit more.

Only after you have mastered these 10 steps are you looking to add things like

• Crawl stroke 
• Side breathing
• Breathing patterns that are outside of what feels right (breathing every 3 strokes or some other pattern)
• Fitness training

Swimming is about understanding the water and yourself.  Getting your thoughts and feelings in order so your actions produce the results you want.  The result of fun, freedom with you being the master of your safety. 

This is your year!  

Watch Episode 14 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.

The post Episode 14: 10 Tips for Basic Swimming Skills appeared first on Orca Swim School.

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:

1. Wear a nose clip so it will be ok if your face goes underwater
2. 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)
3. 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.
4. 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.

The post Episode 12: How To Float On Your Back appeared first on Orca Swim School.

If you’re like most of our students, you are probably thinking, “It’s about time”. 

You are right – the beginning class does skip leg and kicking lessons. We believe we’d *muddy the waters if we added that detail.  

Not knowing how floating or buoyancy work is to swimming as not knowing how gravity works is to walking. Being taught stroke skills to someone who doesn’t know buoyancy is like teaching soccer to someone who doesn’t know gravity.

Besides! Those legs are far away from your mind and lungs and those are the important tools in swimming. Only after you are safe in the deep end, do we even worry about the other skills.  

Here’s a tip from the Foundation 1 (Beginning) Class that you might not have noticed.  Beginning leg work starts when you let go of all the tension in the legs and they are loose like the tail of a kite.  

What happens to a kite if you put a rod on the end?  It won’t fly!

What happens to a kite if you add a loose floppy tail?  It flies.

*make a situation unnecessarily complicated and less clear

Kicking… Hello, Legs! 

Slide #37: Legs are much more difficult to figure out. 

1. 1. Why legs are hard (slide with words)
      • Far away from our breathing
      • They are the first thing we lose control of when nervous (think pacing)
        1. 5c language
      • Do not have a 1:1 correlation
      • The sensation is different
        1. Walking you get the information off the bottom of the foot
        2. Swimming it is more often off the top or side of the food

Slide #38: How to Start

1. 1. 1. Start basic (slide with words)
         • Can they move?
         • Can you tell them what to do
         • Where do you feel a connection with the water
           1. Check the foot, legs
         • When you have a connection observe the result
           1. Repeat until you can produce the result on purpose
           2. Mind your thoughts
              • I should go XYZ directions this must be wrong
              • I am going XYZ direction this must be how it works

Slide #39: Types of Kicks

• Flutter (vid)
• Whip (vid)
• Scissor (vid)
• Eggbeater – advanced (vid)
• Swooping many different things (vid)

In the membership, I have added a lesson on how to do the flutter kick.  In the meantime keep in mind who invented the flutter kick…or any other of the named kicks.  It was someone just like you who didn’t know what they were doing but went into the water and experimented.  Perhaps they had watched some fish and said let me copy them or they simply started moving their legs and made connections with the water and with their results.  Most new discoveries are not on purpose. They come as a side product, a failure of something else or out of the blue. This is because you cannot look for something that has never been found before.  For you, in the water, you are person number one. This is because you are the first and only person with your exact body to discover how kicking works. No two humans walk the exact same way. This is why robots walk so awkwardly.  We can give them the formula, but it is still to be discovered how to get them the brain to feel their way into walking. 

Luckily you do have a brain and you are very used to feeling your way through physical space.  Play and discover. Once you are connected to this then you can start to play and discover using a formula someone else has a name… flutter kick.

Watch Episode 11 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.

The post Episode 11: Learn Kicking For Swimming appeared first on Orca Swim School.

What would make the best ever winter getaway trip?

Long days on a warm sunny beach.  Strip off your raincoat, your hats, and scarfs and finally stand up straight to embrace the sun!  

When I think of something as dreamy and enticing as a winter getaway there is a song that springs up in my head…

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.  Cry if I want to.”

What does this have to do with a winter getaway?  Sometimes the expectations that build-up prior to an event could be dashed when you are actually living it.  

In this episode, I share 10 tips for snorkeling to ensure you actually enjoy the party on your tropical vacation.  This is a preview into the full snorkeling course we will release later this year.

