“Friend’s timing could not be better. Some 16 million Americans now practice yoga, a 5,000-year-old mental, physical and spiritual discipline brought to us by Indian gurus. Nowadays there aren’t just hourly classes in major American cities but also in places like Deephaven, Minn., and Hattiesburg, Miss. . . .  If yoga began as a meditation technique with poses, or asanas, devised to assist in reaching a transcendentally blissful state, it has . . . become much more about doing than being . . .  a weight-loss technique and a stress-management tool . . . an exploding market for workout clothes and equipment. “

“Friend set out to build his brand by straddling yoga’s two poles: he is trying to enhance yoga’s spiritual aspects by training teachers to speak inspirationally as they teach postures. Friend spends a great deal of time on philosophy and writes that the spiritual effects of yoga are more important than the physical ones . . . in language that draws as much from Dale Carnegie and the American idiom of self-improvement as from Hindu philosophy.”

“Friend’s yoga is based on classic hatha-yoga postures — he has refined them using what he calls ‘universal principles of alignment’ — but it can be as challenging as a student wants it to be. His classes are less about toned abs than about self-expression and enjoyment. Adjustments don’t make the poses ‘right,’ for instance, they make them “more beautiful.”

The intention to make an asana more beautiful rather than ‘right’ is one I relate strongly to. From my first day of coaching, in 1972, I had an instinct to coach esthetically more than energetically. My experience as a swimmer suggested that races were decided primarily by how long and hard you worked. My slight exposure to principles of technique left me with a sense one might need an engineering degree to really understand them.

But from literally my first hour on deck observing my team in the pool, I found myself magnetically drawn to visual impressions and to feeling that clean lines and flowing movement would produce faster times. Even as articles and clinic talks continued to describe technique like rocket science I grew steadily more convinced that that any instruction that made a swimmer look taller, sleeker or smoother deserved recall and reuse. Over the years what was initially instinctive and experimental developed into a method.

Striving continuously to make your stroke more beautiful obviously has far greater potential for engagement and uplift than striving to make it technically correct.

According to TI-Japan Head Coach Shinji Takeuchi,  the promise that draws the strongest response there is Learn to swim with more grace.  Though I’ve spent 45 years as a competitive swimmer and coach, nothing moves me more than seeing a truly beautiful stroke. Shinji’s Youtube video is both the most beautiful swimming and the most popular on the web, making it clear over a million others feel as I do.

What I take from this is that a holistic and crystallizing goal for many swimmers and triathletes would be to “Move with grace at the end of the race.”

For both Buddhism and TI, discoveries about neuroplasticity—i.e. observations that the brain is constantly rewiring itself—reveal that our practice methods create changes in brain infrastructure. When the Dalai Lama said that the purpose of life is happiness, and that purpose is achieved through training the mind, he spoke literally, not figuratively. TI has been seeking to replace the traditional belief–that you improve at swimming by training the body–with a new principle that you improve by training the brain. And that this—because it’s a form of moving meditation–is also a proven way to experience Flow, a state of almost unmatched happiness.

In an unprecedented convergence of Western science with Eastern philosophy, Dr. Richard Davidson, a University of Wisconsin professor of psychiatry, brought 32 subjects to his Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience in Madison and wired them for study. Half were Buddhist monks, each of whom had 10,000 to 50,000 lifetime hours of meditation. Half were control subjects with no previous training, who were taught the fundamentals of meditation for two weeks prior to the experiment.

All were placed in an MRI scanner and asked to think compassionately about people close to them, then about mankind in  general. The scientists reading the scans knew that optimistic and constructive thinking activates the left frontal cortex, while stress or depression activate the right frontal cortex.  When the monks meditated on compassion, they showed an average of 100 percent greater activity in the left frontal cortex; two showed increases of 700 to 800 percent. The novice meditators increased activity in that area by just 10 percent.

This study was the first to document that thinking patterns can be learned in the same way as physical skills–by stimulating cell growth in the region of the brain where that kind of neural activity occurs. The scans revealed that thousands of hours of meditation had grown significantly more robust brain circuits and, with it, the ability to generate far more “brain power” in that region. In other words, brain power is no different than muscle power—a result of targeted work that adds ‘functional tissue’ in a particular area of the physical body.

