The Conscious Swimmer’s Top 5 Books of 2022

I read a lot. But what is a lot? It is a question I needed answering. And the only way I could answer it was by keeping count. At the beginning of 2022, I decided to document how many books I read by taking a photo of the cover of each one. What a journey. The tally stands at 38 at the time of writing this blog. I can’t promise I won’t read anymore books before the end of the year :). Come with me as I share with you my absolute favourite reads of 2022.

I hope this will inspire you to read more and document your reading journey along the way.

I like to try new authors, themes and genres. I have my favourite authors, of course, but I want to keep experiencing new voices and tones. A good example of this was the book, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. His voice is so fresh and different. I loved it.  I read this book on my summer holiday on the beautiful Danish Island of Bornholm. A perfect combination.

Reading is an existential joy for me. Take this away and I would struggle to find meaning. It sounds serious and it is. Luckily I grew up in a family of readers and it was perfectly normal to sit and read for hours on end. Reading has value. Its currency, in the world, is being able to have interesting conversations, connection to others and imaging a world beyond our own.

Books, like music, are deeply personal. This is me sharing my love of books with you. I understand if my favourite books don’t resonate with you. You can find a full list of the books I read in 2022 at the end of this blog. In the comments section, please let me know what your favourite reads of the year have been. I would love to know.

The Year Started off with these two books - they found me - in Malta

Shortly after new year’s I was in Malta in an Airbnb that had a very interesting book shelf. I was amazed at the gems there. You never know where and when you will find good books. Two books from the ‘Malta’ shelf is where I must begin my 2022 story.

The first one was Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore. A thick book that gave me the world of Japanese culture and thinking. It is a fascinating book. I loved the fantasy elements in the book, and the Japanese folk lore. It weaved me in and out of the superstitious landscape that builds some lives. It whispered to the possibility of the year ahead and that anything might be possible. Isn’t that the way all new years should start?

Don’t worry I won’t mention every book I’ve read, even though I’m tempted to, I’m so excited to share them all with you.

And the second ‘Malta find’ was JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass. It gripped me from the first word. Sitting in the living room with the view of the tumultuous blue sea before me, I read about the tumultuous life of someone who changed his mind in the most dangerous way possible and how the people meant to protect him, killed him.  In this book you see not a perfect man, but a man struggling with the world his predecessors had left him. JFK decided to do what no President after him has ever done, try and broker peace for the good of the people who suffer from war. Peace is not profitable and the “industrialised military complex”, as Roosevelt named it, wouldn’t allow it. The book gives insight into the workings of the White House that were a real eye opener.

Oliver Stone called it, “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance.” 

My Favourite Books of 2022

So, on to my favourite books of 2022. A picture of their covers appears in the collage above. These books took me to places I would never have imagined , placed me into alternate realities and brought me back a changed human being. Grateful!

#1 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

This book grabbed me by the scruff of my soul and shook me to the core. I read this book in two days, it would not let me go. I was possessed. In my opinion, these are the best books. I cried multiple times while reading this book. The beauty of the prose and the story is unmatched in my mind. Delia Owens tells a story from the heart of the female experience; with all its trials, tribulations, connections, beauty, love and violence. As a Zoologist and conservationist, Owens paints this book with the beauty of the natural world she so loves. It is breathtaking.

This book touched me deep down, in a place I rarely go, yet a place that is still accessible after the death of my sister. A place of connection to the suffering and hardship of another and their resolution of it.  It filled me with a warmth I can still feel now.  5/5 - Fiction

#2 The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

A beautifully written book. A living tree almost. Through this book I learnt about Cypress’ very difficult and painful past. The backdrop to this beautifully told story is the love between two people from opposite sides of the Greek/Turkish divide.

Interestingly, part of the story is told from the viewpoint of a fig tree. I loved this touch of genius. The tree is female and is able to say all the things the human characters cannot or may not say. This believable living presence speaks to hatred, intolerance and how the environment suffers when there is war.

This book touches so many aspects of what it means to be human, good and bad. It left me wanting more. This book is a book of remembrance and hope. It gets a 4.8/5 from me. Fiction

#3 Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

This book made the biggest impression on me this year. It changed me the most. Or more importantly, it validated some convictions I already had. I wrote Feminism - Where to now? as a result of reading this book. The book deals with data bias in a world designed by men. It speaks into the way women are “forgotten” by men and big data. It is candid and holds no punches in telling the story of how half the population are still seen as a minority by the male world that designs things from smart phones to breast pumps.

The take away from this book is to question everything we see and use by asking, “Was a women consulted in its design?”

It may not always be intentional, but the impact of the default male mentality goes a long way. It creates fallacies and errors of thinking that could be easily corrected by removing the default male from the equation and sex-disaggregate data to see how women experience the world. This book is a look into the ways women are forgotten and it is alarming.

This book is a MUST read for all my male friends and colleagues.  4.6/5 Non-Fiction

 #4 Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis

How do you tell the tale of a world without Capitalism? And how do you do it convincingly? Well, you create a wormhole to a parallel universe, that’s how. The former Greek minister of Finance has written a delightfully light novel that deals with a deep and very serious issue: If not Capitalism, what then? What now for the world? If you cannot imagine what the world would look like without Capitalism, then this is the book for you. It will provide a mental framework to think and talk about life without Capitalism. It is a great conversational piece at parties, let me tell you.

Just like Huxley and Orwell, who painted a picture of a future that has mostly come true, Varoufakis has painted a new and brave world in his novel. It is a world I would like to live in. His novel helps to resolve issues like, social and colonial injustice and our current climate crisis.

This book reads uncomfortably, because the concepts it proposes are so unfamiliar to the Global North mind and hence why it is essential reading.  4.5/5 Fiction CLI-FI

 #5 Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

We all feel it, don’t we? That the world is in trouble. The cause might be unclear, but we know that it has something to do with this constant need to grow: grow sales, markets and profits. Growth is only good to a point. Indeterminate growth for children, for instance, would lead to ill-health and death. Indeterminate growth of the economy is leading us in the same direction, to ill-health of the planet and extinction. Infinite growth is a myth and it’s hurting our beloved planet.

Less is More explains in the first half of the book how this concept of exponential growth was born from Capitalism’s trecherous past. Hickel pulls no punches. ‘Growthism’, as Hickel calls it, is rooted in injustice, colonialism and slavery. The book highlights the role growthism has played in bringing us to the brink of environmental collapse.

The second half of the book speaks to what degrowth is, why we shouldnt be afraid of it and how degrowth can bring the world back to a place of abundance. He talks about using resources to meet human need, not shareholders greed. It mentions logical and healthy steps the world needs to take to step away from the dangerous edge we are on and start healing the earth and its people. It will take courage and vision, but this book points the way.   

This book was recommended to me by Cecile van Oppen, see her talk at the Love Tomorrow Conference here.

