When I was young, I would go swimming on a summer's day. I felt alive, sun soaked, healthy and worry free.
I reflected on these memories today, they were actually the best times of my childhood.
Swimming in summer in an open air pool and watching clouds and trees roll by as you float has to be one of the most liberating feelings one can have. I have always been healed by water.
I remember staying submerged as long as I could and listening to the sound of my heartbeat underneath the water. The thrill of a race when challenged, swimming faster and faster until I won and was always surprised I had won!
I remember the emptiness in my stomach from the exercise and the blessed sensation of over eating when I returned home. Needless to say I slept better from such exercise and to this day swimming is happiness to me in many ways.
It is an art of sorts, to move with water and not resist. To let gentle ripples carry you where they will, to surrender to the effortless movement enveloped by the deepest blue.
I realise I never felt happy unless I was free to be in the water, unless I could dive for pennies beneath the sky and forget about everything for a few moments of detachment.
It seems obvious to me now that swimming has always been and will continue to be a source of cleansing from reality for me. An empath, a sensitive soul or whatever title you choose, needs such time out. Nature is my temple, solace and healer.
Moving to another shift of thought today...
India is a place that beckons you to live in the now, a place where the soil holds many layers of left behind wisdom.
While reflecting on the earlier swimming years of my life, I also got thinking on how random moments in India bestow me the same feeling of serenity and detachment.
Not so random a change of direction after all.
Be it a visit from the monkeys in the past, a hawk screeching overhead, dragonflies in search of water or the neighbourhood cat blessing my path, there are at times the feelings of innocence once more to be released from reality, albeit temporary, and feel peace of soul by experiencing the serenity of simply being.
From the pool to Bhārat Mata (Mother India), moments of pause within so much chaos and change have shaped and claimed me in many ways.
A day of memories and epiphanies bleed through more and more of late as my soul surrenders to the nows.
I have always felt more connected to nature and the animal kingdom than to the human realm.
Is it ever too late to be a female version of Mowgli?
Perhaps I can be a mermaid instead?
Who knows what is possible when the mind transcends.
Blog - Words Among Trees
Image - Pixabay - free domain
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