What activity comes to mind when you think about continuous movement over time? Cycling? Running? Walking? Dancing? Chances are, not yoga. During yoga practice, our medium is the earth, and naturally, we seek stability, security, and steadiness. But athletes use other dimensions: basketball players leap straight upwards, and seem to pause a moment, suspended; footballers sometimes revolve 360 degrees backwards as they kick, the ‘bicyclette’ a most astonishing action; dancers whirl, spring, taking flight and landing perfectly on one foot, sublimely balanced. The air is also their milieu.
Swimming, we actuate the body in a medium other than earth. And water has an additional mysterious quality: it’s our original environment as we developed in the womb, but long, long before that, we evolved, by means of non-stop movement, from ocean dwellers to living on solid ground. Floating, crawling, kicking, wriggling, pulsating, swirling, and diving are organic and familiar – they are our most ancient movements, And each of us is a little water-body: we’re made up of 65% liquid. When in water, the heaviness we experience on land drops away, and we become fluid and sinuous, locating and relocating ourselves constantly, adjusting, shifting, and realigning – for safety, enjoyment, desire, excitement, competition – testing our limits and stimulating our imagination. Plunging in is the experience of literally immersing in a natural element we can neither control nor want to. Such experiences upend our sense of ‘earthliness’ and stimulate the brain.
Bathing, especially in open water, symbolizes initiation, a significant passage, an entry into the unconscious. In international folklore, there is often an underwater world existing parallel to our earthbound one, that’s strange and challenging. There are stories of children being pulled under and when they reemerge, they’ve matured, they’re adult. Diving deeply down refers to our interest in understanding our psychic essence, our true selves, and what lies beneath the surface of our material lives.
The transition from land to water and back again is cooling and refreshing, dreamlike, and profound. The same could be said for practising yoga and meditation. Let’s jump into our practice, and trust that the water is fine.
