How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful: What the water gave me.

 “There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis…

I came from the wilderness.” – Wilderness, Carl Sandberg

I can’t remember the first time I decided to try cold water swimming. Considering how monumental a force it has been in my life this surprises me, but when I started thinking about writing this I couldn’t recall one clear galvanising moment of that first step into the water, or clearly bring to mind feeling the first waves of ecstasy stood on the beach following that first dip. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me really. The earliest photo I can find of me swimming in the cold sea is from 4 years ago. At this time in my life I would have been in the throes of my second period of morphine reliance (the one that truly became addiction), deep in pain and depression and living my life in a muddled blur of medication, fear, anger and hopelessness. I was right in the grips of the worst of it.

I’ve always loved the water. I grew up in glorious Devon so the beach and the moorland lakes and rivers were a part of my childhood. Many Christmases would be marked by running into the freezing sea at Exmouth with hundreds of people on Christmas morning, but other than that I don’t think I’d swam in the cold British waters since I was a kid. Not really, not with intention.

I’d love to tell you a story about this first monumental swim, this moment of lightning bolt clarity that changed my life forever but I can’t. It wasn’t like that. At some point I just started doing it and kept going back.

My Instagram is mostly just pictures of water (amongst pictures of my beautiful nieces and lovely pup) and I found one from around this time that begins to explore why this practice saved me. Beneath the image it reads:

“ ‘In times when nothing stood/but worsened or grew strange/ there was one constant good/she did not change.’ – Philip Larkin. Least favourite fact about chronic pain no.1 – you can literally make your pain worse by thinking about it. This is not psychological, it’s physiological. So, when not thinking about it feels impossible and you know you have to keep moving…go and get in the sea. She does not change.”

Here I could begin to cite research and add links to articles about the physiological and psychological benefits of cold water exposure. Wild swimming, being in cold water has never been that empirical for me.  I want to tell you, from my heart, why it means so much to me.

Being in cold, wild water again and again and again taught me two key things. These teachings I absorbed into my brain and body over time, through repetition, until I knew them in my bones. 1. All feelings are transient and 2. I am an infinitesimal spec. These are the lessons that saved me. This is what keeps me connected to getting back in over and over again, whenever I can.

When everything in my life felt hard, painful, confusing, hopeless…when I was riddled with anxiety, terror, fear, pain…when I was lost in the thick of it unable to accept living with this condition forever…bitter, furious, stuck and feeling helpless against the onslaught of constant fluctuating consuming pain – the water bought me sharply into the present moment. All things vanish for me when I’m in the cold water. All I can do is breathe and be there. It’s so pure, to just be present in my body, be present with my breath, be present in nature and it is wildly consuming.

For those minutes in the water I am not in pain. I’ll say that once again, louder, for the cheap seats in the back. WHEN I AM IN COLD WATER I AM NOT IN PAIN.

"Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing. Who you're around. What you're doing. Recreate and repeat." - Warsan Shire #postswimhappyface

I have lived through days now, over and over, when the thing that gets me through is knowing that I will be getting in the water later and the pain will go away. Often it stays away after, sometimes for the rest of the day, sometimes even for the day after too.

When I have stood on the shore or the river bank in the rain or wind or sleet or snow thinking about how cold I was about to be, I never considered that what I was absorbing was an understanding of the temporary nature of all things. I will be cold, but not forever. I am in pain now, but I won’t be in pain for every moment of my life. Life feels impossible now, but it won’t always. If I just keep going, things will change. Hold on. Keep going. Connect with that transient nature of all life.

“And I do this to remind me that I'm really, really tiny
In the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

But it's only really scary 'cause it makes me feel serene
In a way I never thought I'd be because I've never been
So grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

Rock and roll is fun but if you ever hear someone
Say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun
Look at the ocean, and the desert, and the mountains, and the sky
Say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye…

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side

Of the road and jump into the ocean in my clothes

And I’m smaller than a poppyseed inside a great big bowl

And the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole

So I swim for all salvation and I swim to save my soul

But my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornado

So I flip to my back and I float and I sing

I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything.” I Like Giants, Kimya Dawson

Spot the Lizzie - "I do this to remind me that i'm really really tiny." - Kimya Dawson

There is liberation in the water too. The sea does not care that I’m in it. The River doesn’t change its flow for me. The sleet keeps on beating against my face whether I’m crying or singing, trying to get dressed or dancing with joy. When I’m out there floating, moving in the waves I do not matter and I love it. That may sound flippant, but I find it hugely reassuring and it sets me free. For that time, I am just a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand, a molecule, dust…a minute part of a massive, beautiful, wild and infinite whole. Connected to everything, comforted by my impermanence and existing solely in that moment is the freest I ever feel from the bonds of my body, the trials of my life, the pain of the world. Its meditative and enlightening and it lightens the load, even if just for those brief precious moments.

"That moment was all, that moment was enough." - The Waves, Virginia Woolf

Yesterday I was sharing my craving to write this piece with my dear soul sister Hannah and I said “I’m worried it will be 10,000 words long.” I really could expound on this unendingly! We haven’t touched on the deep beauty of getting in to nature, the dolphins, the sea birds, the fish, the frogs, the magic life I have witnessed in this practice. We haven’t delved in to the chemical and physiological effects that occur in the body. We haven’t explored the joy and lessons the surround this practice – how I heal through the action of travelling to the water too and how it brings moments of community, family, connection and compassion. There is so much gold here to fill many pages more, but before I ramble on too much today I want to come to the breath.

This weekend I learnt a new way of approaching this practice I have known and loved so deeply for so long. On our mid-course retreat for our Breathwork facilitation training we had the pleasure of being taught by a fascinating teacher by the name of Anastasis Tzanis. Anastasis spent the day giving in-depth lectures about the physiology behind different breathing practices, but he also bought with him a paddling pool that was filled with 120KG of ice cubes and water and invited us in to the water in a way that taught me how to connect with this practice to a new and powerful depth.

Sometimes at the beach or on the moor, I run in to the water panting and howling. Sometimes I walk in breathing Ujjayi breath. Sometimes I move my body the entire time I’m in the water. I enter and stay in the water in a variety of ways depending on how I’m feeling, what the days been like, how vulnerable I feel etc and so on. What I have never explored is entering the water in complete silence, focused, calmly breathing slowly through my nose, with soft shoulders, soft jaw, soft body and sitting with it in such peace and serenity and, reader, it blew my mind. It was so powerful. I know I can relax in cold water, but this was another level of exploration in to how to be with discomfort. In how to teach yourself that you can find peace in stressful places, you can find serenity when amidst ferocity, you can choose how you feel and react to fear and stress and pain and that your breath holds the key.

So yesterday at the beach, I stood on the shore and prepared myself slowly to enter the waves. Soft shoulders, soft jaw, soft gaze. I walked gently into the sea until the water was up to my chin breathing steadily through my nose and I just stood there. Still and present in the cold ocean, a Cormorant watching from the sea wall, the sun on my face, my body submerged in the icy salt water, my eyes closed.

Totally present. 

Totally Free.

At peace with my power and my insignificance.

Without pain.

How big. How blue. How beautiful.

Todays ramblings were bought to you with the help of massive mug of hazelnut coffee with hazelnut milk.