Happy holidays and may Santa bring you the book of your dreams.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The person who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin

 Books Read in 2022 in Chronological Order

1.      Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

2.      JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass

3.      Truly, Madly, Guilty by Liane Moriarty

4.      That Glimpse of Truth, 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Written by David Miller

5.      Blog to Win Business by Henneke Duistermaat https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/

6.      Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

7.      Findings by Kathleen Jamie

8.      Creative Writing by Teach Yourself

9.      Story by Robert McKee

10.   The Secret River by Kate Greenville

11.   The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

12.   Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel

13.   The Road to Jerusalem by Jan Guillou

14.   The Knight Templar by Jan Guillou

15.   Birth of the Kingdom by Jan Guillou

16.   Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegat

17.   Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

18.   The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

19.   On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

20.   Human Kind by Rutger Bregman

21.   Why we Swim by Bonnie Tsui

22.   The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson

23.   How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

24.   The Pious Ones by Joseph Berger

25.   Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

26.   Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis

27.   The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Cathering Gray

28.   Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

29.   Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

30.   Brave New World by Aldus Huxley

31.   The Island of the Trees by Elif Shafak

32.   The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

33.   Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

34.   The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

35.   Less is More by Jason Hickel

36.   The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

37.   A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

38.   Freedom to Think by Susie Alegre

Feminism, Where to Now?

For me, Feminism is so much more than the advocating of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. It is about acknowledging that women make up half of the world’s population and that their viewpoint is not a minority or niche view. It is about knowing and respecting a women’s perspective, getting rid of the male default and empowering woman to lead from the feminine. A young lady, who died almost six hundred years ago, started me on my journey to feminism. I realise I still have a long way to go on this journey, and I’m not perfectly versed in all its aspects, so please forgive me for the errors of male thought you might find within.  

On the 30 May 1431 Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake as a Heretic. She was burnt alive in the old marketplace in Rouen, France. The weather was fine that day, slightly overcast, no wind, and a very pleasant nineteen degrees Celsius. A small mercy as the flames did not stray from their task of killing her. A wind would surely have delayed her misery by letting the flames dance in and out of her death. The winds of change have been blowing for a long time now in the arena of Feminism and the injustices visited upon women. Joan’s story faned my own flames towards the upholding of women’s rights. Yes, i am a Feminist.

When I first read her story as a twelve-year-old in a 1950’s book called 100 Great lives, it moved me deeply. Only 7 women appeared in this book, spot the problem right there.  I was utterly captivated by her story and I must have read it at least twenty times. Every time I would marvel at her courage because women were valued even less then then they are today. She had to put herself at the mercy of an all-male church to make herself heard. In fact, there is a story of her waiting doggedly for three days to speak to the archbishop who initially wouldn’t speak to her. Only after her persistence wore him down, did he speak to her, presumably to get rid of her. Would that have been a man’s experience?

Once she had won three battles against the English, she was a hero. She had a place of honour next to Charles at his coronation in Reims in 1429.

Despite all this, it was the more “sinister” characteristics she displayed that dismayed the men and led them to betray her. She wore men’s clothes in the form of a soldier’s uniform, what else on the battlefield you might ask? Not a dress for sure. Women in today’s army are still struggling with getting women specific clothes, read about it here from Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women.   

Joan’s aggressive independence did not agree with King Charles’ court and so she fell out of favour.

At her heresy trial, she was accused of having blasphemed by wearing men’s clothes, of acting upon visions that were demonic (which were pronounced as visions of God only two years earlier), and (here it comes,) of refusing to submit her words and deeds to the church because she claimed she would be judged by God alone.  So basically, she was burnt for having strong convictions, dress sense and not ageeing to the mansplaining of the church.

The story of Joan of Arc speaks into the narrative that women are only useful until they are not. It highlights the imbalance of power between men and women and it shows us the injustice that women have been subjected to for longer than we can remember. A woman who speaks her mind is a danger to the established order, especially if it’s about her own body(look at America today), or about military campaigns in Joan’s time.

So where does Feminism go to from here? What is it and what is it not? How does the past inform the future? I think, first and foremost we have to stop thinking that Feminism is some aggressive military style attack on Masculism. It is the story of women, what they face and how they suffer and how we must stand up and recognise women for who they are, half of the population.

So, what is Feminism and what is it not?

Feminism, what it isn’t

The Oxford dictionary defines feminism as: “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.”  I think a man must have written this definition because it falls short in so many ways.

Firstly,Advocacy suggests a sponsorship of some sort. Something that may be removed in the future, when no longer in favour by the men in charge.

Secondly, human rights are women’s rights, and vice-versa, period. It does not require any positioning of equality between the sexes to be true. In fact, women’s rights have suffered for this very reason.

No Equality because of the Default Male

There is no equality between the sexes. Not in boardrooms, big data or bathrooms. The presumption is of the default male - the male perspective is universal. Women’s hearts, feet and bladders have been victims of the default male for centuries. Male default is everywhere. It is in the way we make cars and treat heart attacks. It’s in the way we lead meetings and programme big data algorithms. It is even in the design of breast pumps.

The presumption that the male view is default has never been a favourite among women, and rightly so, but there is a good reason why it shouldn’t be a favourite among men either - namely, the survival of the planet.

Feminism, What It Is!

Women are not men! It seems obvious, but it’s true. Women experience heart attacks differently from men. They experience the boardroom differently from men and access to bathrooms differently from men. They think differently from men. They are not men.

It is knowing that women are half of the population. Yes, that’s right, women make up half the world’s population. There is no M for minority in 50%, yet their experiences still seem to be niche. This has to stop. If we want to change the conversation, men will have to accept this fact. The male propaganda machine that has been turning for centuries seems to have also led women to believe the fallacy that they are in the minority.

It is about learning and knowing a women’s perspective. We know enough about men: their habits, thoughts and diseases. We know very little about women, because women have been mainly excluded from studies because they are either seen as the default male or are too complicated to study due to their hormone cycles. I kid you not, have a read here how a chocolate study excluded women. We need to put money and effort into knowing about women: studying women and asking women what their needs are.

It is empowering women to lead from the Feminine. I have worked in big corporate environments and spoken to women in leadership positions. Some feel a pressure to be like men and lead like men. Women are not men. They should feel free to lead from their core values and femininity. Collaboration might be used instead of competition, inclusion instead of separation. Working towards fulfilling needs instead of greed.

It is fighting against injustice. Feminism is fighting against injustice. Not only the injustice of having no or little say over their own bodies, education, marital status, lives, thoughts and feelings. But Feminism is also fighting against the injustice of war, corruption and climate change, because women are more likely to be the victims of all three . Feminism is pluralistic, it encompasses so much more than just being female and it represents most of the injustice that faces us today, including climate injustice.

The world needs feminism to help balance the scales of injustice and return the world to a fair and equitable place.

Feminism is the future.

What is feminism asking for?

Feminism is asking for what she has always been due; a world that gives equal emphasis to a woman’s perspective and experience as it does to a man’s.

Perhaps this is the definition of Feminism we all need to adopt. The world has a chance of survival if men started asking, “What does a woman perceive and experience?”

Joan of Arc may have died in battle if led to live a full life, but that would’t have been her first choice. I think she preferred a life of peace. She was sensitive to the well-being of others and couldn’t stand seeing her native Lorraine suffer under the Bourguignons.

