underwater tea party

oh, i wish i had an underwater camera!*  tonight, i went swimming with two friends and one showed me a fun thing she used to do as a kid (maybe everyone else already knows about these?  maybe i knew at one point, but forgot?) called “underwater tea parties” where you try to sit cross-legged on the bottom of the pool and pretend to drink tea out of a pretend teacup.  i think it was the cheeky grin on her face while drinking tea that cracked me up the most.  and then of course, i had to bob to the top because you can’t laugh underwater very well.
we also decided that the cross-legged position was well-suited to underwater zen meditation–a fun exercise for getting more comfortable with being underwater (which is still a bit of a challenge for my other swimming friend).  not only is it nicely distracting to think about crossing your legs just right and flapping your arms to try to push yourself farther down in the water, but thinking about slow, meditative exhaling is a good model to follow when trying to coordinate breathing and swimming at the same time anyway.

up until my hip/back problems, i’d been swimming by myself once a week, often for 45 minutes to an hour at a time.  do you know how boring that can get?  yes, sometimes i was able to brainstorm about projects while i swam and i even tried meditating while i swam, but there were times when i desperately wished that i could listen to music or an audiobook (but not quite desperately enough to buy one of these).  now that i’ve taken a break and am finally getting back into swimming, i decided to try a different technique to mix things up a bit–let’s make it more social!  this is my third week of not swimming alone.  so far, it’s been great.  yeah, i’m not swimming for an hour straight, but i feel more tired tonight than i did after some of those 45 minute stints and i enjoyed myself way more.  thanks, friends!
*although neither friend was crazy about being photographed in a swimsuit (in the water or out of it) i just love the clear blue otherworldliness of underwater photography and would love to try it sometime.  and not with those cheapie disposable cameras either.  maybe if we ever go on another vacation with snorkeling possibilities we can justify investing in either a water-proof camera casing or an actual waterproof camera.