Some swimmers can be seen in swimming-pools any day of the week. Where are those carefree, elegant swimmers who manifestly love the water and are such a pleasure to watch? They seem to be out of the frame. Is this then, what swimming is all about, boredom, strain and discomfort? Non-swimmers can settle back in their chairs with a sigh of relief – they are obviously not missing anything. Yet… are you that non-swimmer? Do you, perhaps, recognize something of yourself in any of these caricatures? There’s a good chance, of course, that the very swimmers on whom these characters are modeled would not recognize themselves, because they are all lacking in the same respect: a true and full awareness of what they are doing.

We limit our awareness in different ways. The awareness of the here and now, when we’re doing something and enjoying every minute of it. His mind is on other things – the week-end, the ball-game – anything but what he’s actually doing. Then there’s the awareness that depends on knowledge: knowing how to use one’s body in breast stroke, or knowing why swimming with one’s head held stiffly out of the water is not a good idea. The young woman on the right of the cartoon obviously reckons that swimming is good exercise as long as she keeps her hair dry. And there’s the awareness of keeping a perspective on whatever we do, since the way we behave exemplifies our wider approach to life. Do we know when our lives lack balance, and do we know how to redress the balance? The figure in the centre is all too familiar. Jaw clenched, heedless of other swimmers, he strains his taut muscles against the water in an ungainly butterfly stroke, his sole aim to cut a half-second off his length. What more has he to learn? Everything, in our view, about the art of swimming.

It’s often said that swimming is the ideal type of exercise, the best way of exercising the whole body in a medium where the risk of injury is minimal. It supposedly combines the pleasure of a sport with the benefits of fitness. But the fact remains that many people don’t associate swimming with pleasure, and even those who swim out of choice often seem to lack any sense of fun. They struggle through the water, their heads pulled back and their faces set in a grimace, their overriding purpose being to complete a fixed number of laps in a given time. They act as if the water were an assault course which must be battled through from a sense of duty, rather than for pleasure or profit. Unaware of other swimmers around them, they seem oblivious even to the nature of their own experience. Those who swim regularly in this way are convinced that at least it’s doing them good. But how much good can it do if their attention is focused on something other than swimming – speed, fitness, or whatever? If our mind isn’t engaged in what we’re doing, the benefits of exercise are limited or non-existent. And what a waste of time if we can’t even enjoys it.

Why is it that so many swimmers merely go through the motions rather than savor the quality of their experience? Why don’t we discover how to enjoy swimming more than we do? One reason is that enjoying the water is usually taken for granted in swimming-teaching. Swimming instruction traditionally focuses on ways of moving the arms and legs, on techniques for swimming faster and longer, or on ploughing up and down a pool for extended periods of time. How we think and feel about swimming (and even what we think about when we swim) is generally ignored. But these aspects can be crucial, especially if our feelings arc negative, as they often are. Fear, for instance, or boredom, which are feelings that many people associate with swimming, are rarely dealt with in a knowledgeable and constructive way. Yet such attitudes are widespread, and knowing how to deal with them will clearly have an important bearing on our relationship to the water.

For this reason, the teaching of swimming should always pay due attention to how we think and feel about water. If it doesn’t, it overlooks the intimate connection between thought and action. The dissociation of the physical and the mental is commonplace in our scientific age. But while it can be hard to avoid talking about these domains as if they were quite separate, in doing so we create a mistaken and unhelpful impression. This gets in the way of our resolving the difficulties we may have in learning how to perform activities which require physical skill, and misleads teachers into neglecting an invaluable resource: the mind’s ability to direct the body.

Many swimmers, for instance, don’t recognize that specific problems in swimming relate to unresolved anxieties. But it takes only a moment’s consideration to realize that swimmers at all levels can be affected by them. Such feelings are bound not only to detract from our ability to swim, but also to hinder any real potential to derive pleasure from the water. Traditional swimming lessons encourage us to divorce our mental processes from the physical activity in hand – rather than, say, to acknowledge our fears and to learn to overcome their inevitable side-effects. In blocking out thoughts and feelings about what we are trying to learn, we deliberately approach the learning experience with less than total sensitivity. We thus obstruct a vital aspect of our organic mind-body awareness, in short, of our self.