“People are not stuck at certain preset points,” Dr. Davidson says. “We can take advantage of our brain’s plasticity to enhance chosen qualities.” In another study at Massachusetts General Hospital, and MIT, brain scans showed that regular practice of mindfulness increased cortical thickness in an area of the right hemisphere that we use to sustain attention and increase sensory awareness—two essential capacities for improving a stroking pattern!

From Aspiration to Achievement

These were my most exciting and empowering insights in all the time since I began swimming in 1966 or coaching in 1972. They revealed that: (1) The mindsets and behaviors that lead to Mastery are learnable; (2) Literally every perception or action that occurs from the moment you  cross the threshold to the pool deck, or approach the shore of a lake is controlled by the brain; and (3) Any rational objective can be brought to fruition through the application of strategic mindfulness.

• If you expect to improve continuously at swimming, you will.
• If you interpret something in your environment—crowded lanes, rough water, not enough time, too-warm or too-cold water—as an opportunity to “strengthen a circuit”. . . though every other person in the pool finds it annoying or inconvenient . . . you will turn it into an opportunity.
• If you focus on finding and fixing inefficiency in your stroke, it will improve before you leave the water.
• If you decide to complete a 20-mile marathon—no matter that you can barely complete 25 yards now—you will!

How different from the wishful thinking I done for the first 25 years of my swimming life.

The TI Self-Coached Workshop has been designed upon this principle.

Positive Psychology, the study of optimal human functioning, became a recognized field only 10 years ago in reaction to the fact that 60 years of research had focused almost exclusively on mental illness while ignoring mental wellness. Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the fathers of the movement, hoped that study of individuals and groups that were thriving could “find and nurture genius and talent” and “make normal life more fulfilling.”

You can choose happiness  . . .

Two recent books (my Kindle contains copies of both) reveal helpful insights from the research. In The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, University of California psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky says that each of us has an inherited potential for happiness coded in our genes, but also considerable ability to choose happiness. She says that our inherited “happiness set point” determines just 50 percent of happiness while only 10 percent results from the impact of life circumstances. This leaves 40 percent of our capacity for happiness within our control. Like nearly all areas of human potential, this capacity remains undeveloped in most people because few of us realize our power to affect it by conscious choices and intentions. This takes us right back to the words of the Dalai Lama: “The key to happiness is in your own hands.”

. . .  but will you choose right?

Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, draws on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy and behavioral economics to show the limitations of human imagination and how it steers us wrong in our pursuit of happiness.

Malcolm Gladwell, reviewing Gilbert’s book in the New Yorker,  wrote: “What distinguishes humans from other animals is our ability to predict the future–or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. Gilbert sets out to figure why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?”

After my post about the Dalai Lama, Lawrence commented: “My motivation for learning TI freestyle is a conviction, formed after watching you and Shinji . . . that if I could reach such a level of competency I would have a new and reliable source of peace and deep happiness in my life that I could enjoy every day. In short, what drives me on with TI is the rhetorical question I ask myself whenever I view these demonstrations: Wouldn’t it be *great* to be able to do *that*?”

The Happiness Principle I take from Lawrence’s comment is that the goal he seeks is one he can never fulfill: However he swims on a given day, he’ll return the next day trying to improve on it just a little bit. And that daily striving to improve is what will ensure Flow States while he’s in the pool . . . an enduring sense of well-being that stays with him for hours after . . . and motivates him to renew his quest the next day.

While the Dalai Lama said the purpose of life is to pursue happiness, Csikszentmihalyi says our world is not designed to make us happy, but to help us grow by facing challenges.

Csikszentmihalyi describes a defining distinction between pleasure and enjoyment. Pleasure is passive, from things like a massage or warm bath, a glass of wine or a dish of ice cream.

Enjoyment requires an active contribution to the result. In the 250,000 surveys he conducted while developing Flow Theory, people reported their happiest moments came when absorbed in a mindful and exacting challenge — like improving your swimming.

