Most people come to TI initially because of utilitarian goals—to swim easier, farther or faster. They also recognize swimming is healthful exercise. When ordering a TI DVD or registering for a class, most will be happy to get a smoother stroke and strong heart. Few expect it to benefit mind and spirit. And fewer still anticipate it could even improve their work or professional lives. Paolo took up swimming to reduce stress. And look where it got him.

I met Paolo in Nov 2008 when he came to NY to conduct Aida at the Metropolitan Opera. We swam together near Lincoln Center, then Alice and I were his guests at the opera. It was my first time seeing an opera. The main thing that struck me was, during our swim, Paolo kept repeating “TI has such a gift to make people happy.” Then I learned just how important a happy conductor can be to an opera company!

Paolo began swimming while he was Music Director at the Frankfurt Opera one of the world’s most respected companies. He spent almost 10 years there. It was a time of fantastic professional growth for Paolo as he memorized every note of 80 to 90 operas and gained global stature.

Paolo described a typical day this way: “I studied one opera all day, then conducted  another that evening.” Watching Aida gave me an appreciation of the physical and psychic demands of opera conducting. With intermission breaks, the performance lasted nearly four hour a period during which Paolo had to maintain fierce concentration and constant motion . . . while giving the impression of graceful flow.

There appeared to be about 60 musicians in the pit, a similar number of principal singers and chorus members on stage, and at times that many or more extras (plus elephants and other livestock!) representing both a victorious and a defeated army. Every note played or sung, every gesture and movement, came in response to Paolo’s cues.

Because his relentless schedule had left him suffering in body and mind, Paolo began swimming for stress relief. A fellow swimmer noticed him at the pool daily and urged him to learn TI. Paolo started with book and video, then attended a workshop in Zurich.

After leaving Frankfurt, Paolo was in demand to lead top companies in major cities around the world.  As he traveled he sought out TI coaching–Barcelona, Tokyo, New York. When we met in Nov 2008, Paolo had developed a truly graceful stroke. That day he said “I always swim before a performance. After practicing TI I feel much more energized in body and mind, I feel happier, and I even feel more fluent in my conducting gestures.”  Naturally I was thrilled. I asked if that affected the performance. Paolo replied: “The company can sense the conductor’s energy and spirit and they reflect it back in their performance.”

I reflected on this and realized that an audience of thousands witnesses a more joyful and uplifting production . . .  all because one man swims for an hour before starting his ‘work day.’

Enjoy Paolo’s video. I got great pleasure from shooting it.

Postscript: Paolo, who celebrated his 50^th birthday days before we met in November, confided that his goal is to cut back on his conducting schedule by the time he turns 55—to allow time to become a TI Coach!

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In competitive swimming, they aspire to:

• Bang Out the Yards (when they’re not Getting Them In.)
• Get the Heart Rate Up.
• Push through Pain Barriers.

And at the health club where I do yoga and strength work, there is  a poster saying “Fitness is a battleground. This is the front line.”

In the ‘Western Industrialized’ model of Fitness, health clubs hold ranks of people on machines, many reading magazines or watching TV as they robotically ‘burn’ things

• Burn Calories
• Burn Fat
• Burn Heartbeats
• Burn Hours.

How much more satisfying to swim as a form of self-expression, like dance or other movement arts, while pursing Mastery and Purpose. The heartbeats still happen. So do faster times.

This is a guest post by TI Swimmer Sarah Crymes

Terry describes TI as “Swimming that Changes Your Life.” It has emphatically done this for me thanks to practices that encourage happiness.  Here’s how I experience this in my own TI practice:

1) I take a moment before beginning to commit to being present and mindful with no worries.  I focus on my breath and clear my mind of other thoughts. I begin my swim with simple focal points: head down, streamline position, balance while rotating. Then I focus on my breath. I swim into a moving meditation. Once my mind is clear and calm, I turn to back to stroke-oriented focal points, one at a time.  Being present with focused thoughts creates a sense of well-being and happiness for me. Open water swimming takes this to another level, since my meditative rhythm is never interrupted by a wall.