“I ask, first of all, to make peace. If one is not prepared to make that peace, I am quite ready to fight for it.” - Joan of Arc, The Maid of Orleans 1412 - 1431

What are you prepared to fight for?

Individualism: The Story of Our Demise

Echo and Narcissus, John William Waterhouse, 1903.

“IT IS WORSE, MUCH WORSE, THAN YOU THINK. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all...”

This is the opening sentence of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. Your extinction is imminent. And no, it won’t be an asteroid or the dying of the sun that ends your sojourn around the sun.

It will be mine, yours – every human’s doing. It will be in the near future, within 60-100 years. But especially man’s doing, the richest 10% in the global north actually. Read 10% richest as white males. It will be entirely our doing and yet these same rich white men are doing little or nothing to change course. Our extinction is coming, and it isn’t going to be a merry-go-round.  The climate crisis will punish us with all the ferocity with which we have fed it. And we have fed it a hell of lot. In the last three decades we have emitted more carbon into the biosphere than in all of human history before that.

The consequences? Well, they are well known and have been for a while already, since the 1970’s, believe it or not? I could bore you with the details but you would switch off because “you’ve heard it all before.” You are numb to the glum news of climate change. You feel that you cannot change the world because you are only one person.

It’s true that you are one person, an individual. And here is where I think part of the problem is. We have been made to believe in the Global North the lie that our lives are outside of nature, removed by double glazed windows and the screens of our phones from the whole. The world is out there and I am in here. I am all that matters. We have been made to believe that we are somehow outside of the laws of nature and that our individual needs matter most, above the health of the earth itself. Did I just write that? Yes, I did. Like gods? Yes, like gods, we feel we are beyond the reach of the climate change we have orchestrated and authored into future time. We believe our choices are beyond scrutiny because we feel access to our individual freedoms is an inalienable right.  

It feels like the story of Narcissus, doesn’t it? He loved himself so much he drowned in his own reflection. I feel that we have entered the end game and we will all happily drown in our own reflections.

I don’t like what I see in the reflection.

It will be very inconvenient, our extinction. Leading on from last week’s post, on the one hand, I think we have to embrace inconvenience to protect the planet and our very existence from ourselves, and on the other, it’s about a collective, collaborative, and non-individualistic response to the crisis. Something which the Global North is ill equipped to do. Why is this so? Well, it is ill-equipped to think of itself as a whole because, through Capitalism, it has come to understand that the needs of the individual are more important than the needs of the whole - read planet. This is a very dangerous point of view given our current circumstance. In a sense it is not a natural view and has never been natural but has been evoked and provoked by the history of capitalism.

How did we get here, to this place of radical individualism and climate breakdown? Individualism is a symptom of the disease. The disease being capitalism and its need for constant growth. This vehicle is elitist, never forget that. It was created by Lords who couldn’t share any part of the vast pie of natural resources with peasants. The Lords wanted it all for themselves, very much like we see today happening. Remember 40% of the world’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population. Let that sink in.

To be honest, we got here, and this is not to try and make you feel any better, not by your or my doing. But we are perpetuating the breakdown of the earth. We are responsible for what is happening now.

 It started with something called enclosure in the twelfth century in England. Enclosure was the cruel appropriation of common land and unfair practice of depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege to those said common grounds. It unlawfully took away access to common land.  Rent was charged on the enclosed land and peasants were now pitted against each other to produce the best yields from the land allotted to them or lose the right to work the land. Lords found that this doubled and tripled production yield. In addition, the large amounts of food produced on the appropriated land was kept from the peasants, creating what we today call artificial scarcity. There was enough to go around, by near poverty produced the best results.

Once there was no land left to appropriate in England, the British Empire cast its net and system wider – colonialism and the slave trade being perfect vehicles to extract maximum value with minimum cost to British life locally. By the way, The British Empire has never internalized the costs of its colonialist extraction and slavery. It has not paid one cent out in retribution to those countries and peoples affected. A pathetic “sorry” from the Crown is not enough, never ever.

When Both of those horrors of injustice were outlawed, capitalism had to find new “markets”.

Luckily, it found it in the Industrial revolution and the two wars to really kick start things.  Christmas and war have always been good for business. Peasants then, and workers now, are pitted against each other to produce more for less in the interest of capital growth. The old adage of conquer and divide comes to mind. Capitalism and its brokers have done a great job in doing both.

Let me be clear. Injustice is the engine purring underneath the hood of capitalism. It has tried to look beautiful with its bright, dynamic and colourful paint. But that is just an image, a coverup sold by Lords and Ladies and marketing firms. The world, climate and people have suffered to get us to where we are today.     

Becoming wage slaves has separated us from the land, the planet and each other. It has divested us from responsibility through proxy. We have no idea how things are made or what damage that making has on the earth because, by proxy, we hand over that responsibility with the money we pay for it. The pain and torture of the Turkey on the Christmas table is absent when we hand over the money for it in the shops. It does not interest us how it got to the shop shelf. The taste is all that counts. By proxy we let the global corporations “administer” the world and its resources for us. Isn’t it ironic that Capitalism has finally got its cake and eaten it. Capitalism has wage slaves who are enslaved to buying its mostly useless products. That’s what we call win-win. Individualism is a symptom of the disease.

Collaboration, breaking open the enclosed commons and non-individualism or anti-individualism is the way forward. A way to heal the world from our current predicament. Thinking of others before ourself should be the mantra. Actually, thinking of the planet before ourselves is more specific.

The planet belongs to everybody, not to an elite few who see it as property and worthy only of extraction and exploitation.

If individual freedom is the high watermark of our modern civilization, it will also be our downfall. The thing that will damn us to the climate hell we are shortly going to face. Believing that your choices are sacred, not to be challenged and that you are free to do and buy what you want is the rust that is eroding our planet. Individual freedom is the reflection in which we, like Narcissus, will drown. The selfishness with which the richest people in the world walk around with is disgusting and exhausting, not only for them but for the planet. We are exhausting the planet at a rate that will leave nothing untouched.

Choose NOT to satisfy your needs and realise that you are free because the air you breathe is still breathable.

Inconvenience and Why it Matters in a Climate Crisis

The answer for most people to the question, “Am I willing to be inconvenienced and uncomfortable,” is no. A plain simple no. I think learning to live with inconvenience is divesting ourselves from the slavery of Capitalism.

This is what I have been thinking about - will the world be better off with more inconvenience? I think so. I think that if there was more inconvenience, the world would be a more present and mindful place, something we sorely need at this moment in time. The Anthropocene time. Extinction is coming if we don’t change and embrace inconvenience. Say yes to inconvenience.

Through Capitalism the world has become so convenient. By this I mean, one can purchase meat at any time of the day, you can buy avocados and bananas year-round, even though they are seasonal fruits. You can fly to anywhere in the world, visiting exotic places. You can make purchases online and have them delivered the next day. There is nothing that seems to stand in the way of our convenience in the Global North. We always have running water and electricity for example. We cannot imagine our lives or a time when that has not been so.

We get annoyed when we can’t have something we want. We call it bad customer service, or a rubbish supply chain. We rarely value anything that takes time to make or get.

