Numb with the shock of events those first few months after my husband told me he was having an affair, I looked around for something that could help my shattered self. From somewhere came the idea of learning to swim. Perhaps it was in a spirit of compromise with my sporty husband. Perhaps it was an attempt to make time pass through giving myself a short-term goal. Wherever the idea came from, I discovered, even as someone who couldn’t swim and was slightly scared of it, water is a healing medium.
Not just the fact of one-to-one learning with a kind and smiley coach in a warm, uncrowded pool but through regularly making use of the pool's sauna, steam-room, and whirlpool.
I felt like a Roman lady going through the ritual bathing stages of the
apodyterium—
tepidarium —
caldarium —
frigidarium. I would swim a few lengths, then sit in the dry heat of the sauna. A few more lengths. Then the steam-room with its lavender or eucalyptus-scented air. The warmth, the quiet, the not having to do anything for a while brought on a state of calm. Swim again. Finally the whirlpool where the foaming water unknotted any muscle tension. The combination of water in many forms was pleasantly tiring, calming, and head- and sinus-clearing.
Suddenly it clicked why the Finns, who regularly top international surveys on the most contented nation on earth, see saunas as essential.
Water therapy for the more advanced
If all this sounds a bit girly, a Scottish male friend I talked to revealed his own version of water therapy:
Though you’d need to check with a GP before trying anything like this.
‘May I recommend a cold bath accompanied by three minutes of up-tempo music, followed by a hot shower whilst sitting or standing in the same cold bath?’
‘You can recommend it,’ I answered, ‘but I can’t promise to try it.’ To me it sounded like some form of punishment but judging by the people I know who literally appear to glow and put it down to a cold morning dip on a beach, he’s right.
‘Seriously,’ he went on, ‘it helps with physical and emotional pain. Anecdotally it builds your immune system, which is why I started doing it. You get a massive endorphin hit by getting out of the cold water and this is made more immediate by having a hot shower. And it’s basically free (except for the hot water). What's not to like?’
I have never tried it but I’m confident in its energising effects. Someone else described its effect as ‘making you feel you can do anything, conquer anything! And you carry that feeling with you for the rest of the day.’
My water therapy was more tranquil but I had discovered something I didn’t know existed.
What it did for me
From my diary of the time:
‘Learning to swim. Two lessons a week. I go into the lovely café afterwards, have a cup of tea and apple, read the newspapers, and feel oddly comforted. An enjoyable day even in the middle of heartache and uncertainty.’
Today I would call this finding and sheltering in the eye of the storm. I discovered that even going through an emotional desert, there are oases scattered around for us like this that help get us through.
In your life, what oases are within your reach?