2) I attempt to accept imperfection and to be kind in my thoughts about myself. For example, my left arm recovery doesn’t feel as relaxed as my right and this creates pain in my body after very long swims.  So I remind myself that finding and fixing errors is the path to improvement. And I’m grateful to my left arm, shoulder and back for doing their best to overcome 30+ years of pre-TI muscle memory.

3) I practice continuous improvement with the faith that even when I can’t feel progress, it is happening. When I practiced martial arts, my Sensei told me not to do horse stance if I didn’t do it correctly, to avoid building bad muscle memory. In swimming, correct practice is even more challenging. When I concentrate on one focal point, I sometimes sense another part of my stroke reflecting my inattention to it. I remember to let that go and doone thing well at a time.

At the TI Open Water Experience at Maho Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands last week, I learned how valuable having the option to breathe on both sides is when the water gets rough, so I’ve committed to learn bilateral breathing. I’m doing this with a beginner’s mind by revisiting balance and streamline drills, to make my stroke more balanced and stable when I breathe to an unfamiliar side.

4) PLAY: As a child, I experienced grace and joy in the water that I never felt on land. I’m exceedingly grateful that TI Practice enhances my ability to replicate this sense of grace and beauty.  I do my best to swim as a fish or a dolphin.   I think this is why I love swimming butterfly so much.

If you’d like to experience more joy, pleasure and happiness, please consider incorporating some of these ideas in your swimming practice:

· Before swimming, focus on your breath, visualize how you want to swim and commit to a mindful practice. Add breath-focus to the focal points included in your warm-up.

· Don’t worry, be happy. What’s the worst thing that can happen to you, especially in the pool? Not much except self-inflicted negative thoughts.

· Be kind to yourself in your thoughts

·         Have faith that you’re getting better when you practice with purpose—even when you feel you’ve plateaued.

·         Be playful. Channel the sense of freedom, joy and playfulness you felt in the water as a child, before swimming became competitive and goal oriented.

Sarah Crymes is from Atlanta, Georgia and travels for work to many southern states.  If you see me in your pool wearing a TI cap, please say hello.  Her passion is swimming outdoors, with as much grace and beauty as possible.  She’s been practicing TI for 10 years and recently attended a weekend workshop at Georgia Tech and the Maho Bay Open Water Swim Camp in St. John, USVI.  She’s seeking TI enthusiasts in Atlanta to join regular meet ups and to share TI with others.  To join an email list for this purpose, please send a note tos_crymes@hotmail.com or contact me via LinkedIn.  Happy swimming! I hope our paths cross in or near water soon.

My curiosity had been piqued by a TI Forum post about a book called ‘The Talent Code’ written by Daniel Coyle — in particular a sentence from one of Terry’s posts about it: “Improvement in swimming starts with being conscious of creating molecular change in the brain more than in the muscles and blood vessels.”

A couple of clicks and a few dollars later I had the book loaded into my Kindle in time for a ferry ride across the Norwegian fjord. I was interested in discovering new ways to improve both as a student of swimming and as a vocal coach for singing. That evening I went to the pool with even more excitement than normal.  I was about to test the thesis: Can I achieve 2 weeks of swimming improvement in one practice session?

I decided to swim 25-meter repeats, striving to hold  14SPL (Strokes Per Length) whilst increasing my stroke rate in small increments. My goal was to find the fastest tempo at which I could still touch the far wall in my stroke budget.

I set my Tempo Trainer at 1.30 seconds/stroke —  my normal stroke rate for an SPL of 14.  Each time I completed 2 successful lengths I decreased tempo by 0.02 seconds.

This set seemed to embody the improvement principles cited in the Talent Code:

1. Break a skilled task into small chunks; determine how you’ll measure improvement.
2. Practice with unblinking focus; evaluate each repeat.
3. Look for small adjustments that can ‘improve the circuit.’
4. Repeat until you find the limit of your improvement.

To my complete amazement I was able to hold 14 SPL all the way down to a tempo of 0.95 — and in the process improve on my Personal Best for 25m by over a second.

