What I Talk About When I Talk About Swimming
on how I learnt to do a thing I thought I couldn't do
I really love swimming.
It’s probably my favourite thing to do these days. I’m still not very good at it but I feel comfortable and free and happy in the water. I cannot stress enough how much of a deviation this is from the previous 32 years of my life. The fact that I actually enjoy diving into deep water and seeing how far down I can go before the physics of it all brings me back up would have blown my own mind a few years ago.
In December 2023 I basically couldn’t tread water. Then I went to a party where I took some acid and journeyed in a pool for like 2 hours. When I came out I could tread water and I wasn’t afraid of the depth anymore. So here’s the full story of all that.
A Brief History In the Water
My relationship with being in the water has been complicated for a long time.
As early as I can remember I was terrified of open bodies of water.
As a kid I was scared of showering because the drain freaked me out and I thought sharks would swim out of it.
When my extended family went on a glass bottom boat ride once I stayed on shore clinging to my mum crying hysterically.
When I was 4 or 5, my uncle took my sister and I on a day trip, where we came across a canal. While we were playing alongside it I managed to fall in and was washed away downstream. I remember thinking I was going to die. I didn't die; my uncle saved me.
I never really grokked how to swim as a kid. I went to school in Australia where swimming school is a mandatory part of both the primary and secondary schooling curriculum. But I could just never pick it up. I went from not wanting to be in the water at all to being okay in shallow water. I kind of got the hang of a few strokes; but being in the deep end was still terrifying.
It was around this time at the age of 13-14 that I began to recognise my own internalised shame about my inability to swim.
When swimming school kicks off they let you self select which grade you want to be in. These ranged from “Learn to Swim, Junior Swim, Senior Swim and Bronze Star”. All the kids in Learn to Swim were absolute dweebs and I didn’t want to be associated with them so obviously I picked Junior Swim where most of my friends were. I think the criteria was something like “must be able to tread water and swim 25m freestyle”. Well I sure as hell hadn’t done that before but how hard can that really be??
Anyway it took a couple of days before one of the instructors came up to me while I was gasping for air struggling to swim more than 10m and asked “Hey do you know how to swim??”. The next day I quietly slinked away and joined the Learn to Swim group. It was fine and honestly I felt so much more chill and comfortable there. Still didn’t learn how to swim though.
There were probably a dozen times as a kid where I jumped into a pool thinking “I can do this” and promptly realised I couldn't float, freaked out, started flailing and had to be saved by someone.
More than anything I was terrified of being submerged in the open ocean. You’re telling me there’s water for hundreds of meters below me, filled with all sorts of THINGS I can’t see moving around, and i'm supposed to just jump in and float and be okay with all of this. Are you fucking kidding me?
The idea that I would simply stay near the surface no matter what rather than sink to the bottom seemed absurd and against the laws of physics as implemented by my mind.
I was a skinny kid growing up and when I came across the concept of negative buoyancy it was a lightbulb moment and a wonderful justification for why I sucked at this. It was simple; my bones were dense and I lacked enough body fat to be able to float or swim in any meaningful way and nothing I did could change that.
you: “well you can test this by putting on lots of weight”
me: yeah I kind of tried this but i’m also terrible at putting on mass so this experiment was hard to get off the ground.
As I got older and into my twenties I started to really enjoy being on the water. In 2018 I mustered up the courage to swim in the deep ocean for the first time (with a life jacket on) and it was brilliant. Intoxicating even. I looked down and it was just endless bluish black and it was awe inspiring. Also, terrifying.
In December 2019 I was traveling in Ecuador and did a white water rafting trip. Like I said at this point I loved being on the water especially kayaking or canoeing - I just prayed I didn’t come off and go in the water.
The rafting was challenging but we never capsized.
There was a period between rapids with a long open stretch of calmish water. The guides encouraged us to jump in and swim for a bit (wtf?). I'm not sure what came over me but I (knowing full well my capabilities) jumped into the rapidly flowing Amazon River to join a bunch of people who had gone in... upon surfacing I immediately realised how badly I had fucked up.
I wasn't a strong enough swimmer to fight the current and get back to the raft in time and we were all drifting closer and closer to the rapids.
