December 2020
Most people who know me know that my passion is swimming, snorkelling, and diving. Just being in the water is bliss. These days, it feels to me that all the pools, ponds, lakes, rivers, seas and oceans I have ever swum in are gathered together in the singular swim of the day. It is as though all the waters of the world are present in the now of this swim.
I have swum in the North Sea (Scotland, England, the Adriatic (off Italy), the Andaman (off Thailand), the Indian and Southern Oceans (Western Australia), Fonty’s Pool, Manjimup (WA south-west), in the Pacific, the Atlantic (Iceland) multiple rivers, streams, lakes (including Lake Zurich in Switzerland), the Silfra Fissure in Lake Thingvallavatn in Iceland (water temperature, 3-4 degrees Celsius); hotel and public pools (last year I was in Berlin swimming in their pool on top of a shopping centre, and Caracalla Spa in Baden-Baden), etc., etc. I actually dream of swimming across whole countrysides, and it feels fantastic.
One thing I love to do when diving, is swim upside down gazing at the underside of the shimmering water’s surface. I’ve had dive masters try to save me, thinking I’m drowning! This, I guess, is the legacy of nearly drowning when I was four years old. That time, I wasn’t yet a strong swimmer and couldn’t follow the group of swimmers who left me behind, so was going under. Far from being afraid, however, I was fascinated by the underside of the surface of the water with the light streaming through. It was magical. I was pretty cross on being saved and told to play on the beach like the other little kids. I guess the reason I didn’t drown was the children’s capacity for stilling the breath, something I consciously practice these days.
I have a hankering to free dive the kelp forests off Tasmania, and plan on doing this in the next couple of months. I bought the useful extra long free diving fins and added them to my existing rather large fin collection (I’m the Imelda Marcos of swim fins). My Octopus Teacher, that beautiful documentary made by Craig Foster on the way in which an octopus taught the man about octopus-life, has added fuel to this desire. The dance of waving kelp seduces me.
So, what has this all to do with psychotherapy? Far from being a remotely connected idea, understanding what being in water requires and understanding what being in the presence of other people in the psychotherapeutic realm necessitates, gives a very clear pointer to how the one reflects the other.
Being in the water and working with clients requires in-the-moment attention; it requires focus, listening, awareness of everything around me, and all done while alert and yet relaxed. The nature of both and all the interconnections within is an imperative of the therapeutic communication.
It is no accident that water is often seen as the essence of communication, a word that shares its meaning with “communal”, or “togetherness”. Sound travels long distances in water. A microphone dropped beneath a boat captures whale song of those swimming many metres away.
In astronomy, Sedna, the planetary body beyond Neptune, was named after the Inuit goddess of marine life. She, or it, in this romance, usefully could symbolize the coming of consciousness from a backdrop of watery unconsciousness. This is our task in psychotherapy, and in life. It’s also what I endeavour to do while swimming, that is, swimming with awareness.
Water is subtle in her currents, shifts in water temperature, clarity or murkiness, volume (it took awhile to perceive in my body depth perception), the delicate sense of water tension, and the strange way in which the swimmer can sometimes forget that there is a watery substance, but just the natural environment of the marine animal. Swimming the waters of the world is how I’m coming to know how interconnection, individuation and consciousness all roll into the doing of participation in the art, craft and process of psychotherapy. I swim for the enjoyment of coming to know my work, my life.
