All my life, I've been terrified of water. Even on treks with waterfalls, while being under one I would feel that I would drown in that gushing water. After I moved to Delhi, one of the things that I steadfastly did was exercise daily in the mornings. One day I found myself wanting to explore swimming lessons and promptly located one quite near my locality. Yesterday was my first day at a swimming pool early in the morning at 5:45 and I was quite surprised to see lots of children at that hour. Quite nervous but with vigour I entered the pool and found myself struggling to float when the coach directed me to loosen my body and shake off my fear. With trepidation, I repeated what he asked me to do and in a couple of minutes was floating on water. That moment felt like the greatest conquest of my life. He then asked me to hold my breath under water which is what I have always been quite nervous about. I took a deep breath and went down the water and for a few microseconds, my life felt to have gone outside of my body. It was an entirely new sensation to put myself through that. I promptly came up and gasped for air frantically, all the while my coach kept assuring me that I wouldn't drown. Oh, how much I laugh now while remembering this! I repeated the exercise a couple of times. He then held both my hands and guided me to swim afloat the entire length of the pool. It really surprises me that I was able to achieve this in the first fifteen minutes, a feat I kept myself away from practically all my life.
As I began enjoying the water, it was time to get out of the pool. It certainly felt eventful as far as the first day went. Today morning was my second session. As it had rained the night before and this is an outdoor pool, the air felt stifled, the water felt strangely uncomfortable as I ventured in the pool. It was difficult to even hold my breath underwater for more than a few seconds. I had a terrible self-realisation of wasting my progress from yesterday. However, I still went down in the pool, holding my breath coming up quickly every few seconds. I saw kids around me bobbing their heads up and down in the water as I reminded myself of doing it too. After a good 15-20 minutes acclimatising to the water and the feel of chlorine on my skin, I felt my body floating for longer than I could count. My shoulders felt to weigh a tonne as I tried to shake off my nervousness and go adrift with the water. All my thoughts were consumed with being light weight in the water. It is tremendously difficult to hold breath under water, to be consumed with a breathlessness even if for a few seconds more than we can tolerate the thought of doing so. My mind went to assessing the upper body weight each time I started floating on water. Then in a moment, I reprimanded myself for concentrating on that thought and let go.
What I discovered in this process was that our body does listen to us. Even though it has been barely close to 90 minutes of two swimming lessons, I can say, I look forward to being in water again even as I memorize the slivery feel of being in the pool. My fear has come undone, after more than 30 years!
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