by Josephine Bell, Personal Assistant, Pottsville
I’ve been staying in a hotel for about a week. Above us is an elegant rooftop swimming pool with spa and sauna facilities. Early yesterday morning I found myself feeling that a swim would be nice. It’s something I very seldom do, but this time I had even packed a pair of goggles as well as my bathers, so I was well prepared and had everything I needed for an enjoyable experience.
It felt very lovely to be swimming in the dawn’s early light above the city and to watch the skyscape change at that special morning time. But it felt even more lovely to be with myself in the pool as I experimented with some simple exercises I had learned from Simone Benhayon an international swimming instructor. As I was playing with breathing through my nose and keeping my head under the water I could feel various tensions in my body and then a melting away of a feeling of driven-ness, of moving forward, which allowed me to feel my body more deeply. But more than that, I could feel the innate joy and playfulness of just being me in my body in the water. This took me back to being a child and how I used to play for hours in various friends’ swimming pools, and the simple delight of it.
I contemplated the fact that over the years I had lost much of the joy of simply swimming, of just feeling the grace of my body in the water, and had therefore stopped doing it very often. Even when I did get into the water and swim, it had become overlaid with the sense of being another thing “to do” because it was good for me, or needed the exercise, or to be more toned, or whatever mental construct was running at the time! I could feel the mental driven-ness of that approach, its narrowness and constriction, and how that way had actually become the norm in so many areas of my life – not overtly perhaps, but it was there in the background all the same. It was a beautiful moment to fully feel just how much this way of living had closed me down to the depth and richness of life pulsing within my own body. In effect I had lost touch with the symphony of me swimming through life.
As I felt all of this and how the beauty of my own symphony was beginning to emerge once again, I also felt a deep gratitude to Universal Medicine (UniMed), Serge Benhayon, and the many UniMed practitioners who have helped and inspired me to start to open those doors in myself that had long been closed and thus find myself, after so many years, inspired to take a delicious dive in a pool on a rooftop in Sydney.
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
I have never been the biggest fan of swimming. Not because I didn’t like it, but because my ears did not cope with the water going into them but, also the strength water has when it’s in large quantities. Not learning to swim from a young age didn’t help either. I hated swimming sessions and a couple of times I nearly drowned.
I however appreciate the support water has on our bodies when we respect the water. Just recently I went to the pool for rehab, to nurture a sore back and the ability to perform a range of exercises and stretches I am dubious about doing on dry land. It was super supportive. Whilst there I observed the children, playing jumping and having fun. It was an outdoor pool, and the sun was shining. It sure was joyful to be with them. They bought the lightheartedness to how water can be fun, it was beautiful to be a part of.
Water can be fun, it’s how we perceive it that makes the difference. Like anything on this planet, it is something that needs to be respected.
‘the depth and richness of life pulsing within my own body’… that is a stunner of a quote to connect to and realise is the truth of our every moment.
Spot on Richard, the way Josephine has shared this piece of writing allows us to feel all she felt too in the process of the swim and how transformative this was and is.
The drive to do things can easily take over if we switch off our sensitivity and the communications of the body.
Spot on!..Drive stops you from many things and the body cannot be heard. Until it speaks so loud you have no choice but to take heed to its calling…
It is so easy to get caught up in the list of chores, the next thing to do or get done and loose sight of the importance of just being and allowing the body and the bubbling joy inside to be free to express.
Those moments of having nothing being asked of us and us simply being free to feel ourselves and all that that entails is like magic, like a gift so precious and beautiful. It helps us to re-ignite our relationship with self, and that is worth so much more than Gold.
“It was a beautiful moment to fully feel just how much this way of living had closed me down to the depth and richness of life pulsing within my own body.” It’s a great inventory to take to look at the lack of richness our lives have because of imposing belief systems such as placing what needs to be done before ourselves. As we age we tend to lose the sense of our preciousness and the joy of life, life can become very heavy and focused on doing and surviving.
How lovely to reconnect to that innocent joy of childhood where we could play for hours and be ourselves. Unfortunately all this gets left behind as we grow up and we step onto the tread mill of what we call life which to me feel like an existence. This is not how life is meant to be but we have reduced and diminished ourselves so much that we except it. It reminds me of Elephants in captivity they have been so conditioned since birth to behave in a certain way that when they are grown up in spite of their huge strength they do not stray from the posts they were tied up to since young.
How lovely to feel the joy and playfulness that is always inside, ‘I could feel the innate joy and playfulness of just being me in my body in the water.’
We have lost the joy of simply being. Watching children they experience so much of the world and their daily tasks with wonder and joy, they are in the beauty of themselves and they bring that in full expression to everything, even tying their shoelaces is an expression of the joy they are! It is a great conversation and something to explore more fully – our joy (or lack thereof) in life.
Allowing wonder and joy to infuse our every day activities, mundane as we may consider them to be, changes everything.