So, in a sense I think convenience is the currency of capitalism and not money. Convenience is the manifestation of the madness of Capitalism.

Convenience speaks about extraction and exploitation. The burger joint that is conveniently open 24/7, allowing us to eat their junk any time of the day. This convenience is at the expense of the people and resources it has to exploit to maintain this convenience? Convenience is the vehicle of our destruction. It wants to service us day and night. Those big global companies know this and make sure that things are as convenient as possible. It keeps us lazy and stops us from asking the real questions; At what cost did this convenience come? Why is something that comes from half way around the world cheaper than something made locally? Surely you have had those thoughts, and just shrugged it off with the propaganda that has been programmed into your head. Convenience makes us all lazy in the head. It is markedly convenient for capitalism and its protagonists to keep us colonised in our heads to think convenience is good for us and the earth. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” was a saying when I was growing up. Convenience has spared us the rod. The global north is a spoiled brat. And I don’t want convenience anymore. I don’t want things to be simple and binary.

I want to reconnect with the earth and know that I am one of its living organisms and that I don’t have any more right than the earthworm to live in its abundance.

I don’t want to be able to fly to Rome as if it’s a bus and almost as cheap. I want the cost to be inconvenient enough to help me understand how extraordinary it is to fly and see new places. How privileged we all are in the Global North. Through this inconvenience I want to be mindful of the impact my movements have on the world, its biodiversity and the foot print I leave behind. I want to be reminded that I co-exist on this planet with many beautiful living organisms that have just as much right to light, water and space as I do. They are not a resource to be exploited.

I want to remember how consumers, like me, wanting greater access to cheaper animal protein have driven the growth and exploitation of animals for cheap meat. I welcome the inconvenience of not having any meat to eat, so that we can take the pressure off the convenience of burning down the amazon to make way for pasture for cows. I welcome the inconvenience of very high prices for meat, being cognisant of the life that has been given up to feed me and also having to pay a high enough price to mitigate its loss. What price would be put on the heads of our loved ones to be eaten?

Women are inconvenient. I want us to start thinking about population growth and how to reduce the number of people on this earth. Women’s education and the right for them to make decisions about their own bodies is crucial and the place to start. We need to start valueing women. Inconvenient for the Global North I’m sure, seeing life from a women’s perspective. Something it hasn’t done up until now. Men have had their time. It’s now time for something different. It’s inconvenient, so what. Women are the key to our survival as a species, it is a glaring truth that those fat cat white politicians fail to acknowledge time and again because they are well… fat cat white men. The world only has so much space. Going into space is not an option either. Only crazy people and stinking rich capitalists, who have made their money off the backs of exploiting women and the poorest on the globe think this is a good idea. Imagine the richest 1%’s horror if the world treated their children and family like their companies do employees in the Global South. There would be outrage.

I want to start thinking about the inconvenience of limiting the use of fossil fuels and what that would mean for me. I know that it would make my convenient world a lot more uncomfortable. I wish that Politicians in power would have the courage to talk into this tension to secure a better, and most likely more uncomfortable future, rather than just the next vote.

I consider, on an early Sunday morning walk through the streets of Amsterdam, the inconvenience of revellers being forced to keep their trash on them instead of throwing it on the ground or in the canals. I wonder if that will change the way they might think about how, and how much, they consume? The inconvenience of the municipality cleaning up the streets creates the convenience of our lives.

The inconvenience I am talking about is a real pain in the arse because I want to be free to travel, eat and buy as my money allows. Yet my mind is calling me out on this idiocy. It is no more sustainable for one more person to live the way they want to,than it is for all the millions who have come before them and will come after them. Individual agency claims that you can behave like you want, now. But you can’t. Think of the future generations. It’s not someone else’s problem. It’s our problem now and that is fucking inconvenient. Future generations won’t thank us for our individualism and materialism and not standing up to Capitalism and not creating something different. They just won’t.

Why should I exercise self-restraint when plane tickets, avocados and meat are cheap and convenient? Why should I put myself out like this when the convenience of modern life still exists? Will I be more willing to accept inconvenience when the world is forced out of it by climate change?

I am only a drop in the ocean of the billions of bodies that sponge on the earth, like pieces of plastic on the water. What difference will my inconvenience make to the convenience curve? Nothing. It will not change minds or stop corporations. But nevertheless i do it because our brothers and sisters in the global south are suffering with the inconvenience of capitalism and climate change. Ther is real suffering, injustice and inconvenience in the global south as a direct response to my desire for convenience. I am troubled. Those jeans from China or customer service department in India. My money bought them by proxy, but at what cost? Modern convenience is expensively cheap. Capitalism exploits and extracts from people and the land, internalising the profits and externalising the costs.

Has convenience become a bad habit? Has it anesthetised our minds of the fact that our lives impact the world and is leading to its destruction? We rarely get to see how, here in our Global North castles, protected by our wealth and blinded by capitalism.

I am learning to live with inconvenience because I feel that it is important to do so. If not to stand with those abused and exploited by colonisation and capitalism, then because Inconvenience is coming to the world, whether we like it or not. Would the letter from the future say, “Just exercise self-restraint and inconvenience now and see the world heal to a degree that is still habitable?”. The ultimate inconvenience I can see is the extinction of the human race and the annihilation of the Planet in the name of our comfort and convenience.

Maybe learning to live with inconvenience can help us all make the tough choices we need to, to bring the earth and its eco-system back into balance and soften the blows when they come.

HOW TO OVERCOME YOUR FEAR OF THE WATER WITH THIS ONE EASY DRILL

Let’s face it. That’s all you want. Not to be scared of putting your face in the water. The sink-down drill can fix that. Where others feel pleasure, you feel dread. Where others are splashing around, you are sitting on the sunbed hoping no one asks you to jump in. You want to, but you can’t. Your fear is big enough to keep you rooted to the spot. It can be different you know. There is a way that you can overcome your fear and begin to enjoy swimming. I am going to share how this is possible and the drill that will get you there.

Let’s start the journey by having an honest look at why you have a fear of the water. Usually, your fear can be traced back to a childhood or adolescent trauma:  Being tossed in the deep end to learn how to “sink or swim” or; Being pushed under by accident or intentionally by others or; having a near drowning experience. Your fear is real!

YOUR FEAR IS REAL. DON’T BELIEVE OTHERWISE

Don’t believe what others say when they tell you that your fear isn’t real. It is. You may drown when swimming, it’s true for everyone who swims, not just you. However, the probability is very low. That doesn’t help. I know, so what does help?

It’s important to accept that your fear is real. So how do you take the first step?

MAKE SURE YOU FEEL SAFE

Make sure you feel safe. It is important that you are in an environment that does not make your feal more anxious than you already are.

You will feel safe by doing the following things:

-        Stay in shallow water that is warm. You want to be able to stand up if need be. Deep water is for when you feel more comfortable.

-        Make sure the water is clear. Murky dark water will just make you nervous. Your will start creating stories about what might or might not be lurking there.

-        Have someone you trust with you. Having someone who knows your story helps keep you calm. That person will know how you feel about the water and wont judge. If anything happens, they are there for you.

-        Find an experienced coach that can help you. There are good coaches out there that can take you from terror to tranquility.