We want to help you reach your wildest dreams.  No one wants to learn something new so it becomes a plodding, boring thing on a checklist.  We learn so we can expand to new opportunities and discoveries.  

So where do you dream of escaping the winter blues?  Come be inspired!

Watch Episode 8 Below: 

The post Episode 8: Tips for a Tropical Vacation appeared first on Orca Swim School.

However, I was smarter than the average duck (or so I thought).   When they would put all of us little kids on a platform I firmly stood in the middle.  I knew they kept the sharks under the platform and I was not going to risk getting bit.  So there was a bit of over-exaggerated fantasy.

Do not put up with untrustworthy people

A teacher would tell me to swim.  I would comply only after requesting that they not step back.  As I would swim I could see them stepping back. I had no tolerance for this kind of trickery.  Even if it came with, “See I knew you could do it”! Tune in here to listen to the podcast interview to hear Cori’s full swim story.

Trust is essential to learning and especially learning to swim.

There are many layers of trust that must be achieved to feel completely safe.

1.       Trust your physical location – are there sharks in the pool or not?
2.       Trust those around you – will others listen to me?
3.       Trust in yourself

These layers of trust go from wide to narrow.  The further out they are, like location, the less control you have.  Closer in, like YOU, the more control you have. For example, when you are standing in a forest you have very little control of the environment.  You do, however, control whether or not to walk into the forest and what you will do there.

This gives you the starting point for getting scary situations under control.  Learn to trust yourself!

Start with the area over which you have the most control.

For little me, this seemed like still being curious about the water.  I found a place in the pool on my own, near the wall, close to a lifeguard.  Here it felt fun for me to play, explore and discover how the water works.

Start Your Private Swim Journey

The confidence to explore, ask questions and discover comes from being able to trust yourself.

Want to learn more about how to learn to swim with a completely trustworthy system?  Peek into Orca Swim School’s online learning platform to test the waters before jumping into the big pool!  Our online classes offer a private swim journey to take the time you need to understand what has been missing so you can learn with confidence.

The post Adult Learning to Swim Requires Trust appeared first on Orca Swim School.

If you’re like many John Legend and many other 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.

“Ultimately, we connect people to the way swimming should feel, not just the way it should look.”

The post Inspiring People to Learn to Swim appeared first on Orca Swim School.

At 6 years old my mom dutifly took me to swim lessons.  I never finished.  They were scary, the teachers were not trustworthy and they kept sharks under the platform where the little kids stood.   Yet my whole career has been based on teaching swimming!

Last month I had the wonderful opportunity to do a podcast with Debbie Gonzales author of Girls with Guts. It’s a children’s book about women and athletic though history.  While I don’t think of myself as a particularly athletic person since I’ve never won a swim race (or come close). However, I have drawn my inspiration from my connection to physical movement and the freedom gained from carving my own path.

At the time of the interview, I had several classes of adult beginner swim students. They had me feeling very inspired by there learning.  Amazingly Debbie created a comfortable setting to freely share my own swim story mixed in with our student’s journies.  In our conversation, I revealed how I never completed a swim lesson as a kid. This is because I didn’t trust the teachers. While I swam competitively with USA Swimming and was an American Red Cross lifeguard I never won.  None of this stopped me from growing in my own path.  Just like the women featured in Debbie’s book.

Take a listen (EP13: It’s Okay to be Afraid with Cori Myka)!  It is fun to hear about Debbie’s book for girls and about some of the remarkable women I have worked with in the water making their own swim path to success.  My own swim story is also revealed.

About Orca Swim School

The post Why you don’t have to pass a swim lesson to be an expert! appeared first on Orca Swim School.

Learning to swim as an adult can be embarrassing, difficult, confusing or fear-filled.  It is often something we think you learn as a kid.  But there are lessons for adults it is never too late.

Previous Experience

Have you taken adult lessons before?  Did it feel like you were behind on the first day of class?  Or did you feel like everyone else was getting it and you were missing something?

