Q

The body as a machine. And what if this machine cannot do what it has been doing — as natural as breathing, and just as essential?

Since I found out the news, I have had to let go off a series of activities that are part of my daily life. HIIT, running, yoga, pilates, strength. Too much impact. Too much jumping. Too much twisting. Too much core. Too much weight.

I could not help thinking my body has failed me, against my best efforts. How wrong was I to think that. Against all my working it, my body has protected me. Now it is time for me to be kind to it, and allow it the space to heal.

For days I felt myself a caged lion. Pacing, restless, erratic energy bouncing off walls. Day one of meditation failed miserably. My mind was in high frequency, as it often is, leaping from one node to another, a scatter and a scribble.

The only safe, kind way I could move my body, was to confront an old friend / fear of mine: swimming.

Some background on my fear of water, a near drowning exactly 10 years ago.

Since then, I have been swimming, intermittently. Baby swims. Recreational swims. Not the many laps, few times a week, solitary swims I used to do — until that happened.

Even today, I feel that inky fear pool in my tummy and fill my chest again, compelling me to find solid ground with foot. I no longer swam with my head underwater, something I loved to do before. I said swam, because I did it, for the first time (again), today.

After a few laps of shallow-breathed gulping for air, stemming from confused rhythms, something just –

clicked. I got it, altogether, all at once. How to dip my head and breathe out, watch the stream of bubbles float above me. How to push the water like an arrow just as I kick right beneath the surface. How to draw my arms in, like reading a book, pulling my shoulders back, the certainty of air, and all over again, a glide, a cadence, a fluid movement.

I remember now how peaceful it was to swim. To be underwater and watch this quiet belly of the world, no sound, all fuzzy, where you have left thought just above the surface, and here where light distorts in blue, they do not matter.

I remember now the weightlessness, the feeling of being buoyed as in amniota. Leaving the water, heaving on the heavy clock of life and all its mechanical complexities was so much to bear.