Inner Vision Ocean Swimming

I train individuals in deep breathing, fluid swim stroke symmetry collectively termed aqua-linear swimming. Combined with open observation of coastal conditions, we take careful and confident shoreline swims, delighting in discoveries of marine life.

Each student’s course is individualized according to specific goals I help a client shape with current and emergent concerns as s/he evolves a swim practice.

The end-goal is not how fast or far one swims. Ocean swim trainings entail confident control and awareness in dynamic ocean ecosystems. Aspects of tide, current, surf, wind conditions, and observing underwater topography are covered. Individualized trainings are designed to meet a swimmer where s/he is in process to maintain, rebuild, and develop an ongoing and skilled swim practice. Depending upon the person, coaching incorporates emphases on physical swim skills, emotional experience, tapping capacity for spiritual sustenance in observing and enjoying our fundamentally linked and nested aquatic and genetic heritage.

Practicing ocean swimming develops mental acuity, physical strength and spiritual enrichment via tapping humankind’s inherited biological connections, inside and out, to the sea. It fosters awareness of, and care for our aquatic, ocean resources.

Inner Vision Ocean Swimming is doubly nested– within oneself, and the ocean. With extended immersion swims, one experiences increased sensations of significant calm and clarity– relaxing in breath, swim-stroke, and ocean-thinking skills. When under “control”– learned in repeated practice– relaxed skills become second nature: symmetrical, synchronized and unconsciously mastered. The way a good dancer moves seamlessly with body is how one’s body can manifest as aquatic vessel and consciousness. Swimming even half a mile in this frame of reference can be athletic, devotional, and adventurous– a self-expanding voyage through our marine world.

Fee for personal training: $60 per hour. Initial hour and a half session includes swim history evaluation; skills/beliefs on ocean swimming, and in-water assessments.
I encourage and help client shape up to three target goals, which vary from learning to appreciate seaweed and like fish, to developing capacity in endurance training.

Several issues/skills can be worked on simultaneously:

• Identifying hitches/problems in breath, stroke, and/or stored beliefs to "dissolve" through re-patterning.
• Possible water exits to demonstrate issues/solutions, and to practice deep breathing-- utterly indispensable for buoyancy, safety, calm, and mastery of new or refining your swim stroke skills.
• Developing ocean-thinking skills relative to managing changing conditions– and swimming in consideration of prevailing winds, currents, tide, or surf.
• Introductory oceanography to make every ocean swim a fun, athletic, and perhaps eventually a contemplative odyssey!

My background is as a swim guide and in-water trainer since 1997, inspired by water experiences growing up in Hawaii, study in the Caribbean for a PADI Divemaster, with over 25 years ocean swimming on the Vineyard alone. Cumulative experience dates from our family summer gathering place in the St. Lawrence River, also known as The Thousand Islands or “Garden of the Great Spirit”, and in Hawaii where our family moved when I was 2. It took an injury with chainsaw work for me to expand my 10-15 minute dips to swim distance (45 min +) in ponds in western Massachusetts, from 1982 on. Moreover, I recognize swimming is an essentially submerged practice fused with moderate surface aquatic activity! This is even truer in the ocean, where Life offers a huge range of aquatic organisms to see and enjoy.

The vision one develops is seeing and understanding the ocean environment clearly, and factually. It comprises nurturing stronger inter-connections to, and a deeper appreciation for the Ocean and its multitudinous life forms. Here on the Vineyard, not far offshore, one encounters and observes hermit and horseshoe crabs, lobster, bait fish, striped bass, channeled whelk (conch), spider crabs– diverse marine life such as comb jellyfish lighting up at night like spaceships! Further, since much of Ocean life is at risk– it’s good to be conscious and to wish to conserve and restore Ocean resources for future generations for the sake of humankind, and all Life.