Perhaps there was an expert swimmer friend who said, “I can teach you to swim!  It is easy just do this, this and this.  Go ahead you try.”  Only to be told when you try new just relax.

Inside you were screaming HOW CAN I RELAX WHEN I CAN’T SWIM!

This doesn’t inspire one to want to put themselves in a vulnerable place again to try to learn.  To learn you have to feel safe, comfortable and in control.  Learning happens at the pace of the individual, not the group.  If the group is not structured to meet every individual at their place someone will get left behind.

You Must Be In Charge of Learning

When learning to swim as an adult you must be in charge of your safety.  How can this be possible if you cannot swim?  Because of the biggest danger in the water in panic.  The good and bad news is you are the only one in charge of panic.  If no one taught you this it was the first skipped step.

You are the only one who knows if you are totally calm and grounded or flying off the handle.  To learn at your pace you need to feel safe.  It’s not what someone else says to do.  Have you ever been told, “Oh just give it a try you will be fine”?  This is a projection of the ‘teacher’.  You know if you are fine or not.

How Does Online Learning Work

Online learning puts you in charge and at your pace.  You can view the material several times.  Step away and let your questions come up.  Ask your questions so you are then ready for more learning.  Learning really is all about the right questions.

For learning swimming the questions may have been:
How can I learn to swim?  Then how can I relax, do I need to know how to tread, how do I float and so on.  When working with students the deepest question is how can I keep myself from losing it (panicking) in the water?

How do I keep myself from losing it in the water?

This is a question that can be answered in the privacy of your own home.  Where you are dry and warm.  There will be steps to take to the water, but when you are ready.  When you have information that allows you to feel in control.  When the steps are planned out in small enough bits that you can pick up just the right ones for you.

Online learning to swim means learning on your terms anywhere any time!  To learn more, please visit online.orcaswimschool.com.

The post Learn to Swim Online appeared first on Orca Swim School.

When these phrases are used to describe a business or life, the image is one of not doing very well.  You are staying in one place, moving all your parts, but not going anywhere and using energy inefficiently.  There is no sense of calm, ease, efficacy, or long-term safety.  It is an image of being locked into a pattern of movement that is accomplishing a life-surviving task, or breathing in the case of actual treading water, but is not sustainable for very long.

For a business, it may be just holding the line between going in the red or staying in the black.  In life it may mean everyone got out the door and back home that night, only to grind away the next day in the same furious fashion.

To the non-swimmer, being able to tread water is often thought to be the golden crown goal.  There is an idea that if I could tread water then I would be safe, at ease, relaxed, know what I am doing and again be safe.   Just as the metaphor of treading in life or business is not the golden crown, the same is true for swimming.
That raises the question that if treading is not the goal, then what is?

There is nothing wrong with treading per se, but if the action is the goal then it will not feel right.  In life, it is a good thing to be able to get everyone out the door each morning and safely home each night.  Treading is frantically going through the motions, but missing the feeling of a great life.  When you focus simply on the tasks of getting out the door, you miss the point.

The point is to start a fresh new day.  To savor the first sip of coffee, drink in the beautiful faces of the people you love the most who live with you or to enjoy the cool fresh morning.  You don’t have to completely shift your life to become a Zen master, but keeping what is important in mind and stopping (even for a few moments) to collect yourself and be in the present, changes the view from “doing” life to “living” life.

In business, going between being in the red versus the black you may feel like you are always chasing the sale.  If we keep chasing the sale and never take time to understand the underlining systems at play the frantic on the edge treading could continue until we slip under.

In the water, the goal must come before the action.  The goal is to be at ease, safe, efficient and calm. So, therefore, this must come first and treading can be a way these goals are manifested.  This frees the physical activity of treading from being the cause of safety.  So when you do not want to tread anymore you do not have to give up safety.  Safety comes before, during and after the activity of treading.  Safety is a way of being and not limited to one particular action.

Keeping the goal in mind and bringing presence to your actions will move you beyond treading into a meaningful way of being. Love your life, understand the deeper systems and let the water hold you.
What areas of your day feel like you are “just treading”?

The post Treading Water is Not a Safety Net in the Water or in Life appeared first on Orca Swim School.