Warrior and Water

I have been a yoga teacher for the past five years, and a dedicated practitioner for considerably longer and have long known the powerful impact yoga has on my life and the ways in which it helps me stay balanced and grounded. I have only been swimming outside for the past three years, but during that time I have given much thought to the ways in which these two modalities offer similar opportunities for mindfulness, relaxation and joy.

There may be more similarities between yoga and wild swimming than you think.

Both require dedication and consistency

While an occasional dip will make you feel awake, alive and zingy, consistent exposure over time will enable you to acclimatise to the cold water. Likewise, stepping on the mat every now and then is great. But to arrive in a place where your yoga feels easeful, nourishing, expansive and grounding, takes time and practice. It’s not about what your yoga looks look and everything about how it feels. It takes a consistent practice to be able to ease into your downward dog effortlessly. To acclimatise to cold water also takes time. There are no short cuts. Little and often is the best route to establishing new habits, deepening experiences and developing new neural pathways. To get the greatest benefits you must give the greatest attention, time and energy. Allowing your practices to become daily or weekly rituals, prioritising them and embracing small, step by step progress – this is the way to building solid resources and deep anchors.

Both increase mindfulness

Both yoga and swimming encourage you to be fully in the moment. There’s not too much space for chattering thoughts when you are immersing yourself in cold water. In that moment, it’s just you and the lake. Similarly, yoga eases us into a space where alignment, breath and proprioception sharpen our focus and blur out extraneous mental noise.

Creating the conditions for mindfulness is arguably more important now than ever. Life is fast and frantic. Many of us are experiencing overwhelm and burnout, juggling so many balls and finding little respite from the bombardment of information and media. Finding ways to press pause on life’s demands, to create moments of stillness and presence, is crucial for our mental health and physical wellbeing.

Both yoga and swimming offer an opportunity to discover who you are beneath the layers of labels and roles and stories which we all carry. There is no hiding from yourself on the mat. Or in the water. In both these spaces we are exposed and vulnerable – just us and our bodies, stepping bravely into something very real, very truthful and very illuminating.

Both teach the power of the breath

You only need to wade slowly into a cold lake to become immediately and intimately aware of your breath. Using it, harnessing it and controlling it are important tools for easing into cold water. Likewise, yoga without breath awareness is arguably just stretching. It is the utilisation of specific breathing techniques as well as cultivating a meditative focus on the rhymical inflow and outflow of our inhalation and exhalation, which shifts our yoga practice to the next level. Breath awareness can offer invaluable feedback data about our bodies, emotions and stress levels. Connection to our breath can help us navigate strong emotions, flux and change, anxiety and overwhelm. And not only is our breath a useful interval GPS, but we can also consciously use it and manipulate it to create desired states, using it to calm our nervous system, energise a sluggish mind and wake up our bodies. Breath awareness is extremely useful when getting into water – breathing our way through the initial exposure and paying attention to the breath’s subtle signals about how our bodies are adapting to the cold gives us critical feedback about how our bodies are coping and when we should get out.  

Both connect you to community

Whenever I arrive at my regular lake spot and see someone else's neat pile of clothes, a hanging dry robe, a waiting flask, it fills me with joy. The connection between wild swimmers is supportive and inclusive. On the jetties and lake shores all are welcome. All bodies, in all moods in all states of undress. I have enjoyed countless conversations and cups of tea with swimming strangers, delighting in the buzz of swimming, talking about each other’s swimsuits and kit, about the sliver of moon, the light on the water, the sunset. And just as many times we’ve not talked at all, just changed and breathed it in in companionable silence. In the same way, yoga encourages connection to other souls. While it is perfectly possible to experience both yoga and swimming as solitary adventures, there is a certain and specific joy in enjoying it with other like-minded folk and to encourage and support each other as we experience the bliss of shared experience.

Both call for stewardship, care and compassion

Many people are unaware that there is a lot more to yoga then bendy postures. The path of yoga is a holistic lifestyle which begins with the Yamas and Niyamas, guidelines for a fulfilling, happy and connected life. The very first of these, Ahimsa, refers to the ethical principle of not causing harm to other living things. This foundational element of the 8 limbs of yoga encourages us to be compassionate – towards others, ourselves and the planet. In the same way, responsible swimming calls for us to be attentive to our impact on the environment. This means leaving no trace of your swim. It means being respectful of landowners, wildlife and other water users. It means educating yourself about cross-contamination ensuring that you are not unwittingly contributing to the spread of invasive species. Both yoga and swimming ask us to dial up our self-awareness, placing care and compassion at the heart of our practices.

Both increase mental wellbeing

Ask any open water swimmer, or yoga practitioner, and you’ll hear unanimously that they feel better mentally since taking up swimming or getting on their mat. Anecdotally, there are thousands of passionate testimonials about how wild swimming and yoga have eased depression and anxiety and changed people’s negative perception of themselves and their lives. It has long been known that yoga is effective at calming and centring the mind and many studies have demonstrated the benefits of yoga on mental, as well as physical health, with organisations such as the Minded Institute conducting pioneering research into the efficacy of yoga therapy and successfully campaigning to get yoga available on prescription.

The research on cold water swimming is also catching up with the lived experience of so many people, and more and more studies are showing the multitude of health benefits of outdoor swimming and its ability to lift mood, reduce feelings of anxiety and overwhelm, reduce inflammation and maybe even boost the immune system.

In fact, so powerful is swimming on mental health, it is common for swimmers to become evangelical in their newfound passion, talking to anyone and everyone about how amazing it makes them feel.

For many though, myself included, it is difficult to pick out the one reason we swim. Swimming is a holistic, intentional way of life, a conscious choice to step away from the hectic-ness of life for a while and immerse yourself in nature. It is all of the above and more. But, like with yoga, at its root it's just you and your amazing body. Just you and your mindful breath. Just you in this miraculous present moment.