Today's swim: 3200metres (which is 2 miles, or 128 lengths of a 25m pool).  Time on that was 95mins, giving me an average mile-time of 47ish minutes. The only real pause in it was a quick exit to the loos half way through.
The battle on a 2 mile swim is nothing to do with muscle power. Anyone who has learnt to swim a mile has figured out how to build in enough rest into the stroke to allow it to continue indefinitely. Or developed enough muscle strength and stamina for the same purpose. The real battle is what is described by many people as "boredom", equivalent to "grinding" as defined a few days ago. It is the mental stamina to perform the same action again and again knowing that the desired result is not in 30 seconds time. 
I took the opportunity to meditate during my swim. My wonderful buddhist teacher, Gen Thogme: 
  
teaches her students to develop the capacity to choose what the mental activity focusses on. Instead of being driven like a kitesurfer from one end of the bay to the other depending on the mental wind direction, one chooses the focus. To start with, for most meditators, the focus is the breath. 
I found this invaluable in my swim. Instead of thinking, "Gasp, this front crawl is so hard, gasp, can i keep it up for another 100lengths, gasp" I am noticing whether or not my lungs are full on the inbreath, at what rate I am emptying them on the outbreath, I adjust my breathing to match the needs of my body and begin to relax in the water. 

Tags: buddhism, swimming

 Last week's swimming got me thinking about meditation and the usefulness of thinking. Various buddhist thinkers maintain that thinking is less than useful, and mainly injurious. This was reflected in my first few lengths: "omg, how can i ever do 40 lens without stopping. this will never work" etc. All sorts of diseased, pessimistic negativity telling me to stop even trying. 

Turning the exercise into meditative swimming was much more interesting. I observed the patterns of light on the pool floor. I made a mantra of the number of lengths I had swum so far: " 25 ..... 25....... 25.... 26......". I considered whether or not i should blog on this experience and then realised I was thinking again, and wondered whether or not that was useful, and how one should discern whether or not thinking was useful without thinking about it...... then went back to studying light patterns and mantras and finished my given lengths without self-sabotaging.

Interesting. Bowlby offers us insights into our thinking processes, suggesting we have two cognitive maps: one of the "world" and one of our "self". Bowlby's predatory bird flies his territory,  noting and remembering landmarks. He measures the movement of prey against these landmarks and against his own mental cognitive self-map. Uses these two maps to assess the ongoing situation wrt where he is vs his prey. Is a catch likely? Where should i move to? Against what landmark do I assess this position?

Diseased thinking is a problem if you are Bowlby's bird,  but have been taught an erroneous self-map. If you have learnt you are an eagle but in actuality you have the capabilities of a sparrow - or vice versa. Similarly, you need to have an accurate environmental map to assess your movement against the external world. 

If your aim fails, which of these maps is at fault? And how can you assess this without thinking? (But if your maps are faulty it is due to diseased thinking.....)

[Name? also Steven Covey] tells us that self-awareness is the key to solving human dilemmas: the GAP between stimulus and response enables us to think and to choose how to react. HH Dalai Lama tells us that we need to "think THINK THINK" in order to not simply live out of our diseased gut reactions. 

To think or not to think? It is all a question of what mechanisms to use to avoid and defeat and heal our diseased minds.

Tags: buddhism, swimming