I’m feeling exceptionally lucky at the moment. I had a fairly tumultuous summer with preparing a house to sell (including demolition and getting rid of most of the stuff), list house, homelessness, parents’ house burning down, (everyone is okay) 2 family hospital emergencies, (once again, everyone is okay) and moving into my new home. I am now getting the opportunity to process all that mad, crazy stuff. (Yes, all of that really happened between May 1st and August 20th.)
But not into just any old place, but into a lovely new apartment complex (new build so no one has been there before) complete with a saltwater pool, clubhouse, and fitness center. (Yes, I did say that I was feeling lucky!) So, while I still had the opportunity with a seemingly extended summer, I decided to enjoy the pool. It’s a decent sized pool but not meant for doing laps, and as it only gets to 5 feet at its deepest, not meant for diving either, so I just paddled around enjoying being in a pool this late in the season. As I was walking toward the steps at the deep end to get out, I noticed that I was having a hard time maintaining my balance, and I had to wave my arms around so I didn’t go under. I went over to one of the jets and put my hand over it to see how strong it was. Not very was the answer. I looked around and saw several other jets moving the water in different ways to the one I checked. Although the water wasn’t exactly being churned up, it was coming in at different angles creating a kind of swirling that would randomly change direction, and kept gently pushing me off my feet. So I thought, maybe if I focus on my feet, being careful how I placed them, that will help keep me from having to use my hands to maintain my balance. No joy. It required a lot of concentration on my feet and how I was placing them, but I still kept losing my balance and falling over. I even tried looking down at my feet to see if that would help, but that actually made it harder. The shifting current and the nature of water made it more like looking through a fun house mirror by distorting the view enough so I couldn’t gauge where my feet were in relation to the bottom of the pool. It was easier for me to trust that the bottom of the pool was there and let my body’s natural feedback system tell me when I hit it and where the rest of my body was in relation to my feet in space.
So now I’m curious, how do I maintain my balance when I am literally up to my neck, and being buffeted by water? This time, I was going to do it just standing rather than walking. I can only imagine what it looked like to the lifeguard; a woman standing in 5 feet of water, looking very focused and not moving. Hopefully I provided some entertainment for him!
So, with feet firmly planted on the bottom of the pool and my arms dangling by my sides, I tried to see if I could stand up. For some reason I got it into my head that I didn’t want to use my arms to counterbalance if I was thrown. I wanted to see if I could do it without the aid of reaching out with my arms. I knew doing it like that would be useful, but I didn’t want to rely solely on that. After trying to do this for a minute or two, I started to feel a lot of tension and a bit of discomfort in the front part of my lower leg. I realized that I was trying to counterbalance by forcing the balls of my feet to stay in contact with the bottom. There was no other action from any other part of my body, as if they had no part in keeping me from falling over, and just bobbed about like a tethered balloon.
Then I thought, what if I engage my core and center my weight? I engaged my lower abdominals and felt my pelvis shift and move my whole body to an upright position, bringing my feet into full contact with the bottom, but without force or discomfort. I let go of my center a few times to see what would happen, and noticed that I would start floating away from the bottom. When I did have it engaged, I could still feel myself moving around, but I didn’t feel like I was out of control as if I was going to float away. In fact, I felt quite comfortable despite the fact that I was surrounded, up to my neck in a force that I could not control and that could easily overwhelm me.
Really loving the new place!
