What I Learned From an Open Water Swimming Vacation

Diving into self-discovery.

This summer, I challenged myself to do something new and a bit intimidating: I went on an open-water swimming holiday with the British company SwimTrek in Crete, Greece.

I’m a lifelong lover of water — and swimming has been a natural extension of that. Swimming simultaneously calms and energizes me, the water serving as a source of emotional rejuvenation and spiritual contentment.

I learned to swim at the YWCA as a bubbly toddler, the Jersey Shore as an awkward teenager, and studying abroad in Brazil in my 20s — that’s when I learned the correct way to breathe and mastered lap swimming. But I never stopped learning; even at age 38, I taught myself how to do flip turns by watching YouTube videos.

I’m drawn to the water because it calms and mesmerizes me and immersing myself in water rejuvenates me in ways that are hard to describe. So I’ll just say this: Sitting in the shallow parts of the Indian Ocean by an atoll in the Maldives or gazing out at the large rocks on the seaside of Marin County have come close to feeling like “church” for me.

Still, despite my ample experience, I’d never tried open-water swimming in any serious way. I had never swum a significant distance without lanes, and the average distance during my daily Swim Trek adventure was 1.8 miles. So, the lack of lanes felt risky. After all, the sea’s a powerful force that in the worst-case scenario could swallow you whole

But every year I commit to investing in one personal development experience. So, at age 53 I decided to jump in (literally) and try a week of open water swimming thanks to the enthusiastic encouragement of my friend Ivy, who at 20 years older than me had completed a SwimTrek holiday the previous summer. I was nervous, but putting myself into new and possibly uncomfortable situations has been part of my modus operandi: In my 20s I started a small (and unprofitable) hat design company; I’ve lived in five countries on my own; and earned a Ph.D. while working full time. I would not have attempted any of these experiences had I known how challenging they’d be. I keep doing this because each time, I come out the other side enriched and the better for it.

I arrived in Chania in Northern Crete with my friend Tori. We then connected with a car service for a 90-minute drive through mountainous olive groves to the Port of Sfakia, on the southwestern coastline of Crete. From Sfakia we took a 10-minute water taxi to Loutro, a tiny village only accessible by boat and equivalent to five city blocks if it was extended in a straight line. Loutro is tucked away in a cove and its hilly walking paths, pebble beaches, whitewashed homes, and tiny hotels and restaurants abound for families to lounge along the bay by day. Sailboats dock at night along with the occasional ferry. The water is an unbelievably clear turquoise-green color and on a 92-degree day, the 75-degree temperature water hits the spot.

That first evening before dinner, our guides asked us to change into our “swimming costumes” for our first swim of the trip: three loops around two buoys at the Loutro Bay beach. In our group of 13, the average age was 63. Our guides were accomplished swimmers, one of whom had swum the English Channel. We all waded out into the clear, cool water as fellow vacationers looked on from their perches stretched out on towels, or sipping an evening cocktail and…I panicked. I started comparing myself to my fellow swimming-mates, who whizzed by me. I lost my breathing cadence. I kept needing to float on my back to catch my breath. Finally, I came ashore, dripping, deflated, and devastated. The negative voice in me started proclaiming, “I should have never come. I’ll slow down the rest of the group. Maybe I’ll drown!!” The impact of being in this new water environment, and feeling super self-conscious while other swimmers’ arms and legs swished in front and to the side of me was disconcerting.

But then, magically, as I stared defeatedly down at the pebble beach while waiting for the others to finish, my eyes focused on a heart-shaped pebble by my right foot. I picked up the tiny heart and clutched it in my hand while walking back to my room. I took it as a positive sign. That night I called my husband, John, to tell him about my self-doubts. He assured me that I would be fine — easy for him to say from the safety of dry land. Surprisingly, something worked — maybe the pebble, maybe the pep talk — and by the next morning, I had snapped out of my defeated attitude and reconciled myself to being in “the slow group.” I decided to just enjoy the first day’s swim for what it was: a chance to revel in a new natural environment in an incredibly beautiful part of the world doing something that brought me joy: swimming.

As I left my dismal vibes back on shore and began swimming in the turquoise, sapphire, and cerulean blue waters, I allowed myself to toggle between total immersion in my senses (feeling, seeing, and smelling) and focusing in on my breathing, kicking, and stroke techniques.

Then a funny thing happened: I relaxed into my body. I eased into my cadence of long, extended slow strokes and I even began to feel the rhythm of the sea, its own magnanimous heartbeat — which is a pretty cool sensation!

That evening, our guides, having observed us all day long, re-sorted the groups, and put me in “the fast group.” I was shocked.

It turns out that swimming with long, extended slow strokes is the best way to swim in open water, and that my anxious energy was slowing me down. For the remainder of the week, I committed to listening to my body. I stopped comparing myself to others — or at least, when I began to compare, I quickly snapped out of that rumination. There’s something about being immersed in water, with just the steady sound of your breathing rebounding through your head that makes you particularly attuned to your self-talk — it made me self-aware enough to stop comparing myself.

My inner voice began to emit total gratitude for the gift of swimming in flow with the sea in such a beautiful place on this earth.

My reconciliation with my body reminded me of the Aesop Fable, “The Hare and The Tortoise.” In the story, a tortoise responds to a hare’s mocking of his slow pace with the challenge of a race, judged by a fox. The hare darts off, and in his arrogance, stops for a nap. The tortoise slowly and steadily passes the hare, and by the time the hare awakens and runs to the finish line, the tortoise has already completed the race. The moral of the story? Slow and steady wins the race.

This trip taught me how to center myself and shut out negative noise. While for me it happened in the sea, these lessons are germane to everyday life, whether you’re overwhelmed by a quarterly report or frustrated by a new knitting pattern. Here’s what I took away from my swimming adventure:

Get out of your head and into your body. Just as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk counseled in his book The Body Keeps The Score, the body has sentient intelligence. The water has been my biggest teacher in this lesson.
Don’t compare yourself to others. It’s a fruitless exercise. As R&B singer India Arie once stated in an interview with Essence magazine, there’s no such thing as competition. We all have training, technique, and our God-given talents. I can’t do what you would do, and you can’t do what I would do.
Tap into nature. Allow yourself, whenever possible, to submerge into nature and become one with your surroundings. Nature simultaneously grounds us while sparking flow.
Slow down. Taking your time at a consistent, slow, and steady pace will keep you on your path.
It’s not a race. Life never was, and it never will be. It’s a meandering through space and time.