Lesson Five-Honoring the individual

From Beth: 
I've been a teacher of swimming for 25 years and worked with a variety of students starting as young as two and as old as seventy-five. My students have been my greatest teachers. They're the ones who have taught me to break skills down into bite-size chunks and the importance of providing an environment of encouragement and possibility. 

Beth is teaching me the head float. With my chin and forehead out of the water on my back, I push off from the wall into the back float while keeping head and chin in a neutral position. She wants me to kick my legs while floating on my back, but quickly sees how locked my knees are. I get out of the pool, sit on a chair and Beth helps me move my knees, experimenting, moving them for me so I can feel how it should work.
Beth is a talented teacher. I’ve been an educator my whole life, working with all ages, including as a professor—so, I think I’m qualified to say this. I specialized in teaching reading [we’ll get back to Beth in a minute]. Some kids learn to read organically, a larger group learns as a group in the classroom. The remaining struggling readers need specialized instruction. It takes a talented teacher to help them achieve reading fluency. In addition to teaching the mechanics of reading—lessons must be tailored to meet individual learning styles, get rid of heaps of emotional baggage [including shame, fear, frustration], build confidence and finally, help the learner experience the joy and empowerment that reading brings.
I think a lot of this is true for teaching non-swimmers to swim.
I didn’t learn how to swim organically. I need specific, personalized instruction.
Beth has years of experience teaching swimming to draw on, but she personalizes her lesson. For example, after getting me out of the pool to practice kicking she could tell I still didn’t get it—we got back into the pool and she gently moved my legs for me so I could feel the correct motion. She continually experiments and observes: you are locking your knees--here are some ways to relax them.
While Beth moves my legs, I relaxed and floated which built my confidence and joy in the water. I could feel how high on the surface I am floating. I wonder how I can achieve that on my own and will practice it between lessons.
Maybe natural swimmers don’t think about the many small movements and minute adjustments go into the process—just as most fluent readers don’t think about phonics. Most couldn’t show them to a non-swimmer. Beth can.

Toward the end of the lesson, while I’m floating on my back, Beth asks me to exhale air through my nose, then she turns me from my back to the belly position, where I blow bubbles in the water before returning to my back to breathe. I try it several times and suddenly, jubilant I get it—I do it! Beth grins and I feel her authentic joy in my learning.
In a recent interview one of Beth’s students told me she hears Beth’s voice in her head when she swims. I laughed remembering my reading students who used to tell me they heard my voice when they were reading—that’s what a good teacher does, lends you her voice until it is replaced with your own.

Lesson Four-Overcoming being self-conscious

From Beth: 
I understand exactly what Shoney is describing. Prior to my climbing accident, I had always been the person who could eat whatever she wanted and still lose weight easily. I became the person who continued to gain weight no matter how much I exercised  or how little I ate because my body had changed in a dramatic way. I would look in the mirror and feel confused. I no longer recognize my own body.  Finally, two years later I realized that the only thing to do was to love and accept my body, and believe that in time---I would come to recognize it again.

Taking swim lessons means getting undressed in a locker room, getting into a swimsuit--seeing my wrinkles and weird little bumps and saggy places and yes, some fat---and being seen. Even writing this makes me sweat. I wonder how many people won’t take a lesson because of swimsuit fear?
Since beginning swimming lessons, I realize that I have been angry with my body for several years now—I felt my body had betrayed me. It is not what it was 10 years ago, though healthier than it was 4 years ago when I suffered months of serious illness and stronger than it was last year after a dog attack left me with two broken bones. I used to be a good runner. I ran 30 marathons, 50-60 miles every week and 5 marathons a year for a long time. While running, I felt like I could fly—I loved my ropy muscles, my flat belly, being strong, being in my body. Being a runner was my identity.
Runners are mostly some version of slim. In the pool there are all kinds of bodies.
Beth constantly reminds me to feel the swimming motions, the breathing —in my body, not just my brain.
I’m not the only self-conscious one, other women change in the bathroom stalls. This is my body at 55. I want to look in the mirror and think good things about my body and banish the self-consciousness, critical voice. No more comparisons between myself, and those who can swim, no more comparisons to my younger body---this is the body I live in, it is a gift and precious.
Beth is an excellent role model for accepting and celebrating the body I live in now and being grateful—she has endured her own struggles with a changing body. And it’s not just Beth, I see people who due to age or disability struggle to get in and out of the pool, a teenager who slips off her cast before lowering herself into the water, a child with a guide dog [the dog naps alongside the pool] taking lessons. I see men and women of all shapes, ages and sizes get into the pool. I get into the pool.
My hips, and belly are bigger than they once were—but in the water nothing bounces like it does on land. And amazingly, after a few lessons

and hours of practice, my body is changing. Muscles are developing in my upper arms, my chest and back for the first time in my life. And I find that nothing banishes hot flashes quicker or with more pleasure than the pool.
I’m not going to let my embarrassment stop me from achieving my goal. I’m doing this for me! This is the body I will love now, in water and out. And, be grateful for it.

Lesson Three: Love of water

From Beth:
My love of water is something that I came into the world with and it's why I am a swimming teacher. It's what fuels my passion to pass on to all of those who have yet to discover the joy and magic of water. 

In my first posts my editor kept changing, “my fear of deep water” to “my fear of water.” I insisted on the distinction: I love water but can’t swim and fear being in deep water. Some people who are afraid of deep water won’t go near lakes or the ocean—others, like me, enjoy being near water a great deal and though terrified, have pushed our limits by snorkeling or kayaking.
Most of my adult life I lived along the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, California. I walked along the steep cliffs or long beaches daily watching the waves, the surfers floating on their boards or rising and falling with those waves, the otters resting on their backs, and when I was lucky breaching dolphins or a whale. I loved the ocean but rarely entered the water other than to get my feet wet a few times a year.
During my last year in California, I started to kayak in Elkhorn Slough off the Monterey Bay—zipped into my wetsuit and wearing a life jacket— always in a state of terror-adrenaline at being in the deep water--mixed with intense joy about being on the ocean and not letting my fear control me. Curious otters peered into my kayak and pelicans flew overhead as though I belonged on the rocking surface of the sea. When I was in the kayak, I didn’t think about learning to swim, this was brave enough-- swimming in the ocean seemed out of reach.
During my third lesson, Beth had me work on “the head float.” I rested on my back, letting my legs dangle below me, keeping my head afloat. Later practicing I was so relaxed that I closed my eyes almost falling asleep. I thought of the mother otters leaving their babies floating in kelp beds, rocked by an ocean lullaby. Beth says, “Let the water hold you,” I think the otters do.
In the days after my lesson, I practiced at the Spruce Street pool, watching the sun create moving ribbons of light underwater. While practicing blowing bubbles I could see legs of little swimmers moving with ease through the light and water. I remembered snorkeling in Kona many summers ago with my daughter—it was a new world with many different kinds of brilliantly colored fish and enormous sea turtles floating over and under us. Sea creatures in all sizes and type shared the ocean. I didn’t go out deep, wore fins, a life jacket, and still spent hours in the ocean mesmerized. I let the waves rock me, though I was afraid, the beauty was too great a temptation to resist. Next time I hope to snorkel without the fear (or the life jacket).

By taking swim lessons with Beth, I’m claiming my right to be in the water with the other sea creatures. Letting the water hold me, with the sun creating ribbons of light all around me, and in the pool for now.