This leads me to ponder the vast amount of time devoted by Americans to watching TV, the quintessential passive activity. We (along with the UK) lead the world in watching an average 28 hours weekly, a staggering 8.4 billion hours each week of lost opportunity to be doing something that could bring true and deep happiness.

Ingredients for Flow

Clear  Goals – reset goals each time one is achieved.

Focus - keen and targeted concentration

Feedback - Direct and immediate to adjust your intention or effort

Balance – between your ability level and the difficulty of your challenge

Autonomy - A sense of personal control.

Intrinsically Rewarding – you needn’t push yourself or be pushed to do it.

I was there mainly to cheer daughter Betsy in her first triathlon — at the 70.3 distance. Betsy has taught TI for quite a few  years–to infants as well as octogenarians, to  nervous, even phobic, beginners as well as English Channel aspirants.  She’s also raced in open water several times a year, since her mid-20s. Her first triathlon was

True to form I never actually saw her take a single stroke, recognizing her only as she stood and peeled off her cap after 1.2 miles in Seneca Lake. I saw her flash by on the bike as  she left the transition to start 56 miles, and never again (I rode my own bike around Geneva to pass the time.). On the 13.1-mile run I found her by working backward from the finish to the 9-mile mark, then accompanied her for the last 4 miles, a stretch during which she passed dozens of competitors — and was passed by no one. Betsy improved her position by maintaining a relaxed smooth stride and walking only briefly at water stops, while others struggled with deteriorating form or walked for long stretches.  Though it was 85 degrees with an unforgiving sun, she looked remarkably fresh.

While I felt a father’s pride there, my memorable moment came over two hours after Betsy’s finish of 7 hrs 23 minutes. Indeed more than 90 minutes after the race was declared officially over at the 8 hour mark. Several minutes apart, at about 9 hours and 30 minutes — after the finish area had been broken down and taken away, the results trailer had been packed up, the spectators had departed and when all that remained of the post-race meal were some cold, glutinous squares of pizza — two final finishers came down the home stretch. One was a man in his 50s greeted by his wife and daughter and two volunteers who held up a length of discarded boundary tape for him to break, the other a woman wearing the green jersey of “Team Z,” who cheered her final steps lustily.

At least to me they’re anonymous–I realized belatedly I should have asked their names–because they don’t show up in the results. But I thought about the mental strength it takes to be  on the course alone, with the aid stations already closed, the cheering spectators departed, the hot sun beating and miles still to go, knowing your accomplishment will receive no official notice. But this–finishing what you started for your own satisfaction–seems to me, more than the fast times of elites that receive far more attention in the tri media, the true essence of this and all endurance sports.

I watched the race leaders during parts of the run and was impressed by their light. fluid, fast strides. But  they kind of made it look easy, and enjoyed support and encouragement  all along from aid station volunteers and spectators. They also tend to be the center of gravity and attention in the sport, particularly its media.

However, the great majority of the 1000 or so athletes I watched on Sunday appeared to be running to participate in a ‘healthful fellowship’ than to prove themselves athletically. But their keenest personal focus–in those hot, draining final miles–was to finish what they started. So this is a salute to those who traversed the hardest miles to do so.

I can’t help but add that persistence itself draws on particular brain circuits and the final finisher in an endurance event grows the persistence circuit more than anyone.

Its  message can be capsulized as:

1. The purpose of life is happiness.

2. Once  basic  needs are met, happiness is determined more by the state of one’s mind than by external conditions, circumstances, or events.

3. Happiness can be achieved through the systematic training of our hearts and minds, through reshaping  attitudes and outlook.

4. The key to happiness is in your own hands.

More succinctly, the Dalai Lama advises,  before making a choice  ask: “Will this bring me happiness?”

Reading this yesterday brought to mind an experience from last November:

Kaizen Happiness

Eight months ago, I met opera director Paolo Carignani in Manhattan. We swam  at Reebok Fitness Club before Alice and I watched him conduct a performance of Aida at the Met Opera.  Paolo had transformed himself into the picture of grace with TI practice (aided by TI Coaches in  Zurich, NY, Tokyo and Barcelona. )

Paolo always practices TI before a performance, because it increases his energy (as we saw, conducting an opera demands incredible endurance–Aida lasted over 3 hours) and even makes his conducting movements more fluid!  But he was even more emphatic about the importance of a  more holistic effect: Several times he repeated “TI has such a gift for making people happy!”