However, it wasn’t the time that was most remarkable but the adjustments this exacting task effected in my stroke along the way:

• As tempo hit 1.2 my head became better aligned while breathing,
• At tempo 1.1, my stroke became more symmetrical and precise
• At tempo 1.05 I began performing 2-Beat Kick with unprecedented coordination.
• At tempo 1.0 I felt a longer, firmer catch.

The icing on the cake was the last 10 lengths. As my tempo descended from 1.0 to 0.95 I started to ‘feel’ all these adjustments harmonize, like a music student learning to distinguish a chord rather than a single note for the first time.

Following this set, I ended my practice 30 minutes sooner than usual. Partly because I wanted to enjoy the moment, but also to let that sense of harmony imprint on my brain. I had achieved the task and made more progress in that short session than in a couple of weeks of normal training.

Driving home I reflected that this type of learning had happened to me once before — on the dry ski slope of Sheffield whilst at university in the UK.  The slope was so short (about 15 seconds of skiing) and the lift so slow (3 minutes) that you spent far more time visualizing your next run than actually skiing,   I learnt more in a few 2-hour sessions on that slope than in a week of skiing in the Alps.

The "Dry" Ski Slope in Sheffield

Andy Williams is an Englishman who has lived in Norway for 12 years, where he works as a professional piano entertainer, singer and vocal coach. He is a regular participant in the TI Discussion Forum under the handle “andyinnorway.” Andy writes: “I swam a little in school and again in my early 20s but always breaststroke.  I discovered TI on youtube whilst on holiday in Florida last winter and have swum with purpose and pleasure  In 2012 I will be entering a handful of 1 to 2- mile open water races and Masters pool competitions later in the year.”

Here’s my advice: I’m not that familiar with the causes and effects of vertigo attacks but I do have some thoughts about the disorienting sensations you’re experiencing while swimming. I’ve learned that nearly every swim-related problem presents an opportunity: In solving the problem, you discover something that can make your swimming much better. I think this can be so in your case.

It seems unlikely that the things you perceive to be different about your strokes really are different. So it’s apparent that the main effect of vertigo on your swimming is in altering your perceptions about body position, timing, rate of movement. Where’s the opportunity in this?

Self-perception is an extraordinarily valuable skill to swimmers because:

• Because we can’t watch ourselves swim, we depend heavily on self-sensing to improve form.
• The water is an intensely sensory environment. We feel it flowing over every millimeter of skin, supporting us (or not), resisting us, and swirling away when we try to push on it.

Since changed perception is making it difficult to think of anything else, go with it. Until this passes, swim in ways designed to highlight perception even more. This awareness exercise may give you a sense of what I mean: Place a raisin in your mouth – only one. Take a full minute to eat it. Compare your awareness of the texture and taste of this one raisin to what it is when you gulp a handful of them.

For the next couple of weeks, savor every stroke you take like that raisin. Your only goal is to increase awareness of the most fundamental aspects of your swimming.

Start with Balance: Do you feel the water cushioning your head, your extending arms, your torso and lower body?

How stable do you feel? Do you feel your arms or legs moving in ways you don’t intend and don’t really control?  Can you tell why they do?

Mix TI balance drills – Superman Glide and Skate – with short segments of swimming where you focus only on how your sensations of ‘Weightlessness’ and Stability compare when drilling, and when swimming.

Then to Streamlining: How long, sleek and aligned do you feel? How much do you move water around vs move through water. Again, mix TI drills – Skate and SpearSwitch – with short segments of whole-stroke and compare the sensations.

In everything you do, make time or distance secondary. Don’t count laps or repeats. Ignore the clock. As you eliminate those ‘distractions’ you’ll become aware of sensations you’ve overlooked before.   The vertigo will pass, but you’ll be left with a level of awareness and discernment about your stroke that will be invaluable – both in the satisfaction of possessing it, and in the improvement it will produce.