Because brain and body processes are in fact inseparable, the way we think and feel in and about ourselves is the foundation for our development as swimmers. A truly effective approach to swimming should therefore begin by appreciating the unity of the self – which is the basis of the Alexander Technique. Built on the principle of developing self-awareness in action, the Alexander Technique is a system of psychophysical re-education, a means of increasing our control over the way we act and think. Applied to swimming, it starts by prompting us to an awareness of how our thoughts affect our actions in the water, an awareness which furnishes the swimmer with valuable tools for learning. It encourages us to discover our individual relationship to water, to find pleasure and to make real progress in swimming, and not to think simply in terms of speed. It indicates a direction both for improving our stroke and discovering new avenues to explore how water can be enjoyed. More broadly, it provides a path for personal growth and empowerment. Swimming thus becomes more than a pleasurable and beneficial pastime. As the art of swimming, it can enhance our lives by providing a way of engaging in mindful and creative activity, and help to bring about a renewed sense of physical and emotional well-being.

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The initial lesson in learning the Alexander Technique (AT) is to become aware of our habitual reactions and to apply the decision to stop. Once we have learned to prevent an unthinking reaction we can choose to apply a response based on reasoned judgment. Responding in this way requires us to attend to ourselves in the present moment. Stopping unthinking habits puts us in the position of being able to exercise choice rather than be subservient to unchecked automatic reactions. The radical difference between our normal patterns of behavior and the process of thinking in activity can be illustrated by the following model. In this model we see how one pathway leads to a pattern of habitual reactions which result in a ‘vicious spiral’ of misuse, tension and pain. Conversely, by learning to break the habit, we enter into a ‘virtuous spiral’ of awareness and the freedom to act in a healthy way.

It’s not easy to remain constantly alert to ourselves in this way. We are creatures of habit, and not used to the idea that we can renew our self-awareness from second to second. Inevitably, we find ourselves slipping back into habitual reactions and unthinking habits. However, through practice of the AT it becomes easier to notice the signals of misuse and to respond in an appropriate way.

Alexander frequently said that only by stopping the wrong can better use emerge, and in the AT great importance is attached to this principle. As the pupil progresses, understanding of what ‘stopping’ entails matures and deepens. It doesn’t mean doing nothing at all so that you collapse in a heap. It relates specifically to stopping the familiar, unwanted and unnecessary habits of our physical and mental responses. Only in this way can we recognize how habitual these patterns are, and be empowered to overcome them so that we can live our lives with a new and more creative awareness.

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Spiritual and religious associations with water are universal, and water has special associations for many faiths throughout the world. Water symbolizes the cleansing of the spirit as well as the body, and this symbolism has frequently been incorporated into religious ritual. Bathing in the holy water of the ancient river Ganges is a religious duty for Hindus. Similarly, there is a religious aspect to bathing in Judaism, which was inherited by the Christian ritual of baptism. Since the 19th century, Catholics in their millions have also made pilgrimages to the sanctified waters of Lourdes in France, and thousands of visitors marvel at the holy springs and the tranquil pools around the Japanese temples to Buddha in the ancient capital of Kyoto.

In the philosophies of Zen and the Tao, the image of moving water is used as a symbol of the flowing, constantly changing nature of life. Water is gentle and yielding, yet possesses tremendous strength. ‘Nothing in this world is softer than water, but nothing is better at overcoming the hard.’ Water and its properties are profoundly connected with notions of balance and harmony. The words of the Tao reflect Oriental ideas of Yin and Yang, the complementary poles of cosmic force which interact to create the equilibrium of existence. For human beings, awareness of how to bring these elements into balance in our own lives is the key to health and happiness.