Two days later, after finishing a practice in a very happy state myself, I was reading an article about a zen roshi who conducts a weekly devotion near Woodstock. He said “People seem much happier as they leave the service.”

Suddenly this confluence of happy thoughts produced the most inspiring possibility I’d ever considered — Kaizen Happiness!

As with all things Kaizen, this would result in:

1) Continuously increasing one’s knowledge of how to  create feelings of happiness; and

2) Continuously deepen the quality of happiness one feels.

If you could do both, you might one day inspire someone to say of you (as Howard Cutler wrote of the Dalai Lama): “I still had a long way to go before achieving the kind of pervasive joy that he seemed to radiate so effortlessly.”

Since that week in November I have had a clearer vision of the direction of my own swimming, and the Total Immersion program: Aim both more consistently toward the Pursuit of Happiness.

I’ll expand further on this idea  in posts to follow, but invite you to ask yourself before any practice or set: How will this bring me happiness?

1. Human brains produce new brain cells–=a process called neurogenesis.

2. Exercise increases neurogenesis.

3. Neurogenesis improves thinking.

Apart from raising, then debunking, a notion that too much exercise might hurt neurogenesis, the content of this article offers little that’s new or significant. Like many others, it missed what I think of as the most important point of all. Since exercise increases neurogenesis and neurogenesis improves thinking, the optimal situation would be to use that new improved thinking capacity to tackle new and more complex skills in your exercise.

In other words, don’t just push your body, push your brain at the same time. This lets us know that not all exercise is created equal when it comes to brain-building.

When it comes to promoting brain function, the most beneficial physical activities combine the following characteristics:

Aerobic – Ensures the brain a better supply of the oxygen and glycogen on which it runs.

Complex – Complexity (i.e. as gymnastics involves more complex skills than running) requires the brain to coordinate a ’suite’ of motor and cognitive functions, leading to Synaptic Plasticity – a richer network of connections between neurons and circuits

Kaizen – The potential for continuous long-term skill improvement means that both neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity will also continue at elevated levels than when the improvement curve levels off. This also leads to the development of “cognitive reserve’ which has been credited with increasing resistance to age-related loss of mental acuity.

Sensory Enriched – Activities that rely heavily on a well-developed sense of feel, and which provide enriched sensory feedback, promote more neurogenesis than activities you can do on auto-pilot.

Swimming provides the greatest opportunity to exploit the brain-building potential of all these characteristics.

Which means a strong case can be made that Swimming Makes you ‘Smarter.’

I’m searching for information on stretching with focus on freestyle swimming.

I’ve found in Total Immersion, the Revolutionary Way to Swim better, Faster, and Easier some exercises and two stretches for the front of the shoulder and two stretches for the back of the shoulder.

I’m definitely interested in shoulder stretches but also back and leg stretches that are appropriate. I’ve noticed with TI swimming a definite change to the muscles in my upper back, and I would like to be sure that lack of correct stretching does not cause a physical problem.
The effects or benefits of stretching are commonly thought to be relief of tightness in muscles and increase of range of motion in joints.  Over time I’ve come to view the question of stretching and its effects differently, and my view today is colored by my age – 59, a time when my muscles seem a bit more susceptible to injury or the occurrence of “hot spots” or knots.

My stretching activities now are more geared to overall health and feeling good at all times, while also–as an athlete–trying to keep my muscles ‘tuned for action.’

I rarely do the kind of swim-specific stretching I did from my teens to my 30s that was illustrated in the original TI book. This focused on muscles like the pectorals, triceps, lats. When I was younger I regularly experienced post-swim soreness in those muscles but that was because my swimming relied on higher arm-forces. By using the drag-evading and whole-body-propelling techniques of Perpetual Motion Freestyle, I no longer experience that kind of soreness.

I deal with more general tension–not uncommon in middle-aged-athletes–by warming up more gently and thoroughly before a practice. Also by having one or two practices a week done entirely at ‘recovery pace’ and devoted to higher levels of technique.

