Friday open thread: changes

[dolorosa_12]

This is the final of my planned Friday open threads — I decided to do these as a trial run for the whole month of August, and gauge interest. From my perspective, people seem to have enjoyed them, so I would like to hear from you in the comments if you would like me to continue to do these in an ongoing way.

In addition, I have a prompting question, brought to you by the fact that I had my first day back in the library since mid-March this week. So my question is: what changed for you this week? It can be a big change, or a small change, as long as it's some kind of change.

You know about my change — so what are yours?

Comments

[nyctanthes]

I've been enjoying your posts on swimming. There's something deeply meditative about it that I love and keeps me coming back.

I highly doubt I swim as well as you do, I'm basically self-taught and focus mostly on the breast stroke. If/when this all blows over, I'd love to take a lesson or two. But I agree with you that swimming doesn't compare with running; I can totally see the difference swimming has made for my yoga practice (improved it, made me noticeably stronger *and* more flexible) while running is the opposite. I feel so tight and crotchety after even short runs, and it immediately brings my practice down. Another reason I enjoy swimming is that it allows me to use the breath control I've developed through yoga. It's been fun to see that element translate into other medium.

I hope you're able to come up with a solution for the swimming! My pool is attached to a gym that is right across the street from me, so that makes changing, etc. a lot easier.

[dolorosa_12]

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.

[nyctanthes]

My kids have had much better formal training in swimming than I did, and swim at school. It's a great skill to have. My daughter was going to join the swim team before...

and I keep agonising over whether swimming indoors is a selfish and unnecessary risk

Purely my opinion of course, grain of salt, etc. etc. but I don't think it is; exercise is so important for mental health. And as you said, the numbers are very low where you are. Perhaps you could try it out once, maybe even a quick change into dry clothes but no shower, and see how it makes you feel?