Life-giving, cleansing, and endlessly abundant, water has nurtured humanity from the earliest times. When we swim, we are interacting with a medium that has exercised magical and spiritual associations for people since the dawn of history. In its myriad forms water has inspired poetry, art, literature, music, wonder, exploration, and love. In a world of dwindling ecological resources, it is a gift to value and cherish. The art of swimming cannot be complete without a profound appreciation of our connection as living beings to the wonderful, unique medium which is intertwined with every aspect of our existence. Water surrounds and embraces our lives with its awesome beauty and variety. We watch it, marvel at it, listen to it, bathe in it, drink it – and swim in it. According to ancient Egyptian legend, the gods bestowed the gift of water on humankind in recompense for enclosing us in a physical body. It was said that through our association with water we become connected to our spiritual nature, and our bodies might discover the freedom that our souls had lost. The Hebrews imagined water as a primordial element, present at the birth of all creation when ‘the spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the waters’. The religions and mythology of Sumeria and Babylonia, of India and China, of peoples ranging from Australasia to the Americas, are replete with stories and symbolism which speak of reverence for water.

The ancient Greeks recognized water to be the source of life. They worshipped spirits of the water, and pondered deeply on its spiritual and physical qualities. Their myth, art, poetry and literature reflect on it and celebrate it in all its aspects. More than two and a half thousand years ago, Thales, one of the originators of the tradition of Western philosophical thought, identified water as the wellspring of all Being, the substance from which all things arose. Heraclitus used the image of water to demonstrate the ever-changing nature of the universe. ‘Everything is in flux,’ he stated, ‘one cannot step into the same river twice.’ The poet Pindar praised water in a famous line as being the ‘noblest of all the elements.’ And it was while bathing that Archimedes came upon his insight – immortalized by his exclamation ‘Eureka!’ -that a body’s mass can be determined by the amount of water it displaces.

The value of learning to swim is emphasized in many societies and traditions. For the Greeks it was a civilized accomplishment, on a par with learning the alphabet as a basic element of education. They were proud of their ability to swim and dive, activities represented in their earliest literature, the epics of Homer. Swimming was not viewed as a competitive sport, and did not feature in the ancient Olympic Games. But the Greeks took for granted that it was a skill necessary for self-preservation, not least in the event of shipwreck (it was a notable irony that the outstanding military genius of the ancient world, Alexander the Great, was unable to swim). The Romans were explicit about the instruction of swimming, both for military purposes and for pleasure. In a line of Ovid, a Roman poet of the first century B.C. and a keen swimmer, we encounter the first occurrence of the phrase ‘the art of swimming’ (arsnandi). In the Jewish Talmud it is considered an obligation, as well as a good deed worthy of respect, for fathers to teach their sons how to swim. In many countries today, children are expected to be taught basic swimming skills by the time they have completed their primary education.

For aquatic creatures like fish, seals, and dolphins, swimming is not an art. But for human beings, relating to water as if it were our element demands art. Thinking of swimming as an art encourages us to cultivate the natural affinity that human beings have with the water. It’s up to each individual how far we wish to develop that art for ourselves and incorporate it into our lives. Being at home in the water opens up a realm of possibilities which we can hardly contemplate if we are not familiar with the art of swimming. Aquatic activities such as snorkeling, diving, and swimming with dolphins, are exciting ways of discovering the underwater world and expanding our horizons through interaction with water.

Breaststroke is often considered a simple stroke to learn, but the need for fine co-ordination of limbs, and the challenges posed for orientation, makes it potentially more complicated than any other stroke. Efficient breaststroke can be viewed as a series of long glides punctuated by symmetrical movements of the arms and legs. In the action phase, swimmers pull back forcefully with both arms and pull the knees up towards the chest, followed by extending the arms forward while pushing out with the legs. Forward propulsion is generated by the hips and inner thighs, which push the water backwards when the legs are extended outwards and then brought together. This leads into the glide, during which the back should be allowed to lengthen and widen. The elements of movement and glide need to be properly timed for the stroke to be performed with fluidity and rhythm.

A common obstacle to swimming the breaststroke efficiently stems from a misunderstanding of the function of the arms. This is the only stroke in which the arms remain below the water-surface throughout, which limits the swimmer’s ability to exert propulsive force with the arms. It should be appreciated that the main propulsive force in the stroke, around 70%, is generated by leg action.