I often get knots, particularly in the muscles around my left scapula, because I tore the rotator cuff in that shoulder in an auto accident in 1996 so those muscles compensate to keep my shoulder stable. I need occasional massage, adjustments and acupuncture to break open those knots and relieve tension.

But virtually all of my prior active stretching has been replaced by yoga, which feels both holistic and integrative in a way those stretches were not. Yoga not only keeps me feeling more supple–in my spine and joints as well as in muscles. It also keeps me strong in an integrative way. That is, rather than working on isolated muscles, it strengthens them as they work–in combination and by using them as I do outside of yoga.

Finally, it brings the calming and centering effects of meditation. I’m certain the combination of yoga and swimming is among the most healthful things I will do for the rest of my life.

I was involved in the planning of the Yoga for Swimming and More DVD with Susan Jacque who is one of my teachers, and can strongly recommend it both to complement swimming and as a way to become acquainted with yoga.

Still, it’s definitely a marathon. What’s a marathon? Well it could be 26.2 miles as in running, but not likely. FINA, the world governing body of swimming, defines any swim of 10km or longer as a marathon – applying the accepted 4-to-1 conversion of run-to-swim mileage. 400 meters of swimming is considered equivalent to a mile of running. Thus 10km of swimming equals 40km of running, which, conveniently, is about a mile short of the running marathon.

In 2002, I swam MIMS as healthful observation of having passed the half-century mark the year before. I set two explicit goals for the swim: (1) To complete an ‘ultra-endurance’ swim with distinctly ordinary training and feel no distress during or after the swim; and (2) To finish the swim in fewer than the estimated 27,000 strokes taken by TI Coach Don Walsh in swimming MIMS the previous year.

I trained for MIMS with no increase in the modest training volume I was doing at the time – averaging about 15km per week. Most other entrants were swimming two to three times as much. My focus was entirely on maximizing my ’swimming economy’ – not just stroke efficiency but profound relaxation. I seldom exceeded a HR of 110 in the 3+ months I trained – trying to ‘program’ my body to rely almost entirely on what was then an ample supply of body fat (I weighed about 20lbs more then, than now) for endurance fuel.

Though MIMS is a race, I swam it in 2002 as a ‘tourist’ – enjoying the sights and experience – pausing frequently to pose for photos with noteworthy landmarks in the background. I completed the swim in 8h53m, 18th of 21 individuals and relays, and – though I was severely dehydrated at the end – never felt significant fatigue and felt completely recovered the next day. Indeed, after drinking 64 oz of water on the 2 hour drive to New Paltz from Manhattan, I felt surprisingly fresh that night.

I swam MIMS again in 2006, with a slightly more competitive orientation. I had trained more intensively leading up to that swim — but had not trained in any particular way for a marathon distance, as my goals that summer were to win USMS national championships and break 55-59 age group records in 1 to 2 mile open water swims.  Again I felt good throughout and experienced little residual fatigue or soreness in the days that followed.

Last year I swam an English Channel relay with training buddies Dave Barra and Willie Miller, mainly to enjoy a ’shared Channel experience’  and to know the Channel first-hand for an intended solo attempt this year.  (Read a series of blogs describing the Dover experience and my motivation for being there, starting with this entry.)

In February I relocated to San Diego for three months of training, in preparation for a planned series of four marathon-distance swims – Maui Channel, Tampa Bay, Catalina Channel and culminating in English Channel. I chronicled the training in a series of posts that started with this entry.

I swim Maui Channel on March 17. It was an absolutely joyful experience (complete with whale and dolphin sightings) shared with my English Channel relay mates Dave Barra and Willie Miller. We completed a 10-mile swim from Lana’i to Maui in rough seas (small craft warnings and alerts of ‘extreme’ surf conditions) in 4h55m. We swam virtually the entire distance 3-abreast, often synchronizing our strokes–something we’d practiced for countless hours in Minnewaska and Awosting lakes at home in New Paltz.  The focus required to synchronize that way makes the distance and time fly. We all felt great in the final mile.

