Mind over water
I’ve always loved the water in an improvised, utterly dilettante way. Like a dog might love rolling in an animal carcass, lacking method or point, yet full of unbridled delight. I learnt to swim at the ripe age of eleven. An acquaintance tasked with minding the children grew tired of my splashing around in the shallow end and showed me how to dog paddle.
From then on, I was unstoppable. On vacation, I spent hours oozing back and forth like a human eel as my mother tanned on shore. I graduated from nocturnal teenage skinny dipping to hours spent at the Olympic sized pool on the way home from work. I loaded the inland husband onto an air mattress and paddled around many kilometers of Mediterranean coastline with him in tow. I gave birth to an amphibian child. Left to our own devices, we turn into otters and will miss mealtimes and other engagements, never getting out of the water.
However, my swimming remained ridiculous technique-wise. I either dog paddled or swam like a frog, not submerging my hair and craning my neck at an odd angle. The latter, a granny swim style that preserves your coiffure, is popular among Russian women and colloquially referred to as the Sochi breaststroke. Named after Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea and a popular local beach resort.
I was determined that my child not be aquatically handicapped. Given my own inadequacies in the area, I didn't feel qualified to teach him myself. My first stop was the NYC YMCA, where he was showered with gold stars for humping noodles. His private swim classes elsewhere were only slightly better and similarly unserious. He could swim and dive but focus on form and performance was lacking. Observing this skeptically from the pool deck, I realized that I want to learn as well, from someone who can make a proper swimmer out of me.
When we moved back to Moscow for six months in 2021, I was determined to wring everything out of our time there. Almost as soon as the plane hit the runway, I joined a fancy health club. I went with the first youngster on staff, hiring him to correct my kid’s strokes and refine his skills. The boy was twenty at most — a sweetheart, but too soft for my impish offspring, who had quickly realized how to wrap the new teacher around his finger. His instructional methods were too similar to those of the Park Slope YMCA for my liking.
I decided to switch to the most imposing character I could find. The new teacher was a Dolph Lundgren look-alike and the head of Aquatics, shaped like the Michelin man. He towered over me, though I’m pretty tall myself, with his massive frame blocking the sunlight and instilling a sense of awe and respect at the sheer size and width of him.
The child secretly nicknamed him Alien Lizard for his impressive lack of emotional display and supernatural build. Alien Lizard would follow him with deadpan eyes and bark out orders, correcting and adjusting every fathomable aspect of alignment and velocity. It worked wonders. As I watched, I realized that I could benefit from some Alien Lizard input as well. I requested a double class for both of us. Thus, at thirty something, my real swimming education finally began.
During our first session, the Alien Lizard looked me up and down, asking what sports I did. I admitted to none, maybe some Pilates on a good day. He announced that I was in acceptable condition and we could begin. I pestered him with questions about whether he would be teaching me the Putin stroke – those unforgettable PR images of Putin flying out of some swamp naked, hands in the air like a mythical sea monster after your soul. The Alien Lizard disregarded this and said that I wasn’t yet ready to work on my flip turns. He used all sorts of cool props, outfitting me with various fins, directing me to plug a buoy in between my legs to disarm them, or making me wear weird knuckle-duster paddles on my hands to perfect stroke technique.
Rarely, the Alien Lizard would divulge meagre details about his life, such as night swimming across the Moscow canal with a group of friends the night before. He had eyes in the back of his head and would turn in a flash, mid-conversation, to yell instructions to my child, who had begun to dally at the far end of the pool. He was strict and stingy on the praise, just what we needed. Within several months, we were transformed.
When I moved back to the US, we tried the suburbs for the first time. What ultimately reconciled me with both the suburbs and the country was the proper sized town pool. I vividly recall one summer day looking out over the blindingly reflective water surface and thinking that I could actually enjoy living here. As I torpedoed back and forth in the mornings, I could hear the Alien Lizard’s voice in my head:
“Butt sinking again, watch the butt!”
“Straight legs, what happened to the legs?”
“Full body wave, top part’s like a log, I want to see the wave!”
