The dark purple scar, which divided my father’s chest in two, was still healing when he asked his cardiac surgeon, what he should do now. “Two words, start swimming,” was the response. I was at the pool when my mother called to relay this story as well as my father’s new found enthusiasm for the activity. It would mark the end of a decade long battle to get my father into the water. My mother, who I had pestered for years, had fallen in love with it. I was certain my father would as well. He had to, it was in our genes.

My grandmother was raised in Louisiana and loved to swim. She grew up in a beautiful southern home on the bayou, where her warm summer days were spent swimming with her neighborhood gang that consisted of: Woof, Weezy, Sniffy Five Rocks, and Fuzzy-who would later become her husband. Days were divided between swimming in the bayou and swimming at the country club, which could only be reached by swimming across the bayou. The country club pool was enormous with a shell filled bottom. Drained only once a year it was kept clean by ‘the sun’s powerful UV rays’. Even after 100 years of living, it was this memory that she so often returned to.

Swimming is exercise; it is play; and it is meditative. Before we can walk we can ‘swim,’ and as we get older and become burdened by our aging bodies, we can still become weightless within the water. The natural rhythm created by our body’s movements and breath become a moving meditation. Learning to swim takes understanding the water and how our bodies glide through it. It is a medium that people often try to fight against instead of learning to move with. When we become aware of this it becomes effortless, freeing and the closest thing to flying we can experience.

For more information go to: http://www.ameliedemahylac.com