Saturday 12 April 2014

Rediscovering my stroke

I am writing this from room 106 at the Sobienie Krolewski hotel 1 hour outside of Warsaw. It's a small hotel with a pool and spa- a perfect getaway for the weekend before starting work again in Warsaw on Monday.

For all sorts of reasons, I hadn't been swimming since August 2013 and swimming is something I really enjoy. I learnt to swim when I was quite young- maybe 8 or 9 and I think I took to the water and swimming very easily. I always have this huge sense of freedom when I am in the water- especially when I am swimming in the sea.

Anyway, this morning, I got into the pool at around 10AM. The pool was completely empty when I got it. The first 30 or so lengths were good but it felt a little strange getting back in the water after all this time. When I got out of the water, I was breathing quite hard and I felt like it took a lot of effort. I rested for a while and got back into the water. This time, it felt a bit better. The next 30 lengths felt easier and I was breathing better but also, I felt I was moving along the water much easier with less resistance. The third time I got in, I used a kickboard and did quite a few lengths using the kickboard only. When I got rid of the kickboard and swam again, I could really feel my stroke coming back. It felt such a luxury to be able to use both arms and legs and somehow, I was completely into each and every stroke. In that sense, I was really in-flow. The fourth time I got in, I felt I could swim on and on. I had found my stroke.

When I got out of the pool, I was reflecting this experience- how strange it was for me to feel so strange doing something that was second nature to me and how it took several breaks and several attempts before I found my stroke again. A few weeks ago, towards the end of an Organisation Effectiveness group workshop that I was co-leading/ facilitating with John and Karol, I mused out loud as to what my work really was. I came to the realisation that I had been very good at supporting and promoting other people's work- but I felt that everything I did was relatively invisible. Or maybe, everything I did was consumed by and subsumed into something else. So I wonder about my work and wonder when and how I was in-flow and how to rediscover and get back in-touch with my stroke(s).