Kwin (L), Tang (C), Jerome (R) at Royal Singapore Yacht Club

1) How I practice meditation
Mindfulness is a skill I use in any kind of situation, but especially in stressful situations.  Mindfulness is a difficult habit to acquire in normal living, where we encounter so many distractions. At my first training, I started with one day and night in the temple. My master monk brought me to an empty room as shown in the photo. There is no phone, nothing to read, nothing to take your mind away from your own thoughts.

Someone leaves food at the door. I’ve been instructed that I’m free to do anything in that space – sitting, walking, cleaning, lying down — as long as I stay mindful, noticing my breath, my movements, my thoughts and feelings. The purpose of going to the practice room is that it’s easier to concentrate there than outside where there are so many distractions. My reason for being there is to train myself to just observe my thinking without judging it.
We hope that when we return ‘outside’ – with all its distractions – we are a bit more able to stay in the present moment. I spend a day at the temple once or twice a year. My wife sometimes stays for up to week.

Becoming a monk is the next step. As a monk you’re sheltered from external concerns. There are no bills to pay and thus no need for money. You receive one meal a day then return to practice. Monks train to stay present in every single moment throughout the day – walking, siting, eating, or performing chores – our main duty is to remain mindful.

2) Measuring improvement in Mindfulness
Continuous improvement is a goal in meditation training, just as in TI training. In TI, rather than focus on how far or fast we swim, we focus on how easily we can move through the water.  In mindfulness practice, our goal is not how long we can remain in meditation posture. Sitting longer isn’t better. Rather it’s about how readily we can let go of a distraction and return our consciousness back to the present moment. My teacher told me that a good measure of improvement is how long I hold any negative or stressful thought or emotion. From Buddha’s word we practice until we can calm a stressful emotion in an eyeblink.

3) TI Swimming / Mindfulness meditation
TI has taught me how to meditate while in motion. Because TI showed me how to swim with ease, I can now swim for long period, instead of one lap at a time. Swimming longer in a Buddhist sense isn’t about seeing how much distance I can cover, but rather to train myself to stay present with my stroke for longer periods. I’ve discovered that the rhythmic action of breathing, rotating, stroking, noticing – comes more easily to me than sitting in an empty room, watching my in-out breathing,  or even walking. The only limitation is that we usually cannot swim for as many hours as we can sit or walk.

4) Why I feel grateful for swimming
After I read your blog “Why I’m Grateful for Swimming My Slowest Time Ever” I felt fortunate I’m not a competitive swimmer. I never need to be concerned with speed or time. My focus is how long I can concentrate on my present movement while swimming without letting my consciousness diverge to any feeling or thought that is not about swimming.  It is a very satisfying feeling to seek harmony with the water and use constant focus to maintain it.  After I leave the pool my body feels healthy and my mind feels refreshed.  This is why I’m grateful for having discovered that swimming can be a form of meditation practice.

View more photos from Kwin’s period of monkhood

Kwin, 36, is a furniture and interior designer. He lives with his wife in Bangkok.

It feels slightly odd to be an American, writing for Japanese readers (and swimmers) about a philosophy – Kaizen – that originated in Japan. But Kaizen has changed my life, and for that I’m grateful to Japan.

When I started swimming, at 10, my vision reached only to the other end of the pool, and how I would get there.

When I joined a swim team, at 14, my vision extended to the end of the week, when I would swim my next race.

When I began coaching, at 21, my vision now stretched to the end of the season, when the hard work of six months training would be rewarded by new best times for my swimmers, and perhaps a championship banner for the team.

But at about age 40, when I began coaching adults—especially adults who were new to swimming–my vision began to extend to limitless horizons and possibilities. I didn’t realize this had a name, Kaizen, or was a widely respected philosophy in Japan that grew out of business, but became applied to ‘the art of living well.’

My horizons grew because my adult students had longer horizons themselves. When I coached younger people, their swimming goals were always to get through today, this week, this season. But adult students took up swimming in order live better, healthier and happier, with no endpoint in sight.

Kaizen is endless; Kaizen is this moment.

The paradox of Kaizen is that the way it helps you think in terms of limitless possibility is by focusing your attention on the potential of this day and this moment. Kaizen Swimming is not built upon any great or impressive action, but upon a very small action only you will notice—a single beautiful stroke . . . repeated with loving attention a few thousand times in the course of an hour.

