I was a guest on an Instagram live with Amanda from Northern TIdes Studio and Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind - talking about water, the Blue Mind movement, and the healing properties of the ocean.
Amanda asked how living at the beach has changed me. I don’t know why that question caught me off guard - it was a great question. I wasn’t really sure I had the answer - at least nothing I felt I could articulate at the moment.
If I had the chance to answer the question again, I would say that although I have always felt a connection to the beach and the ocean - now that I live here - we’ve bonded - we’re in a relationship.
In 2020 when the world took a collective pause, I had a lot of time to sit at the beach alone, to listen, and think about the podcast and how I wanted it to grow.
I needed to connect with other beach lovers, and since no one was meeting in person, I went to the next best thing - Facebook. I found the group “I Love the Beach” and posted a question: “What do you love most about the beach?” minutes later, a flood of responses appeared in the comments.
Most comments were about how peaceful, soothing, or healing it felt to be at the beach. And I certainly could relate to that.
But what stood out to me was that nearly everyone said something about the ocean - the water.
I could definitely relate! That’s what I love most about the beach - the water - - there’s a sense of comfort and belonging - it feels like “home.”
I felt compelled to tell a story about this relationship with water, but honestly, I didn’t know what story to tell. I made a list:
Learning to swim by jumping into the deep end of a pool
My first trip to the ocean
Growing up in a house across the street from the river
Sunday afternoon hikes in the woods along a stream
Swim Team . . .
I never really thought about its significance, but being a swim team member was a significant part of my formative years, and that’s when my relationship with water really began.
Listen as I recall my childhood swim team experience: from making the big shift from being an “OK” sprinter to a long-distance “Champion" and how water saved me from drowning from the pressures of college life and beyond.
What influence has water had in your life? Has it made you happier? Healthier? More connected?
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Be water, my friend.”
~ Bruce Lee
PODCAST LINKS:
Paige [00:00:09]:
Hello friends and fellow lovers of all things Beachy. Welcome to The Beach Speaks, the podcast that shares stories about the beach and our connection to it. I'm your host and beach lover, Paige Friend, helping you reconnect with the beach, return to your soul, and reimagine your life. So grab a cool drink, relax in your beach chair, stick your toes in the sand, and enjoy this episode of The Beach Speaks.
Hey, beach lover. A few days ago, I was a guest on an Instagram live with Amanda from Northern Tide Studio and Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind. We were talking about water, the Blue Mind Movement, and the healing properties of the ocean.
Paige [00:01:44]:
And Amanda asked how living at the beach had changed me. And I don't know why that question caught me off guard. It was a great question. I wasn't really sure I had the answer, at least nothing I felt I could articulate at the moment. And if I had the chance to answer the question again, I would say that, although I'd always felt a connection to the beach and the ocean, now that I live here, we've bonded. We're in a relationship. In 2020, when the world took a collective pause, I had a lot of time to sit at the beach alone to listen and think about the podcast and how I wanted it to grow. I needed to connect with other beach lovers, but since no one was meeting in person, I went to where everyone was at the time, Facebook.
Paige [00:02:51]:
I searched the words beach lovers, and the first group to come up was called I Love the Beach. The members were people from all over the world sharing photos of their favorite beach getaways and posting beach memes with sayings like, I followed my heart and it led me to the beach or Life is just better at the beach. There were rarely any comments, just likes and loves and various forms of happy emojis, and I wanted to get the conversation going. So instead of a catchy meme, I posted a question in large plain white lettering on a turquoise blue background. What do you love most about the beach? And minutes later, a flood of responses appeared in the comments. The majority of the comments were about how peaceful, soothing, or healing it felt to be at the beach, and I certainly could relate to that. But what stood out to me was that nearly everyone said something about the ocean, the water. I could really relate to that.
Paige [00:03:55]:
That's what I love most about the beach, the water. There's a sense of comfort and belonging. It feels like home. I felt compelled to tell a story about this relationship with water. I was sure I had a story to tell, but, honestly, I didn't know what story to tell or how to tell it. Normally, when thoughts come to me, they flow fast, and I need to write them down before they disappear. So I dug out my journal at the bottom of my podcast equipment bag, and I waited for the tsunami of ideas to come. But nothing.