Overemphasizing the role of the arms sometimes causes swimmers to perform a wide, shallow arm-action, in which the forearms sweep back beyond the shoulder-line. This has two negative consequences. First, it means that the muscles of the neck and upper torso become the main means of lifting the head clear of the water. Secondly, the wide action of the arms tugs at the neck muscles so that the head is forced backwards. By using a deeper, bent-arm action and the body naturally rises with a minimum of effort and significantly less strain. Using our arms in an effective manner is therefore important for helping us maintain good use.

When your arms remain closer to your body as you pull them back, your head is not drawn back as far. As a result, you not only put less strain on your shoulder girdle, but you can maintain your forward orientation more easily.

Many breaststrokers lift their head excessively when they come to breathe in, so that their eyes are directed towards the ceiling. But to inhale, your mouth simply has to be high enough to break the surface and be in contact with the air. Any higher is both a waste of effort and reduces stroke efficiency by interfering with the body’s streamlining.

When you get into the water, experiment with this aspect of the stroke. Find out for yourself how little you actually need to disturb the head-neck-back relationship in order to rise up your body sufficiently to breathe in. Compare your habitual way of raising your head with a movement in which your face barely breaks the surface. There’s a fine line between raising the head just enough to breathe in adequately – and getting a mouthful of water.

The glide in the breaststroke offers the perfect opportunity to discover how stopping can allow us to release and naturally extend the body. Keeping the head pulled back interferes with this process of release and extension and impedes the flow and momentum of the stroke. Take advantage of and savor the opportunity of letting go in the glide. This is a liberating experience, enabling us to enjoy a powerful sense of release and natural extension as we move without effort through the water.

See how the balance of your body shifts when you change the position of your arms from by your side to ahead of you. Explore the different feelings by pushing off from the edge with your arms by your side. The shorter stance feels heavier and does not allow one to travel far. A longer body extension, with arms outstretched, gives a feeling of lightness and flow in the glide, and helps you slide easily through the water.

Competitive breaststrokers often exaggerate the extension phase of the stroke by incorporating a deliberate stretch into the glide. But what happens to your back if you do this? Overstretching creates an arching in the lower back and increases tension around the ribcage. Such stretching actually involves a narrowing of the back and compression of the vertebrae, a contraction rather than an extension of the body. This reduces our buoyancy, necessitating more effort to move forward. When we stop contracting, we lengthen and widen automatically, which is all that is required for an effective glide.

Thinking in activity requires attention and practice, but its application has radical effects on the way we move and function. It is the key to breaking old habits and establishing a new way of acting. It also offers the means of developing the freedom and balance essential to the art of swimming. Balance here refers not simply to the physical aspect of our relationship to the water. It includes the idea of balanced integration of all the diverse elements of the activity. A balanced approach will prevent us, for instance, placing undue emphasis on any specific goal we have in mind to the detriment of our overall ability to engage in the art of swimming.

One way in which good orientation helps very directly is by bringing about a reduced resistance of the water against the body – in other words, making the body more streamlined. Traditional swimming instruction, especially in competitive coaching, lays great emphasis on the streamlining of the body. It is rightly considered to be one of the most important factors in stroke efficiency. Why this should be so is clear enough: you can make tremendous efforts with your arms and legs to combat the water’s resistance, but if you’re poorly streamlined you will find it hard to move through the water. The positioning of your body will act as a brake to forward propulsion.

However, swimmers can take the pursuit of a streamlined body to undesirable extremes. For example competitive breaststrokers are often advised to round their shoulders so that their body offers the least possible surface area as it pushes forward through the water. While this may give an advantage of speed at competitive level, it does so at the cost of healthy use both in and out of the water. The cumulative effect of regularly narrowing and stretching the torso is for the shoulders to droop and the chest to collapse. Such effects persist well beyond the swimming session itself. Once we start to discover a more sensitive awareness of the use of our selves, it’s clear that the attainment of extreme speed cannot be the only or indeed the main goal of swimming. The desire for excessive speed is itself a symptom of the unbalanced approach to goals of no intrinsic value that characterizes so much of modern life. The pursuit of speed per se is a prime example of how end-gaining can have undesirable side-effects on use.