If you feel unsafe, your fear will not go away.

Time to get your head into it.

GET YOUR HEAD INTO IT

You cannot ride a bicycle without a bicycle. The one precludes the other. To enjoy the water, you will have to learn to put your head in the water. Swimming is all about your face being in the water. Paradoxically being comfortable with your face in the water reduces anxiety. The more comfortable you are with your face in the water, the less fear you will fear.

Simply, my goal here is to help you do this by giving you a simple drill that will get your head into it.   

THE SINK-DOWN DRILL

This powerful drill will help you relax and get your head in the water. It’s called the sink-down drill and here is how it works.

How to:

1.     In shallow water hold on to the side of the pool. Feel the tiles. It is important to know you are safe.

2.     Sit down in the water. Feet stay on the bottom of the pool. You want to feel grounded.

3.     Before the mouth enters the water start blowing out.

4.     Go only as deep as your head, then come back up, all the while blowing bubbles out of your mouth.

5.     Repeat often to feel your lungs, brain and body relax.

 WHY DOES THE SINK-DRILL WORK?

Fear increases the heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. This drill helps you relax. Think of it as mindfulness breathing exercises in yoga. The sink down drill teaches you to exhale calmly into the water. This sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax.

Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Things to notice when doing this drill:

·       A constant stream of bubbles out the mouth

·       Sing a tune if you need to

·       Don’t take too deep a breath when you come up. Keep it balanced.

GET MOVING AND PRACTICE BLOWING OUT

The Sink down drill will relax you. You will feel calm and ready for something more. Please use fins and a kickboard for this.

Swim 25 or 50m laps, see how to below. The fins and kickboard will help you feel safe. You have the kickboard to hold on to in the front and have fins to keep you solid in the back.

Kicking with your face in the water. How to:

1.     Use the kickboard to support you in the front. Kick with your face in the water and you looking down.

2.     Blow out gently while your face is in the water. Don’t wait too long before breathing. This is not a free diving exercise.

You know you want this. Swimming with your kids on holiday, splashing around and not having to worry about panicking. Learning to swim freestyle for that Triathlon you’ve always dreamt about. Now you can. You have a powerful tool to get you started on the journey that leads to not being scared of the water. Go on, do yourself this favour and move from terror to triumph.

DEATH AND LIFE : Learning about Both

Photo by San Engineer from Pexels

Death

My Father died on the 02 February 1996. He was 64yrs old. He died suddenly from heart failure. It wasn’t unexpected. For many years prior to that he had been battling ill health and was in and out of hospitals. Yet it came like a thunderclap.
To this day, a quarter of a century later, I am filled with dread when the phone rings in the middle of the night. It almost always spells tragedy. I flew back to South Africa the next day. My father was gone. Not only out of life but also out of sight. The fear of death gripped us.

My family have always had an aversion to death. To death itself and talking about it. My mother in particular. She would tighten her lips and dart her eyes, meaning that she felt uncomfortable and didn’t want to discuss the topic any further. “Not dinnertime conversation,” she would say and her voice would send the silent message, “You’d better not be going there.”

This left me with so many questions that my family would, and could not answer about my father’s death. Like, what did my dad look like slumped on the bed when my mother came back from the shower? What did my dad look like in the coffin as I sat there in the chapel? Was he even in the coffin?
Am I the only one who has thoughts like that?

For 20yrs I carried around the trauma of his death and my inability to deal with it. What a burden. That trauma developed into irrational fear. Fear of sudden heart failure at age 25, even though I was fit and healthy. Panic attacks became my constant companion. What a burden on my young family.

In 2016 I felt the need to walk towards my fear and applied for a job at Dunweg. They are one of the local Undertakers in the area where i lived. I got the job as Facility employee. A facility employee is someone who does all those physical things around a person’s death. I would pick up the deceased from the hospital or home and prepare the body for the funeral. I had never seen a dead person before that first day on the job. By the end of it, I had come face to face with death. I’d seen it.

My first thought, once my heart beat returned to normal, seeing my first deceased person was , “Oh, so this is what dad must’ve looked like - peaceful.”. And it was. No matter the cause of death, the deceased person I had the honour of looking after, always looked peaceful.

I came to the point where one day I thought, “This is how mom will look when she dies.”. I know that may seem a strange thought, she was still alive at that point, but it wasn’t. It acknowledged the fact that we are not immortal, that loved ones will die and that we should acknowledge this fact to get the best out of every day with them.

When my mom died in 2018, I was prepared. I gave her the care and respect she deserved. I have no regrets.

Dunweg taught me so many things. They are true professionals who care for the dead and the living. They help families say goodbye in a way that honours the deceased and their family. I also saw Dunweg help families come to terms with death in a healthy and healing way. I am sure that they represent the majority of undertakers in the Netherlands.

Losing a loved leaves a hole that cannot be filled.

I learnt that being open and honest about death minimized the crater of my loved one’s death, minimized trauma in the future and allowed me to focus on life.

Life

I realised that the fear of death had stopped me from living. Sitting down with death, as I had at Dunweg, and having a good conversation with it, opened me up to life. To live life without fear.

I am no longer scared of dying or death. My panic attacks have disappeared. I now walk towards things that scare me, instead of away from them. I am not reckless, just not scared.

I live for the moment and day. I do not know what will happen tomorrow or over a year. Life has become fuller and richer because of the power of now. I dream the craziest things and visualize me failing and getting up and trying again.

I know they don’t sound related but my fear of death was also a fear of failure and full commitment to life.

At the end of every day I rate how my day was. I want every day to be an eight out of ten or up. That is my goal until death comes knocking.

Learning About Both

It takes courage in our modern world to want to move closer to death. To seek it out as it were. In times gone by death would have been more readily available. Death was not sanitised and shipped off as easily as it is today. Today it seems like Death is only reserved for professionals, like the Police, Medical workers or Undertakers. What a great burden we place on their schoulders. It feels to me like we have lost sense over sensitivity. I feel as if we have forgotten the connection between Death and Life.

I am not saying that that i want to see more of it and certainly not violent death. I just think the dialogue needs to be opend up again.
I know that working for an undertaker helped me process the trauma of my dad’s death. It is not for everyone, working for an undertaker, yet it provides a profound love of life.

I had to learn about death to learn about life.

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

Photo by Andrey Grushnikov @andrey_nashi

Time and swimming. So closely related. Do you struggle with pacing and does time seem to flash by while you’re in the wet stuff? In this blog I try to explain why that is, how to measure your time in the pool and learn how to match the time in your head to the time on the clock. It’s well worth taking the time for. Happy reading and swimming.

I have Anke Noorman to thank for this post. As a Philosopher, linguist and Artist, she prompted me to write it and outlined the things that should be in it. So, thank you Anke!  I hope it lives up to your high standards. Go check out her website here.

But first, how do we register time in that magical and sometimes crazy lump of mooshy sitting atop our shoulders we call our brains?  We register it as something called Psychological Time. I can see you getting really interested in what comes next. Let’s dive in. 

