This past weekend, a family drove from upstate California for their daughter, a brilliant 10-year old push-girl, to attend swimming lessons. Just after two lessons, the young woman was floating on her stomach and on her back with perfect ease, however, she wasn’t moving her arms. Her legs, however, have extremely low muscle tone due to the fact that she’s been in a wheel chair most of her life.
During the lesson, she continued to tell me that she wasn’t ready, although her body physically was not only ready, but the perfect combination of strength, flexibility and buoyancy to make her comparable (to scale) to Michael Phelps’ dimensions – she was built to swim!
As she was laying on her back, floating better (she was UNSINKABLE) than any other client I’ve ever encountered, she yelled, “I HATE MYSELF!”
It was at that moment that I realized I wouldn’t be able to teach her to swim until we worked on that aspect of her mental processing. Thankfully, I completed my SoulBlazing Life Coaching certification several months ago and have decades of experience coaching individuals no matter their age or abilities. At that moment I picked her up and hugged her, just held her in my arms in the water like the small ten-year old she is.
After working through the mental block, we spent 5 hours in 3 days, developing her swimming techniques. I was honoured to have had the opportunity to work with her and when I left her at the pool, she was swimming breaststroke, backstroke – both elementary and competitive backstroke, and was working on her freestyle, with no assistance.
This little Push-Girl was the perfect example of our mission and vision – helping others to become One with the Water. Sometimes, as coaches, we are required to patiently help you work through your fears in order to help you achieve your swimming goals.
And as my coaches always told me, it’s 90% mental, 10% physical, plus a lot of hard work! But never give up, our coaches will help you in getting past your fears in order to swim.
Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.