Awareness of our self, of the way we stand, move, and breathe, has led us to explore how we relate to our bodies and to the water, and how we choose to lead our lives. We have suggested that the art of swimming can be a source of self-discovery, personal growth and empowerment. A new approach to the water -one which teaches us to be aware of ourselves, to relate it to our organic wholeness and balance, to be at home in the water, to understand and make use of its generous properties, to discover its intimate connections with the rhythms of our life – awakens in us the possibility of a wealth of hitherto inexperienced sensation, and the discovery of unprecedented, indefinable joy.

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Freeing the neck and back allows the ribcage and diaphragm to work comfortably, permitting us to breathe in an unrestricted way. This promotes greater natural buoyancy and allows us to control the rhythm of our inhalation and exhalation. A properly balanced body reduces the amount of effort required to prevent our legs and hips from dragging us down.

You can explore how buoyancy encourages a sense of good orientation by standing in calm water, submerged up to your chin. The pressure of the water supports the spine and allows you to stand without straining; your head free to pivot on the topmost vertebra.

The principle of good orientation shows once again that swimming requires us to be confident about putting our face in the water. Without this confidence, we’re likely to interfere with our natural head-neck-back relationship. Ask yourself, is it really possible to maintain good orientation if we swim with our head held clear of the water? Perhaps it is, but only for short periods. Those who swim with their heads out of the water for long periods are subjecting their spines to damaging pressure and hampering the process of lengthening and widening. And people who regularly swim in this way usually complain of a stiff neck and aching back.

However, it’s not enough just to put your face in the water. In itself this does not constitute good orientation. Even when the face is submerged below the water surface, the head can remain jammed back against the shoulder girdle.

But good orientation cannot occur without the neck muscles remaining free. This means that in the prone strokes (i.e. when we swim on our front) the head must be allowed to tilt forward under its own weight, leading to the lengthening and widening of the back and torso. Of course, it may be necessary (e.g. in a crowded pool) to raise the head up and look ahead from time to time, but this can and should be done in such a way that the elements of good orientation are preserved. And as the set of steps shown overleaf for Finding Your Feet illustrates, raising your head up is not the first step required for the body to stop moving forward in the water.

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Many swimmers find breathing in the crawl harder than in breaststroke, first because the nose is closer to the water surface at the point of inhalation, and secondly because it is less clear how to co-ordinate breathing with movement. The mark of competent front crawl is the ability to co-ordinate breathing seamlessly with the movement of the arms and body. If you try to inhale too early -before your arm, head and hips have rotated – you are likely to take in a mouthful of water. If you raise your head out of the water too late, there will be insufficient time to inhale freely. Either way, you will interrupt the steady rhythm of the stroke. Unlike the breaststroke, crawl requires a continuous flowing action by the limbs, which is one reason why many swimmers overestimate the amount of air they need to take in. As in the breaststroke, there is no place for the deliberate holding of breath. Again, the exact rhythm or rhythms will be unique to you. Explore the options and experiment with rhythmical variations, allowing yourself to discover what works or feels best at the time.

The front crawl is the only stroke in which the body rotates to the side for breath to be taken .There’s no rule about which side to breathe, but for the sake of symmetry and balanced muscular development it is worth learning to breathe on each side alternately (bilateral breathing). Right-handers find it more comfortable to extend the right arm and look back to the left, and vice versa for left-handers. This is why right-handed people are likely to prefer breathing to the left side (and vice versa). If you already have a favored side for breathing, you may choose to refine your stroke before attempting bilateral breathing. But when learning the crawl, resist the temptation to breathe only on the side that feels more natural.

Swimmers who find it easier to breathe to one side usually incorporate a natural hip-roll to that side. When instructed to breathe on the unfamiliar side, they usually attempt to do so by turning the head alone. The result is that they tend to pull the head and shoulders further out of the water to allow more space to breathe.

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