Paige [00:04:34]:
Not a drop. Typically, a walk along the shoreline would be enough to boost my creativity and get the ideas flowing again, but we were traveling and there was no beach nearby, so I did the next best thing. I took a bath. Some people say they get their best ideas in the shower. For me, I prefer a soak in the tub. I queued up a playlist of ocean music on my phone, hopped in the water and let the thoughts ebb and flow, and then waves of memories started rolling in. I started making a mental list, learning to swim by jumping into the deep end of the pool, my first trip to the ocean, growing up in a house across the street from the river, Sunday afternoon hikes in the woods along a stream, swim team. I was amazed how ubiquitous water had been in my life and how it has shaped who I am, especially swim team.
Paige [00:05:35]:
I never really thought about its significance, but being a member of the swim team was a major part of my formative years, and that's where my relationship with water really began. You know the saying, Water is life? Well, water really was my life back then, from childhood to young adulthood, and it started at the YMCA. When I was in 4th grade, my brother, a 1st grader, joined the YMCA swim team. My mother said it was essentially so that he could learn how to swim. It was like glorified swimming lessons. Now, I already knew how to swim, so I didn't think much about it, Until one cold and dreary Saturday afternoon, I agreed to go with my mother to watch my brother swim practice. Not that I was particularly interested. It was just one of those typical midwinter days in Pennsylvania where the once hard packed, sparkly white snow that would have been perfect for sledding had turned into gray slush, and I was bored.
Paige [00:06:46]:
I put on my puffy ski jacket and fleece lined snow boots and sloshed through the melted snow a hole 3 blocks to the YMCA. A 2 story brick building with the iconic black and red Y painted on the double glass doors at the entrance. The pool was on the bottom level of the building, and I remember feeling, as we walked down the stairs, like we were going into the basement. And if it wasn't for the smell of chlorine, you wouldn't think there was a pool down there at all. I followed my mother down a narrow hallway that led to the pool, then kicking the slush off my boots on a mat by the door and went in. To the left, there were 3 rows of rickety wooden risers along the wall where a handful of moms were sitting quietly with a vague look of interest in what their kids were doing in the water. The pool was really small, 3 feet at one end and dropping to 10 feet at the other, but it had only 4 lanes. And the length of the pool was only 20 yards instead of the standard 25.
Paige [00:07:52]:
And I remember the deck was like a slippery greenish blue tile. The air was stale, warm, muggy. It felt like being in a lukewarm sauna with a heavy aroma of chlorine. And as I sat on the bench watching my skinny 6 year old brother struggling to make it from one end of the pool to the other, just one lap, windmilling his arms and kicking his feet furiously to keep his body from sinking while the waves of the other swimmers splashed over his face as he struggled to catch a breath. I turned to my mother and said, This is swim team. Sign me up! The water was calling me. I couldn't wait to dive in, like a dolphin in the ebb and flow of the waves, moving gracefully down the length of the pool, confident that I could keep up with the more experienced swimmers. Initially, I thought I knew how to swim, but there was a lot more to learn when you're competing.
Paige [00:08:54]:
Racing starts off a block, flip turns, bilateral breathing. I was determined to master all the strokes freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke but the only one I could manage to execute a sprint one length of the pool and back. It's a fast race, and it goes a little like this: Get a quick start off the block, dive in, hold your breath, Move as fast as you can through the water, alternating left and right arms, reaching out to scoop a handful of water and push it behind you in sync with your legs, kicking with the speed of a motorboat creating a wake behind you. And when you're a body length from the wall, you catch a quick breath of air before rolling forward and flipping your legs over as fast as you can, propelling yourself like a torpedo off the wall with your feet, and then sprit to the end. When you get to the last few yards, you look underwater for the wall ahead and time your last stroke so that when you make your final reach, your fingertips touch the wall like an arrow hitting the bull's eye. It all happens so fast, and the separation between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd can be a matter of tenths of a second. And for the most part, I really enjoyed being a sprinter. It was nice only to have two lengths of the pool to swim and be done, but sometimes it felt like it went too fast, considering the long hours spent training in the water for a race that lasted about 30 seconds.
Paige [00:10:24]:
My first year of swimming for the high school team began with a preseason invitational meet. This was where everyone had to swim an event opposite of what they usually would. And since I'd always been a freestyle sprinter, I assumed that meant I would be asked to do something other than freestyle, like the 50 yard butterfly or 50 yard backstroke. A week before this meet, our coach had us all gather together at the pool deck after practice, and I remember shivering, sitting in a wet bathing suit on the cold tile, nervously waiting to learn what event I had been assigned to swim. He read off all the names for the fifty- and 100 yard events, and I wasn't called for any of those. Then he went through the mid length, 200 yard events, and he still had not called my name. At this time, I was panicking. Had I been cut from the team already? The season hadn't even started.
