To Be or Not To Be A Swimmer
By Monika Power, Teacher at The Water School
During my years of teaching swimming I came across an astonishing amount of people who would love to join their family and friends having fun in a pool or the sea, but they restrict themselves to dry land without being able to give a precise reason, or more often, remembering some negative incidents in or around water during their lifetime.
Our brain controls a great deal of our actions. Positive experiences in and around water while growing up can make it easy to learn swimming. Many of us weren’t that lucky ,though and are to this day reluctant to get close to that foreign element. Even the mere thought of getting our face wet could turn us off.
For some this might sound silly when really….. IT IS NOT!
Immersing our face into water can be very challenging. It is the last part of our body we want to get wet. And yet, getting over that discomfort while exposing ourselves doing exactly that, could open a whole new world of activities and fun! And the best part of it is, you do not even need to get out of the house!
If you are self isolating or cocooning, this is the right time for the first step of becoming a waterbaby…! All we need is a big enough bowl to lower our head into and some water. Submerging the whole face up to our ears and doing this comfortably, is our goal!
Start with dipping your nose and eyes into the water, and count to 10 or more.
1 Try to pay attention to your face, neck and shoulders – consciously relax all muscles.
2 Keep trying and immerse more and more of your face every time, check on eyes and lips- all muscles need to be loose and relaxed.
3 Now, take a breath before you submerge your face and exhale into the water…. Again, keep muscles around the mouth very relaxed and let the air flow easy out of your mouth pushing up from the chest. We should breathe out using our diaphragm rather than pressing air out through the lips. Use goggles if you like, it will help.
4 Repeat this regularly and try to get deeper into the bowl each time… ears should be immersed too to really earn a medal!
If you can SMILE during this exercise there is a good chance you’ll store this exercise as a positive experience
WELL DONE! YOU’RE ON THE ROAD TO BECOME A LOVELY SWIMMER!
Please note: this exercise has been highly recommended by ‘The Water School’ for years. It is a great way to practise exhaling into water and also for …… getting us down under!