It was rough and I could see a lot of rocks. I remember thinking there was a pretty good chance this might be it for me and accepting whatever was going to happen next.
My saving grace was a safety kayak manned by a small but utterly heroic Ecuadorian man trudging against the current that got to me just in time. I went through the rapid hugging the underside of his kayak.
Not too long after that I stayed in a cabin in the flooded Ecuadorian Amazon for a while where the guides took us out on the water every day. They’d always encourage me to go swimming and every time I would humbly peace out. I really did appreciate how comfortable some people were in the water though and wondered if that could ever be me.
Suffice to say, for most of my life I avoided going into deep water. I avoided swimming in rivers, lakes, swimming out beyond the surf at a beach, the deep end of pool parties, jumping off piers – anything that involved deep water you could be pretty sure i'd stay the hell away from.
There was a fundamental belief that I simply was not made for swimming.
Focused Attention
After I got back to Australia I started to get this nagging feeling that I really needed to just face my fear of swimming and figure it out. Something about that experience of nearly dying again and the recurrent theme of feeling helpless in the water moved something in me.
In August 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 saga I moved to a quiet beachside suburb in Sydney. I walked to the beach every single day and pretty regularly went for swims. This was the flattest and calmest beach i'd ever seen, so it was perfect for me.
I also met my partner while I was living there and we would regularly go for swims together. I told her about how floating was really hard for me because of negative buoyancy theory and she did not buy it at all.
“That’s not a thing”
“What of course it is… negative buoyancy!”
“It’s all in your technique! ”
At some point she said something along the lines of “if you fixate on limitations like that you can’t overcome anything difficult”.
Yeah, whatever, I told her.
She proceeded to show me some new techniques for treading water, which to her credit, really helped. I went from not being able to tread water at all, to being able to tread water for like 20-30 seconds before I became exhausted.
Which was pretty huge for me.
It was definitely a step change in my water skills, but I was still terrified to be in deep water.
Nothing much else really happened for a while until in August 2023 we moved into an apartment complex with a shallow pool. I spent a lot of time practicing breaststroke. It was astounding how quickly I got tired from swimming but over time improved my cardiovascular endurance and became okay at breaststroke.
Just Move Like The Water Or Something
Then a few really remarkable things happened in December 2023.
I was catching up with a friend who was getting into coaching and also happens to be incredibly comfortable in the water. We spent a while talking about life and decided to go for a swim afterwards in the bay. As we were walking there I opened up to him about my fear of deep water and all the anxieties associated with that.
We went to a wharf and jumped off, him gently encouraging me that it would be fine, me clinging to the wood to help me stay afloat and trying to tread water for a while before getting tired.
He looked at how I was in the water and told me calmly that my problem was not to do with the composition of my body - it was simply because of the way I moved my limbs in the water. He told me that I was so tense and my movements so sharp that I used up a lot of energy unnecessarily. “You have to learn to relax in the water. Move slowly and effortlessly like the water does”.
Hearing it uttered with his soft Iranian accent, it sounded so poetic and true. I still didn't understand what I was doing wrong or how to do it differently.
He took me out away from the wharf and had me lay on my back. Then he held his arms on my back as I floated and he told me to feel whatever fear was coming up. Feel it in my body and try to accept it. Accept the fear, accept the ocean and trust that I will float. And I did. He took away his arms and I felt my body sink a little and I didn't freeze. As I had in meditation so many times before I practiced unclenching my attention from what it was fixed on in the present moment. I just let go and accepted the motion of my body. And for the first time I felt the sense of dread/panic I usually get when I know I'm in deep water disappear. It lasted for about 20 seconds before something snapped me back to panicking. But experiencing that taste of freedom in the water felt profound.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the water every day after that.
Rewiring the circuit
A week later I went to a party hosted by that same friend at a big estate. There was live music. There was a pool. There were psychedelics.
I had taken about 50ug of LSD and right as it was peaking I decided that going into the water would be a nice idea. It was a warm day and the saltwater pool was lovely.
“Going in to cool off” turned into “an intimate exploration of my body-mind” in the deep end of the pool.
