Swimming

I do a lot of things to keep myself physically fit.  I lift light weights; I do crunches, planks, and modified pushups; I walk; I ride a stationary bike.  But most of all I swim.  I’m lucky that my small community has a large, well-equipped YMCA with a nice pool with three lanes always reserved for lap swimming.  I try to swim at least three days a week, and I attribute much of my physical recovery to swimming.

 I’m not of a mystical bent, but I can’t help but think, and feel, that water is healing.  When I jump in, it feels to me that my body responds positively to it, that I have entered a nurturing, supportive environment.  The spasticity that slows me so much when I engage in other forms of exercise has less power over me in the water.  It still fights against me, but the water enables me to overcome it to the extent that I can go 12 lengths of the pool using my own version of a freestyle stroke.  I don’t claim to do laps, since I have to catch my breath at each end of the pool, but I think before long that laps will be doable.

There was a therapeutic pool at my inpatient rehab facility, but my therapists never suggested I use it. I attributed that to the fact that it would be more difficult, and time-consuming, for the therapists to  have to get in and out of the water with their patients.  It’s my personal belief, though, without any research to back it up, that exercising in water would greatly benefit all stroke survivors. 

In my opinion we don’t respect water nearly enough.  It’s where we came from, and mostly what we are.  When I swim I feel its resistance that strengthens me, and its support that assists me.  For sure, it can be dangerous, even deadly, but if you don’t fight it, and instead respect it, it will respect you. 

Near Lexington there is a rehab facility for injured thoroughbred horses where, by use of a crane, sling and harness apparatus, horses can swim in a circular pool.  Something like that would be greatly beneficial to stroke survivors, I believe, but race horses are valuable in our society, while stroke survivors seem much less so.