“Pick up the speed! You’re not on vacation in the Maldives!”
I hope he’s okay, this Slavic Poseidon who turned my relationship with the water around. Strange how you can feel such gratitude to someone who was ultimately an extra in a season of your life, featured in only a few episodes. I don’t even remember his real name, yet he has served to divide my life story into two historic periods: BL and AL - Before Lizard and After Lizard.
There’ve since been other towns and other pools.
I go to the pool for the luxury of silence and solitude, God’s gift to introverts everywhere. When you submerge, both the sound of the world is drowned out and, to a large extent, the sight of it. Swimming is meditative to me – one of the few places that can quieten my thoughts and clear my head. Once I’m in, I don’t stop. I don’t want to engage in conversation or any form of contact, just glide and breathe. I feel like a different creature in the water. When I climb out and go shower, it takes a while for me to morph back into human form from the strong, supple seal I was just minutes ago.
Occasionally I get asked how many laps today, and it always throws me. I note the time, because I have things to do and places to be, but never count anything. I crave the freedom of this other dimension. Either engaging in mental accounting to quantify it or resorting to any form of digital defiling would kill the magic for me. In my perception, swimming isn’t a sport but rehab for the soul.
There is scientific basis for the meditative nature of swimming and the “swimmer’s state of mind”. Humans have five main types of brain frequencies, or electrical impulses in the brain:
· Gamma Waves (30-100 Hz): The fastest brainwaves, associated with high-level cognitive processing and peak states of consciousness, but they are not the most common state for humans.
· Beta Waves (12-30 Hz): Associated with alertness, focus, and mental processing, making them the most common state for humans during waking hours.
· Alpha Waves (8-12 Hz): Occur when the brain is relaxed and not actively engaged, often seen in states of relaxation or meditation.
· Theta Waves (4-8 Hz): Present during deep relaxation, light sleep, or meditation, and are less common in adults compared to children.
· Delta Waves (0.5-4 Hz): Associated with deep sleep and are not typical for conscious states.
Swimming is said to be one of the best sports for inducing an Alpha state. An alpha state refers to the brainwave frequency range associated with a relaxed yet alert state of mind. This state is characterized by feelings of calmness, reduced stress, and increased creativity. Alpha waves are typically dominant when the brain is idle or passively engaged. They are linked to the "flow state," when you feel fully engaged and focused without intense mental effort. The alpha state enhances problem-solving abilities by allowing the mind to wander and explore new ideas.
Being near a body of water and not swimming is torturous to me. On holiday, I try to get as much swim time as possible. The idea of bobbing around by the shore, packed among dozens of people, while being babysat by a lifeguard overseeing this adult playpen situation, does not appeal to me at all. I don’t like swimming in oceans in general, with their waves, riptides and exotic aquatic life. Lakes are too murky. Nothing comes close to the calm, clear, rugged beauty of the Mediterranean in my book. My perfect getaway is setting off to explore and drifting freely from cove to cove for hours, with the occasional thrill of jumping off those porous cliffs that resemble pumice.
My next swimming frontier, a dream I have stashed away in the back of my head, is attending a Total Immersion open water swim camp. You’re out with a group in open water all day, working on technique and endurance. They’re usually located in picturesque little villages on a coast carved with pine-lined bays and inlets.
Through teaching me to swim properly — where breathing and motions became effortless — the Alien Lizard liberated me from the shackles of my physical self. He taught me a way to escape gravity, zoom out of the noise and commotion, and focus inward.
It’s pure sorcery.
-you've an amazing skill at writing
-if you ever do "Ask Me Anything" or a survey or something -I'll participate. I've some questions that don't belong here in this format. They're not really formed, they're kinda...at the "rare" point of being ready. They do steam from fascination though.
Cool! Like you I never had real swim lessons as a child: my family spent summers on the lake, in boats, so I just had to learn to swim. It is cold water but as soon as it became even slightly endurable we were in it. I love swimming in the wild, whether lake or ocean. Back when I lived in Greece, I was always in the water.
I most often do the “Sochi breaststroke” hahahaha. But you make a good case for actually learning to swim.