Here's the part that matters:
On LSD I could notice with more detail the interaction between my thoughts, emotions and the subtle tensions in my body.
I waded into the deep end of the pool and I attempted to tread water -- except this time I could actually pay close attention to what my body was doing, where I was tense, what shape my limbs were taking, and how fast my arms and legs were moving.
I noticed the rapidness of my motions. And in the moment when I would start to sink I noticed a flaring of something emotional.
Something like panic. Something like fear.
A circuit that goes off blaring "ah shit! remember what happened last time? get out!".
It's very brief but it triggers intense discomfort and uneasiness. I seize up and my kinaesthetic intelligence basically disappears.
So I kept triggering it, again and again, by attempting to tread water, except each time I would point my attention at the panic, at the emotion that surfaced. And what happened was that memories would come to light. Terrible experiences I had in the water throughout my life. The felt sense of drowning, of helplessness, of shame at my own ineptitude. So many memories of hating the water, of hating myself, of being scared of this thing that was everywhere. As they came up, I instinctively held them with love and compassion. Love and compassion for the fear and the uncertainty that a younger me had to keep bottled up inside.
Eventually, the emotions dissipated... I felt myself relax more and more. And I felt myself tread water for longer and longer. I could move my arms and legs slowly in unison and stay afloat easily. And if I did go down, I wasn't afraid of what would happen next. I trusted that I would figure it out. And every time I went down, I moved my limbs slowly and synchronously and I came back up. All the techniques I knew and had practiced seemed to work so much more effectively now.
And… that was basically it. I figured out how to relax in the water.
Exploration and Growth
After this experience I was basically obsessed with trying to swim every day anywhere I could. I think I swam almost every day for the next 4 months.
The day after that party my partner and I flew to New Zealand and spent a couple of weeks camping in the South Island. We went swimming at every opportunity.
This is the first river i’ve ever willingly jumped into. I remember diving in and immediately thinking “am I going to drown”. But then I surfaced, felt into the depth, relaxed and then felt a sense of deep comfort and exhilaration. Everything was fine. More than fine – it was incredible!
On New Year's Eve, we made our way to a curious place called the Riuwaka Resurgence. The Resurgence is a bizarre place where an entire river pours out of a cave mouth opening and flows east towards the Tasman Bay. It’s also a spiritually significant place that is revered by the local Maori people who view its’ water as having healing properties.
You can also jump into the hole and swim around in the freezing water – many do.
So naturally the first thing we did on New Year’s Day was take the plunge.
It felt like a very powerful symbol for the year ahead. A year of water. A year of transformation. For most of my life I never thought i’d be able to do this. And now I can do it. This year I transform the act of swimming from something I dread to something I love and relish in.
The last significant event happened here at Oriental Bay in Wellington in January. There was a swimming raft tethered pretty far out (by my standards) in the ocean. Maybe like 100m out. I got to the beach and saw it and thought “oh cool, but that’s way too far, no way I can swim out there”.
I didn’t think much of it, I was just having fun swimming and practicing treading water and practicing my strokes. At some point it dawned on me that I could swim… stop when I was tired… tread water or float on my back until I wasn’t tired… and then swim again.
And then something monumentally obvious but life changing smacked me in the face. I can go as far as I want by stopping and starting!
So I just fucking went to the raft. I swam. I stopped. I floated. I rested. I swam. I stopped. And repeated this until I got there.
I fucking got there!
I had NEVER been this far out from shore before and it was frankly terrifying but I knew that it was basically fine because I had the tools to be okay now!?
I spent a long time sitting at the edge of the raft marvelling at where I was. If a younger me could see me now they would be ecstatic. In fact, a younger me could see me now and they were ecstatic!
These days whenever I find water deep enough to swim in, I feel an urge to take off my clothes and jump in. Maybe i’m making up for lost time.
It's almost as though I am reminding myself every time: "You will always come back up — let me show you".
Funnily enough part of the reason we decided to move back to Sydney this year was because there are so many choice swimming spots.
So if you’re ever in Sydney and want to go for a swim, drop me a line!
MASTERPIECE
I nominate you as the candidate for Nobel prize in literature