Foothold

When I was not communicating with my inner world, I found myself losing on my foothold. No mater how well I deal with the outside world, "something" remains missing and it seems that the wider the gap expands, the more stress it adds on. However, the process of filling that gap is an interesting one and worth the effort to find that out.

I continue looking for the "flow" in my daily life, which is quite a challenge to do so in the first semester of the University's calender, as I came to realise that, the relatively heavier workload for this semester actually is the source that distort that "flow", so I must get that back. A little rule that I used to restore the flow is to make sure, amidst the busy schedules at work, I made sure I fulfil all of them in satisfying fashion of an acceptable quality based on my own standard.

Today, an incident while swimming reinforce the importance of 'communicating with my inner world' in me. Lately, swimming didn't feel quite well 'flown'. I had a bit of a "bad back" and that hurts when you try to catch the breath to float when you swam. I sorted that out a while back, by going back to my basic mediation technique, focusing on my breathing. Today's incident was a different one because I no longer has the 'bad back' problem. It was, however, I rushed to swim fast, and that lost all the fun for me, and more so when there was also another swimmer in the lane, and that urge me more. As I didn't quite feel my momentum like in my usual swim, I was urgent to want to move quick and it didn't work.

Then, I started to focus on my speed and pace and forgot about the other swimmer. As I found my "comfort zone", which was me swimming slower than normal, I stick to it. I go with the flow and let myself go slow, and when later it became clear that should be my foothold, I gripped it hard and I was in control, I began to swim in an acceptable pace, which gradually became faster and faster. I was amazed by this rather unique "self-discovery" experience which was a bit of a personal growth for me, and should have an impact on me, whenever I  looked into myself in my 'inner world', looking for that much needed foothold.

Silent Stress

Smooth and clean breathing drains out all the stress, little by little....

I didn't feel "quite well" for a while since the first semester began beginning of October. We all have what we meant by 'don't feel quite well'. For me, "not feeling well" is when I sense 'things don't flow'. When things flow, I feel good. For things to flow, I have to feel the 'good flow' mainly from the 'quality of the breathing'. This then brought me good vibes, which could easily feel and connect to it because it will be all around you in the air.

I came to the knowledge I was "under stress" after my chat with Kim, a student who came to see me during the 'meet the tutees' week. Kim is a Spanish student from Gibraltar, which happen still to be a British Colony. Kim rejoined Loughborough from Newcastle University. She told me she loved sport and wanted a different university's experience. I began to find Kim engaging, perhaps because of her interesting background. She grew up in a British Colony and being a foreigner, travelling this far, she would have to be even more adaptable than other students from the home country. When Kim told me she would be representing the university in the cross-country competition and would be training quite regularly. I cannot agree more. I told her constant training is not only good for the practise, but help her to become more organised. She can, for example, plan for her studies surrounding with her training schedules, so that she would have her studies in place.

I shared with her about the focus of exercise I did in my daily life. The importance of it lies in the fact that constant daily exercises, walking, swimming, etc, are like built-in stabiliser because this help drains out unnecessary stress in daily life. When I shared with her about that, and then when later I thought back, I actually found myself under stress, but not to my knowledge. How ironical is that! What an interesting way to find out that I am under stress. Stress is so silent! It didn't speak a word and it is creepy! I then realized, when I am under stress, the quality of breathing can't even be made better while swimming. It seems that smooth and clean breathing is a channel to drain out all the stress.

The breath in and breath out process eases some built-in stresses and help clear the mind to make it focused. It is also quite likely that when one was under stress, it lost out on its focus and it felt like 'all over the place' for most things and this only add-on to more stress. Surely, we cannot expect life to be a smooth sailing voyage. Ups and downs in life are good, as it gives us opportunity to re-charge, which helped us to become better and stronger and keeping up with life's frequently changing momentum.