Swimming meditation can work. You heard it here first. One can “nudge” out most thoughts and focus on the “here and now” as you swim one lap after another. I did. Got so relaxed, I lost count for a while, but then didn’t care how many lengths I had traversed.

Got into something Tibetan Buddhists call “analytic meditation,” where you focus on one subject and one subject only, viewing several aspects of an idea without clinging to, or being repulsed by, it. Works better while swimming on my back. Breathing, that is. You anchor meditation by your breathing, you know. Can’t raise your level of consciousness in shallow water. Must use deep long breaths. At least I have to. The kind of breathing I can safely do only while swimming the back stroke. Over and over again. Counting from one to 36 the number of lengths of the pool making up a half mile.

Kind of like a “walking meditation,” but at a faster clip. If I slowed to the pace I usually take while walking meditatively, I would sink like a stone. Drop to the swimming pool floor, and be forced to seek reincarnation quicker than I had hoped to see a new Life evolve.

I’m exercising my body and my mind while in the water. Exercising the mind, you ask? Yes. Stretching it out. That’s how I view meditation now a days. I try to use more than that 2 percent of the brain we normally use. Push my mind to the limit, try pushing the envelope toward the rare space where only the Mystics get to breathe.

You can do it. Swimming creates endorphins that lay the foundation for raising your consciousness, for rising to that spiritual Upper World where you become One with the Universe. OK, you’re not going to win the lottery by divining the daily number. But, you will open yourself to an awareness of an interconnectedness between all of us. Democrat and Republican. Jew and Arab. Me and You.

Care to try it?  Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and dive in. The water temperature is just right.

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