Paige [00:11:20]:
There was one more event left. The one I never imagined I would ever swim. I heard him say, Paige, I've got you leading the line up for the 5 hundred free. I was excited to hear my name called, but then a sense of dread sunk to the pit of my stomach because this meant that instead of racing 2 laps of the pool like I was used to, I would have to do 20. That week, following up to the meet, when everyone else was done with practice, I stayed in the water to swim an extra 500 yards, thinking at the time that the longer your event, the more yards you had to practice in the pool. And the longer I stayed in the water, the easier it was to shift my mindset so that when it was finally my turn to race, all that pressure to sprint, to go, go, go was gone. I just dove in and swam, kicking a smooth and steady pace, taking a breath every 3 to 5 strokes, one lap, flip, another lap, flip. I didn't think about where the other swimmers were.
Paige [00:12:31]:
I just settled into a steady pace, 1 lap, 2 laps, 3, until I touched the wall at 20. I was exhausted, but at the same time, I felt like I could keep on swimming. And I remember looking up at the board to see where I finished, and I couldn't believe it. I came in 1st place. I was now the team's official long distance swimmer. However, that meant more time in the pool, extra practice early morning before school, and regular practice after school. And I can't say that I looked forward to getting up at 5:30 am, but I knew that as soon as I got in the water and started the workout, I'd feel better about myself afterward. I never thought why that was.
Paige [00:13:23]:
It just was. My whole social life and identity revolved around my relationship with water. All my close friends were swimmers, and if we weren't in the pool, we were hanging out at the pool. Our team won district championship all 4 years I competed in high school, and both my junior and senior years, I was women's district champion in the 500. Senior year, I won our High School Scholar Athlete Award. Yeah. I had my share of teenage doubts about who I was and who I wanted to be in my life. But in the water, I knew who I was.
Paige [00:14:09]:
I was a champion. Then came college. It was really difficult for me to adjust. Everyone seemed so much smarter than me and were way better at keeping up with their studies while still having some fun. I didn't think it would be so hard. High school was pretty easy, but now it was a struggle to keep up. I was drowning in books and papers and tests and a part time campus job, but it was water that kept me from sinking. I was missing that mind body connection I had when I was in the water, so I decided to ditch my study group to spend time in our campus pool just to do some laps to clear my mind and boost my mood.
Paige [00:15:05]:
And after a few weeks, I decided to join the swim team, and pretty soon my social life and emotional life revolved around swimming again. I was voted co captain of the team along with my best friend Martha, and I cheerfully volunteered to swim the long distance events, the 500, the 1000, and the 1650, or what we call the swimmer's mile. My mood and my mindset began to shift. If I could go the distance in the pool, I could certainly do the same in my studies. I could keep up. After college, I didn't compete in swimming anymore, but I always made an effort to be in or near water. I especially looked forward to our annual family vacations at the beach. And when I moved to Florida, first Tampa and then Orlando, I didn't think about it at the time, but all three homes we had lived in had a backyard next to a pond.
Paige [00:16:09]:
And the beach was just a few hours away, so it wasn't too difficult to get some sand, sun, and surf when I really needed it. Fast forward to now, where the beach is my home and the ocean is part of my everyday life. I go there to meditate and get grounded. And when I need a boost of energy and creativity, I go for a walk along the shoreline. And now that I have this podcast, I'm so grateful that I get to share these moments with you. And I have a lot more to share about my water related adventures, but I'll save those stories for future episodes.
Until then: Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Be water, my friend. ~ Bruce Lee
The beach is speaking.
Paige [00:17:01]:
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of of The Beach Speaks. If you enjoyed what you heard, please spread the beachy vibes and share it with a friend because let's be honest, who doesn't want more beach in their lives? And if more beach is what you crave, go to the beachbeaks.com and sign up for my newsletter. It's an easy way to stay in the know, collect some tips and travel hacks for your next beach adventure, and find out what I'm doing at the beach. And if you want to dive deeper into the ocean of support, consider becoming a Beach Speaks Patreon member. Your contribution helps keep the podcast afloat and you'll enjoy some cool perks that only our Patreon family gets to enjoy.
The beach is speaking. Are you listening?
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