You begin practice with a plan to find some almost-hidden aspect of your stroke that, during the next hour, you’ll perform better than you ever have before. No one else will notice your improvement, but you will feel it because you give it such keen and unwavering attention. Before you know it, an hour is over and it’s been the best hour of your day.

And that is the greater wonder of Kaizen. Before I embraced the Kaizen spirit, during each day’s practice I thought I was training for a happy moment three or six months in the future when my hard work brought a best time.  But Kaizen, while showing me a life of boundless possibility, has also taught me to make each day special, and not wait for happiness sometime in the future.

Runners 60 and older are the fastest-growing group in the sport, so naturally researchers are studying them with increased interest. One recent study looked at the reasons runners slow down as they age. Researchers had assumed that a main reason is that older runners are less economical (i.e. their muscles use oxygen less efficiently) than youthful athletes. But when scientists measured oxygen use as they ran on a treadmill, runners 60 and older were just as economical as runners half their age.

The more likely reason, according to another study, is the muscles of older runners lose their spring and resilience. Statistics show that older runners suffer much more frequent problems with Achilles tendons and hamstring and calf muscles. Because the impacts of running routinely inflict microtrauma on both bone and soft tissue—and we are slower to heal from stresses of all types as we age–the researchers speculate that damage steadily accumulates in aging runners. The effect isn’t just an increase in acute injury, but that the muscles and joints lose range of motion. With shorter, choppier strides come slower times.

The good news—for those who run and swim—is that your swim practices bring several clear benefits

1)    Less impact and thus less microtrauma.

2)    The massaging effect, as well as enhanced circulation promoted by swimming between runs, accelerates healing and restores resilience to your muscles.

3)    The resistance of water to your movements builds strength.

Muscles that are both stronger and more resilient will regain their spring and snap – improving stride length . . . and running times.

Paul has just taken up triathlon and while he runs and cycles with a prosthetic, there’s nothing to take the place of a missing leg in swimming. As I explained to Paul a missing leg presents two challenges:

1) Because he has more body mass on one side of his body, achieving balance and stability is more of a challenge.

2) Because we rely on our legs as ‘levers’ to help with body rotation – a left-leg downbeat helps us rotate (or weight shift) onto our right side AND helps us spear the right arm forward – something must compensate for the missing leverage when he enters his right hand.

I watched Paul swim for 10 seconds and could immediately see that he faces the same challenge as every adult who is just beginning to swim — the instinct that Job One is to fight your way from one end of the pool to the other, usually with a flurry of arm-and-leg churning.  Once he set his sights on doing a triathlon, Paul did what came naturally — took out a pool membership and began trying to build his swimming endurance.

What that has meant is churning through a single lap. Pant for a while at the other end, then churn his way back.  In the Endless Pool’s current there was no ‘other end’ to reach, but the churning habit still held.

Those early laps haven’t only begun forming movement habits. They’ve also begun forming thinking habits. As I explained to Paul, the first thing we need to do is undo his thinking habits. Thinking Differently will make it much easier for him to Swim Differently.

And the very first New Thought we wanted to teach Paul was this: When he no longer had a ‘mission’ to reach the other end, he could instead focus on being In This Moment and Place with a sense of comfort and calm. Both physical calm – in his movements — and mental calm.  Mental calm comes from replacing Reactive thought (I feel myself sinking so I’d better keep churning) with Reflective thought (What signals am I receiving from the water and my body and what do they mean?)

As it happens, an Endless Pool is an ideal place to acquire new ways of thinking. There’s no lap to complete, no time to keep, and no distractions at all. There’s only you, the water and the experience they have together.

The second clue to awareness I gave Paul was this: Adults who take up swimming not only tend to fight their way from one end to the other. They also tend to engage in near-constant self-criticism and self-judging. They’re aware there’s a Right Way to swim. They’re also aware that what they’re doing is emphatically Wrong. So at every instant they’re likely to be comparing what they ARE doing to what they believe they SHOULD BE doing and finding themselves wanting.