It is a misconception to suppose that without sufficient forward momentum the body is bound to sink. While speed can assist buoyancy, it should not do so at the cost of good orientation. Efficient swimming is a matter of using the optimum amount of energy to propel ourselves through the water. This requires two elements: reducing the water’s resistance (or ‘drag’) against our body, and applying propulsive force in the most economic manner. Swimming with good orientation, rather than forcing our body into a more streamlined shape – is the key to achieving a constructive balance of these elements. The elimination of unnecessary muscular tension in the body encourages us to float more easily. When the body floats higher and flatter in the water, it offers less surface area for resistance. By promoting freedom in the joints and muscles, good orientation allows our limbs to engage with the water with greater control. It increases our sensitivity to where and when force should be applied most appropriately for purposes of propulsion. Orientation is not restricted to when one is upright.

Forward-and-upward orientation along the spine can be achieved when the body is still or moving along any axis – vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. Furthermore, upward extension by itself is only one element of orientation. An equally important aspect is the process of broadening, which naturally accompanies the lengthening unless we prevent it in any way. For this reason, the attempt to stretch our bodies forcefully when swimming is misguided. Unduly narrowing the body interferes with the freedom and ease promoted by release and opening-out. When we swim, we can use the buoyancy of water to discover a whole range of different angles and positions in which our bodies can operate with ease. Water enables us to increase the spectrum of opportunities to experience good orientation within an environment that encourages us to move continuously. Holding our bodies stiffly limits our openness to such an experience. The art of swimming requires a constant, flexible adaptation of our bodies to conditions of buoyancy and liquidity.

The (Alexander Technique) AT emphasizes that good breathing is the natural consequence of good use. It’s not a question of trying to control your breathing mechanism. When the torso is allowed to lengthen and widen, we create more space for our lungs to expand. We are all born with the ability to breathe in this free and unrestricted way. Unfortunately we learn habits of poor breathing as we grow up. Observe the gentle and relaxed way in which infants breathe. Their soft tummies expand effortlessly with each inhalation and release back as they breathe out. Their heads remain poised and pivot freely on their shoulders. The ease they exhibit contrasts starkly with the way most adults breathe. We yawn or strain to obtain a fuller breath by lifting our chests or our shoulders, rather than letting our backs lengthen and widen. And we rarely allow our abdomens to relax.

One reason for this is the critical attitude exhibited in our society to the appearance of a relaxed stomach. Other societies are more sensible. The fashionable body-image promoted in contemporary Western culture militates against good use, and consequently against effective breathing. Images of fashion models with unnaturally flat stomachs are pervasive. Men too are encouraged to aspire to an excessively muscular physique, without regard to the distorted body-image which this frequently results in – an overdeveloped torso held up by an uncomfortably narrow waist.

Appeals to our vanity can make us feel that we need to hold in our stomachs constantly though the actual effect this has on our shape is usually imperceptible to others. More importantly it’s a habit which is likely to harm our dynamic balance. It creates a tendency to fix our muscles which affects both our use and our breathing apparatus. The ways in which we are encouraged to pursue ‘fitness’ often compound this tendency. Truly effective breathing requires our diaphragm and ribs to be able to move freely and without rigidity, the numerous different % 36 the crunch sets of muscles and joints working smoothly in tandem. F. M. Alexander described the sense of ease that good use brings to the process of breathing with the image of ‘floating ribs’.

Breathing exercises which require us to hold our breath, or otherwise interfere with our breathing mechanism, are considered unhelpful in the AT. Such exercises, when performed by people whose bodies are already unbalanced by excessive muscular tension and general misuse, are of dubious benefit. How can they encourage an understanding of healthy breathing under normal conditions, with all that this requires in terms of free joints and dynamic muscular balance? Take a person with obviously poor posture, rounded shoulders, curved back, the head back pulling back intermittently to take uneven breaths.

When someone in this condition experiences strain in breathing, it cannot be alleviated, let alone eliminated, by ‘breathing exercises’. The strain is more likely to worsen. Holding one’s breath for a long time may force one to gasp for air, but it does not encourage regular deeper breathing and can exert dangerous pressure on the lungs and musculoskeletal structure. Where poor breathing habits are symptoms of misuse, focusing on breathing in isolation from overall use cannot help much. People with breathing difficulties who are recommended to the AT find that their problems can be solved without using any breathing exercises whatsoever.

Most of us are not consciously aware of how we breathe, which is an obstacle to improving it. The recognition of a bad habit is a prerequisite for effectively changing it. But the recognition itself is not sufficient, because the force of habit desensitizes our bodies so that to us our misuse often feels right. Even when attention is drawn to our poor breathing habits, our senses are not sufficiently acute to work out with any accuracy what we’re doing and how we can bring about beneficial changes. In such instances, the role of a third party, such as a qualified AT teacher can be essential.