The nature of Psychological time

Psychological Time could be defined as our subjective experience of time. Chronological time filtered through subjective feelings mapped out in such temporal dimensions as duration, pace and the order of perceived internal and external events.

Thus, you can experience time as flying fast or standing still. Why?
Psychological time is a product of the mind more than a reflection of natural chronological order. (Trautmann 1995).

How does the product of the mind manifest itself? It manifests itself in the perceived flow rate of time. Psychological Time either moves more or less quickly. The mental tasks you perform and the resources you allocate to the timing mechanism determines your experience of the flow rate of time. If you are watching the kettle boil, a lot of your mental attention is going to timing and the flow rate seems slow. Scroll on social media or solve a puzzle in the time the kettle boils and the flow rate seems faster.

The more complex the mental task, the faster the flow rate of time is perceived.  And vice versa. Apply this to learning a new skill, like skateboarding, kettle drumming, a new Language, programming or swimming and you see why time seems to move so fast while you are in the activity itself.

Can we ever experience time in real time? Yes. By staying in the moment. Or what Eckert Tolle describes as the Power of Now. Being in the present is the most powerful tool we have to experience real time movement.
Can we stay in the now and learn new skills? It’s difficult. New skills or complex mental tasks take our focus away from the now and the timing mechanism of the brain.

Psychological Time is thus an expression of our consciousness or being conscious.  Psychological Time is an expression of enjoyment, boredom, learning, despair, fear. Can I be so bold as to say that Psychological Time is an expression of our emotions. In the end Psychological Time is an expression of where we lay our attention.

For more read Psychological Time.

Psychological Time in Swimming

In swimming terms, Anke has rightly said to me that, time feels elastic. It can be stretched or shortened, juicy or tough. And she’s right. It has this “product of our mind” feel to it.
Psychological Time affects how fast or slow we think we are swimming. This of course is crucial to our ability to pace our swimming in longer sets. How?
Most swimmers head off to fast. They are fresh and focused and this means they misjudge their pace or swimming time in their heads because they are focused on other things. Logical as we’ve seen. However, physiologically your body can’t sustain the initial pace because it doesn’t have the fitness. 
Learn to measure your speed accurately: psychological time closer to swimming time and you can sustain a constant speed over a longer period.  The tortoise and the hare come to mind here. Constant speed beats variable speed any day in swimming.

But how can you close the gap in this time warp? By measuring your Critical Swim Speed and applying it. Very scientific stuff this!

What the heck is Critical Swim Speed?

The Critical Swim Speed is your aerobic threshold. Like cruise control in a car, CSS is your aerobic cruise control limit. The speed at which you could swim all day. CSS assesses your current fitness level, and links a time to it, so that you don’t have to rely on Psychological Time going forward. Because as we’ve seen, Psychological Time can be pretty unreliable and tricky depending on our emotions.    
Eventually, and what the whole point of this exercise is, you will be able to translate the quantitative measure of speed (CSS) into a feeling of speed (psychological time).

Measuring Critical swim speed

You measure CSS by swimming 400m and 200m for time. The 400m and 200m should be best efforts. You should try and swim these distances as fast as possible. In Between the distances you take 10 minutes of passive rest. Passive rest means no swimming in between.

So how to calculate CSS.  400m time – 200m time/2 An example: 400m time 7min; 200m time 3m30s. difference = 3m30s/2 = 1m45s. per 100m.

CSS should be measured every six weeks. It is best done with a sports watch.

Note: don’t be nervous. The first time is going to be tricky. You may not know how fast to swim or how to hold your pace. You will get used to it I promise. Just give it your best effort.

How to apply CSS

The application of the CSS requires a piece of equipment called the Tempo Trainer Pro. The TTP is for all intents and purposes a metronome for swimming. It beeps out a time that you insert into it. The time you insert we will get to shortly. The use of the TTP is to counter Psychological Time. It is there to keep you on the straight and narrow and within your aerobic capabilities and fitness. A very powerful tool indeed.

The time you insert into the TTP is CSS divided by four to give you a time per 25m. If we do that with the example above, we get 26.25s per 25m (60+45/4 = 105/4= 26.25). This you can insert into your TTP in setting 1. It allows for 10ths of a second, unlike sports watches, so the .25 can also be entered no problem.

Swim sets based on this outcome depends on your level of fitness, experience and goal. When swimming the sets, we do add time on to the CSS to help reset your Psychological Time swimming mechanism.

Here is an example using the CSS test above.  

10x 200m swum as:

4x 200m CSS +4s = 1m49s/100 = 27.25s/25. 27.25s is entered into the TTP
3x 200m CSS +3s = 1m48s/100 = 27.00s/25
2x 200m CSS +2s = 1m47s/100 = 26.75s
1x 200m CSS +1s = 1m46s/100 = 26.50s

You can always make it harder, by swimming longer, contact me to find out how.

What else can the TTP be used for?

Stroke rate. In setting 3 you can use the TTP to regulate your stroke rate. Stroke rate is how many times per minute you turn your arms. Every hand entry is a stroke. A low stroke rate is 50 Strokes Per Minute or below and a high stroke rate is 80 SPM and above. Between 50 and 80 is the normal range for most swimmers.
What is the optimal stroke rate? That is individual and differs per person. However, it is lower for taller swimmers and higher for shorter swimmers.
Can we measure it? Yes, with a ramp test.
What does the result of the ramp test represent? It represents your optimal stroke rate. But only for you.

Why is Stroke Rate Important?

Because is secures a constant speed in the water. Before I go any further, first some physics and the back story.

Speed = Stroke Length (SL) x Stroke Rate (SR) – Drag. If you forget drag for a moment you can simply say that speed is a function of SL x SR. This means that to maximise speed you should find the sweet spot between the length of your stroke and the speed of those strokes.

The back story is that stroke rate, how quickly the arms are turned, has long been seen only as a function of speeding up. If you swim faster you turn your arms faster. True, but it’s not the whole story. The other side of the coin is that your optimum stroke rate guarantees constant forward propulsion. So, increasing your stroke rate needn’t mean swimming faster.  
The other part of this back story, and that still dominates the swimming landscape, is that your stroke should be as long as possible. You should glide and stop at the front of the stroke.
In fact,  the-data-on-stroke-rate-and-efficiency shows that the longer a stroke becomes, the less efficient it is; increasing Heart rate, oxygen uptake and perceived exertion. So, the story needs a re-write with the inclusion of stroke rate as a function of arm length.

Why is arm length a determinant of stroke rate?

Longer arms turn slower and shorter arms turn faster per stroke cycle. It is a biomechanical fact. Shorter arms displace less distance per stroke than longer arms. Shorter armed people who are also generally shorter people swim less distance per stroke and so have to make more stokes than a taller person. I know, not fair right.
Well in indoor competitive swimming a longer and slower stroke might be helpful, but in open water a higher stroke rate is the way to more efficiently navigate currents, waves and fellow competitors.

Let me remind you that we each have an optimum stroke rate. It can be tested. You are not Michael Phelps who is tall and takes fewer strokes than you and me. Don’t get stuck on the numbers or some well-intentioned person telling you to bring your stroke rate down because it’s more efficient. Or that your SWOLF is too high. That is plain bullshit.

