Buddha Bike

Why is it difficult to relax?

1. Relax? Sorry, I’m too busy trying to (dance, box, code, paint, sing…). I’m concentrating on that thing right now, no time to relax thank you very much.
2. You can’t fix what you don’t notice, and it can be difficult to notice that you are physically tense or overthinking a movement. For example, I’m always surprised how different I feel after a massage. Maybe I did need that massage after all.
3. If relaxing is the goal, trying to relax won’t get you there. Trying by definition is something forced and thought, rather than simply done. To illustrate this difference, consider how it feels to catch something reflexively compared to planning to catch something.

Let’s look at how relaxing might help you swim more easily.

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I finally relaxed…I actually started to listen to my hands, to what’s going on in the water around me… I began to develop a relationship with the water, as opposed to just fight(ing) the water.

Lionel Sanders (maybe the most powerful yet least graceful triathlete)

I know how to swim, but my stroke has many strange and curious habits (see above). I’m comfortable in the water, but I don’t have a great picture of what I’m actually doing in it. For example, when I kick, I don’t know what my feet are doing. I often forget that my hands cross over my body.

Also, rather than swimming smoothly, I rely on muscles to power through the water. My most dreaded swimming drill is kick board. I feel like I’m sinking, so I thrash my legs, which makes me feel like I’m sinking. Then, I get anxious that I’m holding up traffic, and I thrash even harder.

Do not frown when you read. Frowning is a symptom of the nervous muscular tension produced in and around the eyes by misdirected attention and the effort to see.

Aldous Huxley

On Australia Day, I swam 5km in open water. It was a big distance and the water was rough, so I knew I had to conserve my energy and swim calmly. On the swim, I planned to focus on holding my head lower in the water, hopefully making me more streamlined.

After a few kilometers, it dawned on me that I was tensing my neck and back. I thought that’s what I needed to do to swim! So rather than trying to hold my head down, I stopped forcing it up, releasing these tense muscles and letting my head hang gently in the water.

I’d been so busy swimming, I’d forgotten that my body was effortlessly floating on the surface, without any added effort from me. Instead of groaning and pulling through the water, I imagined I was gently snorkeling over a beautiful coral reef. Although I didn’t suddenly start smashing PB’s and win the race, I finished feeling calm and refreshed, an achievement in itself.

I thought I was relaxed, but I was swimming like an angry man stuck in traffic. I’ve been drilling for years, yet coaching cues designed to help me relax floated over my head. So, bearing in mind the futility of words, I’ll leave you with this image to play with.

Imagine you’re lying face down in a cotton rope hammock that’s strung over a 100ft ravine. Every muscle in your body will want to tense and grab the hammock for support. Feel that tension. Now, imagine fully relaxing into the hammock. Completely release the weight of your head. Now swim.

From April – August 2020, I tried to swim very often in the sea. Usually every other day for 20-30 minutes. The trouble was the temperature of the water.

Before my swim, was a long protracted sequence of hand rubbing, swearing, dressing up in warm knits and sitting on the couch stewing in dread. It’s going to be cold.

Afterwards, although my body temperature had noticeably dropped, my body was humming and my mind felt pure.

In the middle of winter, the water would sometimes drop below 9 degrees celsius (48f).

One afternoon I went for a swim by myself. The sky was murky and brooding. The water was flat, grey and still.

When I dive in the water I usually brace myself. I clench every muscle and take on the pain that surrounds my whole body. Sometimes I claw onto a word or an image. The hope is I can distract myself away from the onslaught of sensation. Sometimes an image comes to me naturally, like a building imploding or infernal flames and smoke. To my credit, plunging your warm body into frigid water must be one of the most uncomfortable things you can do and it’s no surprise I was seeing visions of hell – that’s my base stress response putting down the hammer.

Swimming distinguishes itself from similar cardiovascular activities by the fact that your skin is completely covered by moving water rather than air. Swimming is an activity that promotes “light pressure and temperature stimulation” something that Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor thinks is good for our skin, our “largest and most diverse sensory organ”. Swimming at max effort in ice water is heavy stimulation.

After the initial scream from my nocicepters, my world became water. I was in a tunnel, and I was vaguely aware of my finger tips, wrists, forearms, heels and toes going numb.

My face, covered in a neoprene hat, transitioned from burning to throbbing and kept receding into nothingness, such that it was a little hard for me to discern where my nose ended and the salty water started.

I felt fluid. I was invisible. I was a water form with some shorts and goggles strapped on. A glass submarine.

But despite this violence and unnerving stimuli, I keep going. My thoughts start wandering, and I’m wondering, am I actually cold anymore?

I must be cold.

I swim a little further and make it to a yellow marker. I’ve swum further and faster than I expected, and I realize if I swim back at the same speed I’d have been in the water for over half an hour – too long.

As I tread water, mulling logistics, I finally pay attention to my surroundings. I notice a ghostly quiet that has settled on the entire beach. The beach huts, the pale sand, ripples near my fingers. In every direction nothing but a grave stillness. I can’t see the separation between sky and sea and I can’t feel the separation between the sea and my body.

I look down at my legs below and realize I’m looking at my body from a slightly higher vantage point.

My brain explains to me that I’m fucked: (“I’ve got hypothermia”, “I’m going to die”, “I need to go home as soon as possible”). But my body has disconnected the phone line and has started playing light jazz. My sympathetic nervous system resembles a sauntering Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now.

The experience is disconcerting mainly because of how ‘opposite’ it is to how I know I should be feeling. This is a good example of how the stories we tell ourselves are so powerful they can overwrite even the most shocking and obvious physical experiences. “This is wrong” rings so true in my mind, I simply have to listen.

A few hours later, I’m dried off and warm but I’m a bit dazed and confused and mellow. I chalk it up to a severe loss in body temperature. But maybe the cold water wasn’t so bad. Maybe my body was perfectly happy to swim in cold temperature. It’s not crazy to believe my body was actually excited by the novel, stimulating sensation of cold water once in a while. I think it’s helpful to think of our bodies both objectively and with great gratitude, like a big gentle dog always by our side.

Most people know, logically, that discomfort is an inevitable part of life. But experientially, we fail to accept this fact, and our desire to flee from it compounds our suffering. If we can learn to witness discomfort without fighting it, we weaken its hold on us, bolstering our ability to lead stable, satisfying lives.

The Mindful Case for Cold Showers

Although memorable, this was a just one swim among many hundreds of hours in the ocean and pool. Aside from the obvious health benefits, swimming in cold water seems to train us to sit with discomfort.

Next time you go for an ocean swim, or even simply turn the shower a bit colder, try to pierce through all that screaming for comfort, you may not actually need it after all.