On April 17, Dave and I swam the 24-mile Tampa Bay Marathon, which turned into the most difficult swim I’d ever attempted. I started with a queasy stomach, and had difficulty digesting my planned feeds (Hammer Nutrition’s Perpetuem) beginning in the fifth hour.  During the eighth hour I felt as if my tank was completely empty, an experience radically different from the way my MIMS had gone. This was extremely puzzling, inasmuch as this was the first marathon for which I’d done marathon training.  I finished the swim in 11h46m but was utterly drained in the final miles and felt on the verge of physical collapse afterward.

In the days that followed I understood why. When my queasy stomach, extreme diarrhea and fatigue continued unabated five days after the swim, I sought a diagnosis from Suzanne Atkinson, a TI coach and emergency room physician who was helping conduct a TI coach training session in Coral Springs FL that week. Suzanne told me I most likely had a stomach virus since the day of the swim.
Suzanne explained that during such a virus, the intestines don’t absorb fluids or nutrients as well as usual, meaning that I had most likely become dehydrated and depleted by the 8th hour. I felt better about my swim, particularly that I’d had the will and efficiency to complete the final five miles (in rough conditions) and nearly four hours in that state.

Even so, in the weeks that followed I felt a distinct lack of enthusiasm for continuing my marathon quest. Even before my energy gave out I had not been enjoying the Tampa Bay swim. In part because my stomach was unsettled, and occasionally nauseous, but also because of the lack of  sensory stimulus. The only two noteworthy features in that swim are two bridges, at 18 and 21 miles. Apart from that the only thing to look at all day is the boat accompanying you.

That day I discovered I lacked the particular kind of mental stamina that allows one to swim solo, next to a boat, for a very long day.  I hadn’t experienced that kind of – not boredom exactly, but absence of diversion – during MIMS because the scenery was highly visible, differentiated, engaging and constantly changing.  Besides the famed NY skyline, and countless other features, you pass under 13 bridges, 9 of them close together in the Harlem River, which is otherwise a pretty uneventful stretch, with mostly industrial  backdrops.

As well, for the final 18 or so miles of MIMS, I had an on-and-off experience of being in a race, with other individuals or relays close enough to pace with or try to pass. In Tampa Bay I had that experience for the first 3 hours or so, but the final 9 hours were lonely.

In early May, about three weeks after that swim, I decided that the Maui and Tampa Bay swims were going to be my full complement of marathons for 2010, and I’m undecided whether I might revisit my earlier ambition to swim the Catalina and English Channels in a future year. The initial and most compelling reason was that the TI business had taken a serious hit to revenues during my 3-month marathon sabbatical and it was clear we could not sustain further diversion of my energy, attention or physical presence to train for and swim two more marathons over the ensuing four months.

But the second reason, which became increasingly clear  as May gave way to June, was that I also lacked the appetite to continue marathon training for the additional 16 weeks needed to stay marathon ready for an English Channel attempt in late August.  And that self-discovery, I now recognize, has everything to do with the keen interest I’ve developed this year in how every aspect of swim training — indeed every aspect of life — has the potential to be impacted by conscious choices about cultivating  brain circuits.

In my next several posts I’ll expand on this idea and how it has come to influence so many aspects of where I devote my energy and attention.

Stay tuned.

Struggle is essential to improving your brain’s circuitry. In order to get a  skill circuit to fire optimally, you must first fire it sub-optimally. When you do it inefficiently, you become aware of your errors and have a chance to fix them. Mistakes increase your attention.

Even the swimming you practice after improving should still be effortful — a precisely calibrated kind of effort rather than brute force. Try smarter not harder.

Better skills happen not by trying harder indiscriminately, but by trying harder in thoughtful, purposeful, targeted ways. Here’s a typical sequence of an improvement-minded swimmer working with a new Stroke Thought:

1.    Choose a sensation to create or experience.

2.    Slightly miss the mark on your first try.

3.    Analyze what happened and adjust your intention.

4.    Try again.

5.   Compare the 2nd trial with the first.

6.   Try again, pursuing the more promising path.

Are we ever satisfied with our first effort at a new skill or tweak? Indeed are we ever satisfied with our 100th try?  Not if we’re seeking Continuous Improvement.