What happens when you are told to take a deep breath? Do you push up your chest and shoulders to try and breathe deeply? This action can create the impression that you are breathing fully. But the impression may be false. You may not be aware that the muscular tension in your torso is restricting the free flow of air and that you are only partially filling your lungs.

Genuine improvement m the way we breathe can only arise from a more sensitive appreciation of our overall use, and the application of the principles of good use in our everyday lives.

How can this sense of discovery be applied to swimming? Most swimmers are locked into unthinking patterns of behavior in the water. These range from swimming with the head pulled back regardless of the strain and pain it produces, to ploughing through the water for long periods in a mindless fashion. Such patterns often stem from fears or persistent misapprehensions which have never been properly articulated or questioned. They serve as a block to achieving a sense of true freedom in the water, and lead to feelings of boredom and apathy about swimming. Tackling these patterns at their root releases a spirit of exploration which enlivens the whole process of swimming. Every stroke becomes an opportunity for discovery and self-exploration, expanding our horizon and opening up a new realm of possibility. Recognizing the consistent interconnection between mental and physical habits, and becoming aware of mindless patterns, are the first steps towards acquiring the ability to approach the water without anxiety or strain.

Traditional swimming-teaching underestimates the way the force of habit gets in the way of learning. The assumption is that if learners are told or shown how to do something, they will be able to do it. The problem is that habits dictate our whole pattern of action. Although they can sometimes offer a short cut to building up our skills, they can also impede the optimum development of those skills. Once they have become fixed, they can be very hard to dislodge. These habits of both thought and action are observable in swimmers at all levels.

Whether it’s the beginner pulling back his head in response to water splashing in his face, or the Olympic swimmer developing an unexpected stroke fault in her effort to win a race, their problems can be traced to an inability to overcome their unthinking habit.

Most swimming environments are likely to present greater distractions than an Alexander Technique (AT) teaching room. On top of external distractions, swimmers have to contend with private anxieties about being lightly-clad, getting wet, submerging their face in water, swimming in public, and numerous other more-or-less unexpressed concerns. It’s quite a challenge to retain one’s awareness under such conditions. Anxiety often has the apparent effect of heightening awareness because it intensifies certain sensations. You will have noticed how under intimidating conditions lights can seem brighter, distances larger, and noises louder. In fact, these very perceptions shift your awareness away from your self and your relationship to the immediate surroundings. What is required under these circumstances is to quieten your mind. The AT encourages this by directing attention, in the first instance, to the most fundamental aspect of use – the relationship between head, neck and back (the primary control).

The other side of the coin is that water can be an extremely liberating, reflective, and sensual medium for exploration. It has exciting and unusual properties. For instance, buoyancy allows us to get as close to weightlessness as we are likely to experience short of traveling in space. Liquidity offers the possibility of uniquely pleasurable sensations. It is well known that being submerged in water has calming and uplifting effects. Water challenges us to discover how to use our whole body to maneuver through it successfully. It magnifies the effects of good and bad use. For example, the effect of pulling the head backwards and down can be more noticeable in the water than outside: it causes the lower body to sink down, creating greater resistance to our attempts at propulsion. Factors of this kind can waken in us a greater awareness of our immediate experience.

Even when we are sufficiently used to our surroundings for them not to be unduly distracting, another familiar habitual tendency comes into play: the desire to make active efforts to achieve our ends. At this stage it should be reiterated that the first steps to awareness involve precisely the opposite of making active efforts. Before any benefit can arise, first you have to stop and do nothing. Just by dropping the habit of being more active than you need, you allow yourself to remain constantly aware of your habitual reactions and your use.

This applies to each- and every stage of your approach to the water: the efforts you make when changing into swim-wear, when walking to the pool, when getting into the water, when comes to acquiring new skills, swimmers of all levels are inclined to apply excessive effort. Trying to hold ourselves up in the water has exactly the opposite effect to what is intended. What we must learn is to let go and allow the water to support the body. Being constantly on guard and learning to stop is the way to unlearn the habit of doing too much. As the unnecessary obstacles posed by our efforts are stripped away, a virtuous cycle arises in which natural and effective water skills are allowed to emerge and flourish. These bring about the quiet confidence that allows us to maintain our awareness and enjoy the experience of being in the water.