Oh wow, that's incredible that it's caused such visible changes to your yoga practice. I will have to try and be more observant the next time I do yoga, and see if I notice anything similar. I'm glad it's had such a profound effect on you! And there's nothing wrong with being self-taught, or doing only breaststroke: whatever works for you, and makes you feel happy and well exercised is perfect!
I'm definitely not a self-taught swimmer. I never did it competitively, except at the 'swimming carnivals' that were a yearly event at my Australian primary and high schools. But swimming seems to be a much more standard thing in Australia — we got a number of free lessons through the school (this was at public/state school), and my sister and I also had private lessons for several years when we were small children, as did most of the other kids I knew, growing up. It seemed to be a kind of expected thing, that you would learn to swim at least until the point of being able to swim at least a length of freestyle fairly confidently and competently — and the expectation was that this was a sort of basic skill that every child would learn, almost on the level of reading and writing. After I became an adult, I had a long gap where I never did lap swimming at all, just went to the beach fairly regularly — I only really picked it up again in the wake of a trip back to Australia to visit my family, only to discover that my mother, sister, one of my aunts and one of my cousins were all going regularly to this gorgeous outdoor pool, joined them, and then continued swimming once I returned to the UK.
At the moment, to be honest, I'm leaning towards going back to my indoor pool at the gym, but just walking home in wet clothes and showering there. The problem is that in winter, this will be a lot less appealling. The local COVID infection numbers are very low, but the country as a whole is obviously not handling the pandemic well, and I keep agonising over whether swimming indoors is a selfish and unnecessary risk.
no subject
I'm definitely not a self-taught swimmer. I never did it competitively, except at the 'swimming carnivals' that were a yearly event at my Australian primary and high schools. But swimming seems to be a much more standard thing in Australia — we got a number of free lessons through the school (this was at public/state school), and my sister and I also had private lessons for several years when we were small children, as did most of the other kids I knew, growing up. It seemed to be a kind of expected thing, that you would learn to swim at least until the point of being able to swim at least a length of freestyle fairly confidently and competently — and the expectation was that this was a sort of basic skill that every child would learn, almost on the level of reading and writing. After I became an adult, I had a long gap where I never did lap swimming at all, just went to the beach fairly regularly — I only really picked it up again in the wake of a trip back to Australia to visit my family, only to discover that my mother, sister, one of my aunts and one of my cousins were all going regularly to this gorgeous outdoor pool, joined them, and then continued swimming once I returned to the UK.
At the moment, to be honest, I'm leaning towards going back to my indoor pool at the gym, but just walking home in wet clothes and showering there. The problem is that in winter, this will be a lot less appealling. The local COVID infection numbers are very low, but the country as a whole is obviously not handling the pandemic well, and I keep agonising over whether swimming indoors is a selfish and unnecessary risk.