Growing up, the idea of swimming in the sea scared me. I always loved to swim and the feeling of being in the water, but in the pool, certainly not in the cold sea, outdoors, year-round. As an adult my relationship to the sea has dramatically changed. Now, for me, to be in the sea is to be of the sea; to be of the sea is to be transformed by the shape-shifting power of this mighty body and to be re-energised by the touch of her powerful muscle. This is my story, the tale of a pool swimmer's journey to the sea and the slow shedding of my fears.

As a child I swam competitively and I spent much of my childhood summer holidays mucking about in pools. At school I loved swimming but when I started to swim recreationally, as an adult, I wondered sometimes why it was so tiring, and frankly, not that much fun. It wasn't until after I trained to become an Alexander Technique teacher that my concept of swimming evolved.

Taking a series of Art of Swimming private lessons changed my life and changed my swimming forever. I learned how to swim with ease and efficiency; to feel and flow with, rather than fight, the water. Perhaps most significantly, I realized that, though a competent swimmer, I had always been quite afraid of not being able to breathe. Easy, relaxed breathing took time to master but the new confidence it gave me was pivotal to transforming my relationship with the sea.  

After these one-to-one lessons, swimming became a different activity; slow, gentle, sensuous, exploratory, fluid, peaceful. Water-borne, I experienced a newfound and joyous congruence. My body, at home in the watery medium, moves gracefully; a sensation I rarely have on land. Instead of sprinting four short lengths of free-style and feeling spent, I learned a style that allows me to swim all day if I want to. Consequently, I began to swim further with less effort and with much more enjoyment than ever before. I trained as a swimming teacher and began to play with the new ways I had learned in order to share them both with fellow Alexander Technique teachers and with friends.

My dream was realised when we moved to Walberswick, a little community in Suffolk coastal heaven, in 2011. One of my first conundrums to work out was - where to swim? Many people suggested the sea, but I still equated swimming with what happened in pools of clear still water with black lines on the bottom and ends to push off from. Swimming was a moving meditation, preferably an experience with few distractions or people to collide with. It certainly didn't involve the surprises or unseen dangers that I imagined the sea might present.

After a year I gave up. I felt discouraged by the torture of getting changed in the wind-chill and not really swimming properly anyway. I continued to enjoy summer sea bathing and I began to get used to the colder water as well as to gain confidence in rougher seas. Despite this, in summer, I would only actually swim (rather than bounce around in the waves) on a calm day and, even then, not for long. Come October I'd leave the sea and visit the beach to take photos of the sun as it rose in winter, enjoying the cold blast of ozone-rich salty air, and the sense of well-being that even that gave me.

In 2017 something changed. Actually a few things changed. Sea swimming presented itself anew. It became something I really wanted to be able to do. I was now at the top of the list for a village beach hut! This meant that on cold and wet winter days I could shelter out of the wind as I got dressed. I decided to equip myself to ameliorate the worst of the cold and perhaps even make cold-water sea swimming pleasurable: I bought a Dry Robe, neoprene gloves, swim socks and hat, as well as furry boots to walk home in afterwards. But I knew the real change was in my mood, not these facilitating aspects.

Why? What had happened? I was grieving. I was angry. I was depleted. And I deeply lacked resilience. A voracious reader, I discovered many memoirs, mainly by women, that made me feel the sea would be the perfect place in which to drown my sorrows. The most inspiring of these were: I Found My Tribe (Ruth Fitzmaurice), The Outrun (Amy Liptrot), Swimming with Seals (Victoria Whitworth), and the beautiful 2020 addition, I am an Island (Tamsin Calidas). All of these women, each one for different reasons, were transformed, redeemed even, by sea swimming.

The cold is always, well.... shocking! But, over time, that shock no longer alarms; it is something to observe and watch recede. I'm a huge over-thinker, and the cold prevents thinking; it is hard to cry hot tears into the sea……they just seem to evaporate. Hangovers, aching joints, heartache, fatigue; all negative feeling is frozen out or washed away in those first cold, wet moments. Re-charged, re-set – such mechanistic metaphors for what feels so thoroughly purging and cathartic – perhaps re-born is nearer the mark.

In 2020, the year of the COVID pandemic, I have been lucky. Even during lockdown the sea has been a constant daily pleasure. More than ever I appreciate being on the east coast where the sun rises first, seemingly rousing itself each day from its watery bed. Sunrises, especially in winter, and full-moon rises on a summer night – these are the jewels that sparkle in the sea and make her face radiant and beautiful to swim across. In the summer months, beneath the sea's surface on dark nights, comes the bioluminescence of small marine organisms that transform one's limbs into magic wands that leave a sparkling trail of mini-lights in their wake. The sea offers up these gifts only to those who enter the water; they often cannot be seen from the shore.

Swimming itself is now easier. My understanding expanded and amplified. The year's many calm days allow me to play with swimming differently. I see more clearly the differences between sea and pool swimming. In the sea I am more buoyant. When I get out, I do not carry any lingering chemical smells. In the sea I can float on my back as I look up at the sky, be it grey or blue, sun-dazzle bright or opaque dull, clouds fluffy or mackerel; or swim my languorous back-crawl for as long as I like with no hard pool wall to crash into and wake me from my reveries. I am learning to sight my position better even though the sea is murky sludge-brown. I still find it hard to judge the relative pulls and drift of current, tide and waves. When I have had enough, I head in towards the shore with the waves behind me as I use their undulations to make light work of my butterfly swimming; a work in progress always. Sometimes on summer mornings I crave the quiet of the beach at sunrise with no-one else around. Sometimes I go to the beach on my own at dawn and swim solo.

When the winter comes this year and the water turns brain-numbingly cold, will I still be able to put my face in and swim? Maybe, maybe not……..it doesn't matter anymore. The sea is a beautiful place to be, but these days, a medium in which to swim is only part of what she offers me.