What is SWOLF?

SWOLF appears on all modern sports watches as a metric of efficiency. It is calculated by adding your 25m time to the amount on strokes you make with the watch arm in 25m. An example would be you swim 25m is 30s and take 11 strokes. Your Swolf is 41. What can you discern from this metric?  Nothing really. In their very informative article, is swolf or swim golf really a true measure of efficiency, SwimSmooth point out that it isn’t.

Furthermore, Swimsmooth highlights that counting strokes is going back to the dark ages and that SWOLF is not a valid or reliable indicator of efficiency. Well, why not? For the reasons mentioned above; each swimmer has their own optimal stroke rate and taking less strokes isn’t necessarily more efficient.

So, what’s left to discuss

Nothing. I hope you enjoyed the blog.

Happy swimming and stay conscious!

Give Peas a Chance

Image courtesy of Tayo Gross

I learnt some very interesting things in September 2020 and I want to share them with you. In this instalment i talk breathing, vinegar and how we learn - well anything!

Do you know where your weight goes when you lose weight? Have you ever thought about that? Has it entered your mind? Well it has mine and I’ve always thought that we lose weight by doing more exercise and eating less. Of course this is true, but I’ve thought my whole life that it was movement and sweating that burns your weight up.
Well it turns out that I was wrong. I stumbled upon a TedTalk that gave me the answer I wasn’t looking for.  But oh, how very interesting. So interesting I have to share it.
We breathe it out.
Ruben Meerman gives a fascinating TedTalk about this very subject called How Breathing and Metabolism are interconnected. Check out the link. I had never made the link before. The link is this: we put carbons into our mouths in the form of carbohydrates and other food sources and breath them out in the form of carbon dioxide. 
I also found out that there is a gadget called the Lumen that measures the O2 and CO2 levels in your breath. You can calculate, just like Meerman, how many atoms go in and out and what’s the net surplus or deficit. Very interesting.

It doesn’t stop there. Keep reading because I talk about swimming later on.  I promise.

Next, I learnt how home-made Vinegar is made.  Have you ever thought about how vinegar is made? Vinegar, in old English, means “sour wine”. And yes, it’s literally that. More fermented than wine. Fermented until there is no alcohol left, just acetic acid. The mildest form of acid and hence why it has so many uses (not just for the fish and chips). The Italian household I visited showed me the vinegar bottle in which the vinegar is made. A big Tuscan looking flask. Here all the dregs of red wine get thrown in to meet mother.
Mother or mother of vinegar, is a term used for the substance that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids. It is a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria. It is more common in unpasteurized vinegar, like the bottle I was staring into.
There were various pieces of mother, some big and some small. Mother can be hundreds of years old. One was much bigger than the others. This was the oldest mother. This mother was apparently the offspring of a much older piece that the family had treasured for over a hundred years.
A smaller piece was taken out and given to me. It looks and feels like a piece of liver. Slimly and soft. It does not look appetizing, but it is completely harmless. It stays in the flask getting bigger as it does its job of turning wine into Vinegar.
Mother is also known as Mycoderma Aceti or “Fungus skin of the acid”, an apt description I’d say.
I would never have guessed or given it a conscious thought that this is how vinegar is made.  Have you?

Learning new things is so cool. It turns out that learning new things changes our brains and that’s the third new thing I learnt. Our brain’s structure changes regularly and with it, so do we! Who I am today, I won’t be tomorrow when I wake up. The changes and the effects may be either big or small, but however you look at it, the ever-changing brain means a changed you.

We have neuroplasticity to thank for this. The ability of the brain to make new synaptic connections or sever old ones. And the changes can be for good and bad.  I may learn to play the piano but forget how to tie knots I learnt in scouts as a kid. It’s a bit of give and take I’m afraid.

Our brains are not like computers: they do not have perfect recall, and some things rank higher than others on the memory hierarchy. There are three reasons for that and it has to do with how we learn. Let’s check it out people.

Memory drives learning and change. Memory failure or loss of memory does the opposite.  Memory happens in three ways: chemically, structurally and functionally according to Neuroscientist Lara Boyd. Go and check out her cool Tedtalk Here.

Want to learn to swim (finally something about swimming) or improve your swimming technique as an adult? Welcome to the world of neuroplasticity and brain change.

It turns out not to be that easy.  As a Swim Coach I know exactly how hard it is. You have learnt some pretty hard-to-get-rid-of shit over the course of your life. Even if you’re not a swimmer, you have genes and motor function co-ordination that helps or hinders. I often get asked if one lesson of an hour will be enough to change a swimmer’s technique. Simple answer. No.  More like one to two years if you are lucky. Why?

Because we are all dumbasses in the end and our fantastic brain wants us to work for it. It won’t just give your adult self a quick win of learning freestyle in a week. Where would the triathlon coaching world be if this was the case?

I think there is some truth to the above. The old adage of, “if it worth doing, it is worth doing right,” comes to mind. Our brain wants to know we are serious about this new skill acquisition before it diverts resources to support it. That enthusiasm and energy must come from our attention and willingness to reinforce the learning of the new skill.

Side-note: we pick up bad habits in the same way: by diverting time and energy to them. Bad habits seemingly need less work because they give us pleasure that drives us to the next fix. So if you can makes things pleasurable, you will learn them quicker.

According to Boyd, “The best driver of neuroplastic change in your brain is your behaviour,” and she continues with, “Nothing is more effective than practice. You have to do the work.”

So, what now, practice and get a good coach? Yes. The three ways in which your brain changes are, as mentioned above – in case you can’t remember­ – chemically, structurally and functionally. Sometimes this happens in isolation, but more often than not in concert with each other.

Let’s take a common swimming problem and look at it from these three lenses.
Freestyle Problem: The hand comes in over the middle line upon entry. [the middle line is an imaginary line coming out of the head which we don’t want to cross when the leading hand enters the water]
Analysis: Common problem among adult learnt swimmers.
Result: Snake like motion in the water, drops the elbow. Swimmer has to push down or to the side to get into the pull-through. Hardly any catch.
Injury: Makes Tennis elbow worse and puts pressure on rotator cuff

The problem is difficult to fix for two reasons. Swimmers cannot see their hands enter the water as they are looking down, and secondly they are moving in the water which makes it more difficult for the brain to feel what’s going on.

The first thing my swimmers need to do is place their hands in time and space and water. Easy on land. Difficult in water. I ask my swimmers to swim with their heads down, arms above their heads and hands in a neutral position, shoulder width apart. There is no arm movement. This is done with fins and snorkel. This exercise helps them feel where their hands and arms need to be upon entry. Playing is the best way here. So, play around with your hand position without swimming. go from neutral to wide to streamline. This teaches the swimmer how things feel and induces the chemical signaling that begins the learning process.

Next, I apply this with having swimmers swim freestyle with what they think, is a very wide hand entry. Extreme actually. And even though they feel like their hands are wide, they are in line with the shoulder. This is the trickery of the brain coming out. Once a swimmer sees this on video, they know that their feeling is incorrect. For now, at least.

