Swimming has always been meditation for me, with some qigong thrown in. Sometimes I move through my body as I have been taught by my qigong master. He said it is not necessary to do the movements, that one can mentally move one's qi.So I do the small universe and the large universe, sometimes, as I swim.
Swimming is great meditation, at least for me. My Vipassana training tells me to ignore my thoughts and focus on my body part by part. I focus on my body in different order than when sitting in a meditation hall with others but all I do is focus on my body and I have almost no thoughts of anything else.
But when I do think of someone else it is usually me juding someone. I might think of someone in my life who has disappointed me and then I watch my thoughts go on to silently review that person's faults. Lately, happily, I let go of those thoughts and return to my breath, to moving my legs hard while moving my arms as fast as I can.
And here is a great lesson while swimming that I am finally beginning to crack. Other swimmers sometimes do things my monkey mind does not think they should do. They should not get in my lane when they swim fast. My lane is a slow lane. They should not get into my lane if there are a couple empty lanes. Now I usually catch such thoughts and let them go and get back to pumping my legs for a faster backstroke. Or, sometimes, I do a lazy back float up and down so I can squint at the sun, slow down and behold the sky. Soon, I have forgotten the person in the next lane doing some weird kick and not quite swimming.
More and more, I either ignore what others do while I swim or I move away from such judgmental thoughts more and more quickly.
And the reason I am growing ever more adept at shrugging off my judgmental thoughts is I am loving myself more. There there, little Tree, be happy. Love yourself, I tell myself. Those others do nothing wrong and you can just go with the flow, which is an apt metaphor for a swimmer.
No comments:
Post a Comment