New Paltz Nation - A Woman's Place in the Pool

Flow in Swimming...and in Life

What sets Total Immersion apart from traditional swimming? The most important distinction has less to do with your muscles than with your mind. Though we’re best known for our stroke-improvement sequences, what I believe most distinguishes TI is a unique mindset about how swimming should be practiced. The experiences of the most successful TI students strongly suggest that adopting a spirit of mindful, purposeful practice is more critical to your success and satisfaction than how many yards you swim.

When we train our coaches, we emphasize that their highest responsibility is not just to teach stroke efficiency, but to share their passion with you. Once you become passionate about swimming, virtually nothing can stop you from realizing your full potential – and far exceeding your current expectations. To access the transforming power of passion, it helps to know something about Positive Psychology and Flow.

Around the time I founded TI, psychologist Martin Seligman began to study the characteristics of people who were adapting successfully to life’s challenges, which resulted in the now recognized field known as “Positive Psychology.” In his book, Learned Optimism, Seligman wrote that “engagement and the pursuit of meaning are more predictive of life satisfaction” than material wealth, marriage status, spiritual beliefs, or any other factor.

Seligman was influenced by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience has had a profound influence on my teaching and swimming. Csikszentmihalyi, defined Flow as “the state of total immersion (italics mine) in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities” and listed the components of a Flow experience as:

· Involvement in a Valued and Intrinsically Rewarding Activity

· Balance between Challenge and Skill: the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult

· Intense Concentration on Clear Goals

· Direct and Immediate Feedback

· A Sense of Personal Control

So the way to improve at swimming is, rather than train for endurance or speed, swim to experience Flow…and by doing so learn that speed and endurance develop as a natural result. After all, what could be more appropriate in swimming than Flow?

Powerful Attitudes

Since 1989, TI has taught tens of thousands of swimmers around the world; the vast majority are not only swimming better, they now love swimming and expect to continue improving and learning for life. They also understand that the knowledge and self-awareness they have gained are even more valuable than the skills we teach. Here are the attitudes that will help you become the swimmer you wished you could be – and if you think about it, to succeed more at anything else as well:

1. Passion for Swimming. Once you become passionate about swimming and understand swimming’s unique capacity to become a path to personal growth, you’ll practice it with an engagement and motivation that will bring real understanding and accomplishment.

2. Understanding. We’ve learned from teaching thousands of formerly struggling swimmers that there are relatively simple explanations and practical solutions for the most common frustrations of swimming. I’m not suggesting that swimming well is easy; I’ve worked at it for 40 years and am still learning important lessons. But the confidence of knowing you are practicing sound principles is invaluable.

3. Self-Awareness. A fundamental principle of the TI program is mindfulness, of blocking out distractions – the lap count, pace clock, other swimmers -- to totally immerse yourself in your personal experience of working with the water. In the beginning your awareness will be of gross-motor aspects- where are your head, limbs, torso, etc. Later you’ll shift to subtler cues – the sound your hand makes as it enters the water or how you use it to guide the flow of water. Keen attention to those cues will lead to Flow and fulfillment.

4. Continuous Improvement. My goal, each time I enter the pool (lake, ocean, etc.) is to swim better than I ever have before. Setting the bar that high has kept my focus and sense of purpose keen, and has put me on a path of continuous improvement and learning. I hope to inspire you to swim with the same kind of constantly renewing aspiration.

A series of stroke-improvement classes for adult swimmers will be offered on four Wednesday evenings from 7:00pm to 8:00pm, running from May 17 through June 7. Tuition is $120 for the complete series. Call 255-4242 for information or to register

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