The difficult part is getting them to come back every time they swim and remember to swim with a “wide” entry. Because it feels wrong. The brain goes back to default. It has to feel wrong before it feels right. Any sportsman will tell you that about a technique change. Practicing this “wide” hand entry will induce structural changes and light up different parts of the brain which is also the functional change.

The brain wants us to get it right, but we need to stick at it.
Remembering the technique after showering and leaving the pool is a hard ask. Keep a journal with what the coach said, how you felt and if possible, add the videos made to it.
This will help you remember the crucial things for the next time you swim and keep your motivation high.

So give peas and peace a chance in this next month. Learn, love and play responsibly. BY that i mean without hurting others or the earth. Have fun in the sun.

The Last Traveller #1 - Home

The last traveler. Stamped in big letters across her port pass. Diana had seen those letters so many times.  They were the rarest words on the planet, yet she gave them so little attention these days. “One could get used to anything,” she thought to herself. Coming back here was hard. The port opened for her automatically. The body scan, mapping her DNA, had already taken place before she stepped out of the transporter. Her port pass was an archaic and official document the confederacy didn’t want to let go of. She was required to have it on her at all times in her travels.  She made a mental note to talk to Etta about this next time they had a serious talk about travel protocol.

There was so much to talk to Etta about. She had a present for her too. She had found it on her travels. It had given her a sense of pride in finding the lamp. Etta would love it, she knew. Bringing back things Etta would like was something she knew how to do. However, the lamp from Xelor would be a constant reminder of that dreadful night, the night she was born. But it didn’t matter. Somethings couldn’t be forgotten; like when and where you were born. Into what state and Tribe. She had wanted nothing more than to sink into the molten rock of Trellidor and end herself. But she couldn’t. The elders wouldn’t allow it. How had they known what she was thinking? This thought flashed into mind as the light of the star gun flashed in the sky. Her eyes traced the white light across it as her mind wandered through the galaxy of her memories.

She shivered at the thought of her birth. Etta had betrayed her. She hated her for it at the time. No need to rehash old wounds. The Last Traveler was born, not chosen. That she knew. How many times had that been said to her – a thousand, a hundred thousand? She had stopped counting. She had not wanted to be born the Last Traveler. There is a desperation and a type of depression in not having any control or say in the matter of one’s birth, she thought. It was the ultimate helplessness and she hated to feel helpless.  She had not chosen this life and role. It had been a chance happening. A random fertilized egg that had brought her to this moment. Why couldn’t she choose another life and not to be the Last Traveler? Why couldn’t she choose not to live?

Nothing would change in the travel protocol. She doubted it would. They liked to hold onto tradition. Especially for the last traveler.  She was their, what had Tesla called her, living relic.

The public awaited as she exited the port. They were always there. Asking for information about the bad lands or pictures from the sweet lands. So curious, the public. Wanting to know where she had been and what she had seen. It was a secret. She wanted to share the beauty her eyes had captured, but it would mean the last traveler would never again travel. Getting through the masses was her homecoming. People trapped in the now that would always be here, this very place and province they were born to. She shivered at the thought of how random it all was.

She touched elbows with many as she walked from the port to the station. Physical contact was a class thing. Even if she wanted to shake hands, it was forbidden. The guards would not punish her for shaking hands, but they would punish those who had shaken her hand. It was unfair, but that was how the system worked. People shouted out their questions to her, knowing there would be no answer. In fact, her return answered their most pressing question. There was still something out there to visit.  

The transport car was empty, as it always was. She punched in the code and the doors closed. She took a deep breath. God it was good to be home. The smell of the tanned leather of the train, the bottle of champagne cold in the cooler and her favourite snack of mixed jelly fish made her almost want to cry. She was home. Travelling takes its toll.

 The city was dark. The electricity was out again. Poor souls who had no way of charging up life cells would be dead by morning. The last traveler has special privileges. She would survive no matter what. She would have to speak to Tesla about this. Power for everyone. She remembered the soft light her mother used in the kitchen while cooking. The beautiful light. Her mother would tell her that the way the light fell from the lamp was important and not just any light bulb or lamp was good enough. That lamp in the kitchen was the soul of the dwelling and her mother’s favourite possession. In those days there had always been plenty of power and light. It was even normal to read after supper and watch the archaic system called TV. That same lamp was now her prized possession and brought her delight and comfort after her travels.

The air was warm, summer on its way. The train docked at her dwelling. She took the bottle of champagne with her. The lights came on immediately and the voice from her AI welcomed her home. “Good evening, Queen Eleanor, how was your trip?”

“Call me Diana, you moron!”

“I cannot compute, try again.”

“Shut up.”

“As you wish Queen Elanor.”  She didn’t answer but went into the kitchen to sit down under her mother’s light. ‘God, how I miss you.’ She thought as the light softly touched her skin, like her mother had until she would never again. Her mother would have had a meal ready and sit and listen to her latest adventure. Diana would be able to laugh and tell her almost everything.  

She passed her AI on her way to the bedroom, ‘Light and power, but no soul.’, she thought. The AI saw everything but nothing as she shed her clothes on the bedroom floor. Almost before they touched the floor the AI was coming towards them, “Stop!” she exclaimed, tearing up. She wanted it to be chaotic and disorderly and fucked up. She wanted her mother to come in and shout at her for dumping her clothes on the floor. She stood naked before the AI. It saw but did not register. She knew how the programming worked; she had seen it being made at the confederacy. It saw her nakedness but did not register it as part of its privacy rules. She would have to scream rape to get any response from her AI. It would trigger the emergency call to the control center and just like that, her life would be invaded. So, she stood there in front of it naked and unashamed.  It didn’t flinch. Neither did she. It was a stand-off. A game. Like when she was a child and they would compete to see who would blink first.  She missed the human touch. The welcome hug or a back rub that came to her from her youth. All forbidden now for the last traveler.

She turned and walked to the bathroom. The AI followed. She had named this particular model Bob. She didn’t know why. Its technical name was Xcilliem 3000. The name of the company that made the AI and the model number or year. She didn’t know and didn’t care.

Bob ran the bath for her. Bob was a slave; she had read about eunuchs in her Last Traveler training. She thought a lot about that. Men without balls. Men who saw everything. Men without testosterone and ego. Testosterone was ego, wasn’t it? How would a world look with men ruling it and making the decisions? She shivered.  She could not imagine such a world. She had read the stories, but her head couldn’t wrap itself around it.

The bath was hot, the stones touched her back as she sank into the water. They started vibrating, calibrating her physical being. She took a deep breath in, held on to it for as long as possible and then blew it all out. It felt good. She let the customised massage tendrils release the stress from her body. It was the only time her body was touched. That wasn’t quite true, but she had to hold onto illusions. This was the only physical relief she was allowed.

The last traveler was untouchable. She had begged to be hugged, but the elders wouldn’t allow it. Her title made her untouchable, ostracized and isolated. Everyone wanted to be her. She wanted to be everybody. Nobody wanted to be themselves. She could just as well have been a diseased creature who people would and could not touch. Tears fell from her face and melted into the water, becoming the collective pain of the last travelers before her.

She was the Last Traveler. Untouchable. It said so in her port pass.