Family, spirituality and art.

Today was special, every day I ferry my youngest grandson, Louis, to school. This morning he told me he had to go to St Mary's Church and not to school. When we arrived the whole school was there, plus some mums and nanas and one or two dads. Louis wanted me to stay, so I did, even though I had planned something else. It was a lovely service in a picturesque, old medieval, gothic church and I left uplifted. Between Jesus and the Buddha there are no disagreements.
The fine weather continues, and afterwards I walked the dogs for an hour, did an hours gardening and then drove to the pool, arriving at one O'clock. It was quiet again, probably people preferring to enjoy the sunshine in their lunch break, so there is a lane to myself once more.
Feeling a little tired and deferred deciding what to do until I had warmed up. Sometimes the tiredness is mental rather than physical and disappears after warm up. Today was like that, on other days, when the tiredness persists, I do less and sometimes nothing at all. Swimming meditatively requires treating rest and recovery periods as equally important aspects of the meditation. Rest is passive meditation and swimming active meditation, and this starts before the first stroke. Ideally the swim ought to be preceded by 20 minutes or so of sitting meditation, but this isn't easy to do in a public baths. Instead I compose myself whilst changing and showering, not being in a rush is important. Then I start my warm up by practising the breathing recovery that I will use between repetitions. This entails calm, meditative, breathing for a minute or so to settle the mind before pushing off on my warm up swim.
Today I swam two 100 IMs really slowly to warm up, with about a minute or so's rest between them. As mentioned in earlier posts, the active meditation focusses on the use of good technique, the feel of the water flowing round the body, the awareness of the breath and of the sensory messages from the environment. Just because the warm up is swum very slowly doesn't alter the attention that is given to it.
Because I felt OK after the warm up, I swam a further 8 x 100 IM's, stretching and putting more effort into the various strokes, whilst still keeping mentally relaxed and trying to swim without making a splash. The routine of breathing rests and breathing swims is very calming. It is also vital not to swim tired. A tired stroke is a poor stroke and will imprint poor technique on the mind/body. To warm down I swim 200 metres backstroke, rested and then a further 200 freestyle. Both very easily.
Tomorrow is a running day, but this evening I took my oldest granddaughter, Alice, to the New Theatre in Hull to see Northern Ballet's production of "Beauty and the Beast". It was stunning, one of those occasions where the actuality exceeds the anticipation. Alice will be in India for her Birthday in two weeks and this was my gift to her before she leaves on Friday.
So today was a lovely, special day, that I shall always cherish.