But learning to swim (as well as learning nearly anything else in adulthood) doesn’t do well in a Pass/Fail environment. Rather, we should view every experience we have as Information. In this instance our experiences are teaching us how a human body (and psyche) tend to behave in an aquatic environment.

So Paul begin his lesson with repeats of Superman Glide, with Alice towing lightly so he could glice a bit longer in a gentle current, with the lightest possible kick. While gliding there – gazing at the mirror below – he was able to begin gathering information

Are my arms extended directly forward of the shoulders?

Is my head hanging neutral – so I look directly into my own eyes in the mirror?

When in this position, how supported do I feel? Is that a new sensation? What significance does this have for my swimming.

Ninety minutes later Paul left with a different way of moving and thinking.  He’ll practice both in the coming week, before his next appointment with Alice.

Learn Balance, Superman Glide and Reflective Thinking in Lesson One of the  DVD TI Self Coached Workshop in 10 Lessons.

Reflective Thinking and Position Imprinting in Superman Glide

Total Immersion teaches swimming as a practice—in the spirit of yoga and ta’i chi– rather than a workout. The first principle of swimming as a practice is to let go of the usual goal of Getting to the Other End. Your new goal is to Be Aware of Every Stroke.  Another word for mindful swimming is intentional swimming. It works best when you target a single, highly specific, element in your stroke. The foundation skill of effortless and enjoyable swimming is Balance–or feeling ‘weightless’ in the water. This series of three focal points are designed to improve Balance in the crawl stroke.

Hang Your Head

While stroking ‘hang’ your head–release its weight–until it feels weightless. Neither hold it up, nor press it down; just let it go.  When you release it, concentrate on feeling that it’s cushioned by the water.  Finally  notice if you feel a new relaxation—and maybe freedom of movement—in neck and shoulders.

Float Your Arm Forward . . . Slowly.

Next focus intently on the extending arm. (N.B. Ignore the one pushing back.)  Feel the same ‘cushion’ supporting your arm as you extend. Watch for—and eliminate–bubbles in your stroke (looking down, not forward.) Finally, explore how slowly you can float your arm forward . . . and try to extend slightly farther  than usual.

Calm Your Legs

Your weightless upper body should help your lower body feel lighter than usual. Take advantage by ‘calming’ and relaxing your legs. Instead of churning them busily and noisily, let them ‘draft behind’ your upper body. Strive for the easiest, quietest, and most streamlined movement possible.

Practice Tips:

1. Before practicing the three focal points, swim a few lengths as you usually do. Count your strokes and rate your effort from 1 (Effortless) to 5 (Exhausting).  Repeat this exercise after each focal point to measure how they affect your ease and efficiency.

2. Practice each focal point by doing a series of learning/familiarizing repeats followed by a series of practicing/memorizing repeats.

• Learning/Familiarizing Swim a series of short (4 to 6 strokes, or 10 yards or less) repeats. Push off the wall, swim a short distance. Catch your breath and return to where you started. These repeats serve two purposes: (i) to break the habit of feeling obliged to complete every length you start; and (ii) to form a new habit of keen and undistracted attention.  Do at least four of these, but continue as long as you feel yourself discovering new sensations or nuances.
• Practicing/Memorizing Once you feel familiar with the new intention and sensation, swim farther—perhaps one, not more than two, pool lengths. Rest for 3 to 5 cleansing breaths after each. Continue visualizing your modified stroke as you do. Continue swimming the longer repeats as long as they feel as good or better than the shorter ones. If they don’t feel as good, resume shorter repeats to better imprint the new habit. Before progressing to the next focal point, count strokes and rate your effort. How do they compare to your former way of swimming?

This lesson is based entirely on whole-stroke practice. But most new swimmers experience find it much easier to learn Balance by mixing skill drills, like Superman Glide and Skate, with the short whole-stroke repeats described above. The next best thing to learning TI from a Certified Coach is to become Your Own Best Coach with the aid of our DVD  Total Immersion Self-Coached Workshop in 10 Lessons. Order one today. Swim better in 2012.