The swimming pools are finally reopening across the UK, and I have been embracing the opportunities to open water swim at my local reservoir. I felt it was a good time to write about why water, and swimming in particular, can make us feel so good.
I intuitively know being in and near water makes me feel good. Indeed any of us who have been near a beautiful lake or gazed out at the waves on the beach know that:
“instinctively that being by water makes us healthier, happier, reduces stress, and brings us peace”.
Wallace J Nichols Blue Mind
To find out why I decided to read Wallace J Nichols’s book Blue Mind: How water makes you happier, more connected and better at what you do.
I’d recommend this book if: you are a lover of any water based activity, you are drawn to the water or you are environmentally conscious about our blue world (Nichols is a marine biologist and conservationist). Nichols takes us through a tour of the neuroscience of why water makes us feel so good and invites us into his blue mind world. He describes blue mind as:
“a mildly meditative state characterised by calm, peacefulness, unity and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment”.
Wallace J Nichols Blue Mind
The science of why being in or near water makes us feel good:
Nichols notes that being in, on, or near to water can:
- Reduce the effects of the stress state (sympathetic nervous system, or the “red mind” state as Nichols it). It can also decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The red mind “fight or flight” response, including high levels of anxiety and stress, can be hard to escape in our modern world. Blue mind provides respite.
- Increase feel good chemicals serotonin and oxytocin.
- Reduce our heart and breathing rate. Studies have shown that even looking at water can reduce blood pressure.
- Be an effective treatment for a range of disorders such as addiction, PTSD, anxiety and autism (see below for more on this).
- Make us more creative and inspires our thought processes.
- Encourage a more positive outlook: Images with water tend to elicit a more positive response in research participants compared to images without water.
- Create a meditative effect: It invites a natural escape from the modern world. We are away from technology and screens.
- Elicit an emotional response creating feelings of awe, peace and joy. People will often describe how water makes them feel.
- Release the feel-good neurotransmitters: dopamine, adrenaline, endocannabinoids and endorphins.
- Allow us to feel connected to something bigger as an effect of being in nature.
- Improve our relationships, make us feel greater love and even have a positive effect on our businesses.
Swimming saved me during challenging times
When I was in the midst of one of the most difficult and challenging periods of my life I had swimming as my anchor. Before Covid-19 hit I swam with a group of friends in the mornings before work. There were times back in 2013/2014 where I didn’t really know how I got out of bed but somehow I managed to get to the pool. Seeing my friends, having a chat in the changing rooms and then getting into the water and doing our swim sessions was grounding. It brought normality, structure, escapism, thinking time and all of the other amazing benefits physical activity has to offer. It felt as though the water was literally soaking up my troubles and easing some of my pain.
Front crawl has always been my favourite stroke. As you glide through the water you are almost fully submersed. When my hand hits the water it felt as though all the angst, sadness and grief I was feeling at the time was transferring into the water. Being submerged in the water makes you feel weightless, and carefree – for me it’s utterly liberating.
I love open water swimming and lidos because I can see the sky and trees every time I breathe to the side. It cleanses the mind and it also allows me to process my thoughts and and be creative: I came up with the name of my business when I was in the water.
As Roger Deakin says in his famous book Waterlog:
“When you enter the water, something, like a metamorphosis happens. Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking glass surface and enter a new world in which survival, not ambition or desire, is the dominant aim.”
Roger Deakin, Waterlog:
Swimming as therapy
Alexandra Heminsley talks about how swimming provided therapy for her when she was going through difficult times in her life in her book Leap In.
In Dip: Wild swims from the Borderlands Andrew Fusek, who lost his father to suicide, talks about how wild swimming provided mindful respite from the “thought-torture” of his depression:
“Diving into wild water is the great bringer-back of reality. A perfect present tense, a right-here, right-now moment. The senses are so filled by the trees, the light, the sound of birds, of shivering leaves, the fierce squeezing clinch of the water – there’s no space for thought shadows”.
Andrew Fusek, Dip
In Blue Mind Nichols discusses an interesting case study in California where a surf club has been set up as a successful treatment facility for drug addicts. The idea being to replace the high of drugs with the high produced by exercise, especially something like surfing which produces a natural dopamine surge. Surfing works by providing a different reward to addictive drugs in the brain.
A swimming community
Alexandra Heminsley refers to the sense of community there is around swimming:
“however exposing the act of getting in the water in nothing but a swimming costume can be, the communities that swimmers have built truly cement my faith in human nature”.
Alexandra Heminsley, Leap In
The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond in Hampstead Heath, North London, is one of my most favourite places. There’s a real sense community there of women, with their individual stories, and reasons for swimming and what it has done for them. It’s secluded, tranquil and amazingly peaceful considering it is in the middle of London. There’s something really special about being somewhere where women have been swimming for almost 100 years all year round. It doesn’t quite feel like anywhere else in the world, it’s a total escape from normal life and is a place where you feel your troubles instantly lifting. There was recently lovely doumentary on the history of the ponds exploring the love people have for the Hampstead Ponds.
Swimming offers a sense of accomplishment and achievement
Nichols also talks about how swimming is a distinct skill we need to learn as children or adults and this is satisfying as it gives us an enormous sense of achievement and satisfaction (once the frustrations are passed).
As Alexandra Heminsley says:
“To discover a new skill as an adult is like noticing a door, deciding to open it and finding an entire room in your own home you never knew you had. And I had done it – I had opened the door to the extra room. Now I wanted to be able to see water, anywhere in the world – oceans, lakes and pools – and sense not fear but adventure and peace”.
Alexandra Heminsley, Leap In
Nichols also talks about the benefits of how we have to learn to swim and the cognitive benefits:
“This combination of cognitive effort and aerobic exercise has actually been proven to provide the greatest amount of what is called “cognitive reserve” – that is, the mind’s resilience to damage to the brain”.
Wallace J Nichols Blue Mind
Swimming is one of the best forms of aerobic exercise
It might be a pain to get to a pool, get changed and get wet but it’s worth it for the great overall workout you get without adding any stress to your joints:
“The resistance and pressure of water contribute to swimming’s role as one of the best forms of both aerobic exercise and muscle toning. Because the pressure of the water outside the body is greater than the pressure inside”.
Wallace J Nichols Blue Mind
Swimming improves the respiratory system and every muscle is benefiting from a resistance training workout.
Swimming as a stress buster
Catecholamines are a hormone in the body which regulates stress. Being immersed in the water can change the make up of catecholamines in the body in a way similar to relaxation or meditation – so just being in water can reduce stress and increase feelings of relaxation.
As other forms of aerobic exercise do, swimming releases feel good chemicals endorphins and endocannabinoids again serving to reduce the body’s stress response and make us feel great. Swimming is also linked to an increase in the number of neurons in the hippocampus (see my earlier post on exercise and mental health). Nichols also writes that partaking in regular aerobic exercise can help the ageing process by maintaining our cognitive abilities.
So get in the water whichever way feels good to you and see if it can make you feel better, lift your mood, increase your feelings of happiness, increase your creativity and reduce stress and anxiety!
Woop woop for swimming! In the pool with the butterfly ladies was always good times!
It sure was Graeme. The good days! Hope you are well 🙂