Lily and Tim's Travel Blog: Swimming...yoga...breathing...squealing!

So, I think we all know that I'm not much of a swimmer. I've always been a bit of a scaredycat around water. And that's quite sensible of me, I reckon. Water is scary! How long can you hold your breath for under water? 20 seconds? 30 seconds? Awesome! Can you keep going for much longer? No? You know why not? BECAUSE YOU WILL DIE!!! Breathing is ace! I love breathing. I don't want to stay anywhere that won't allow me to breathe, thank-you-very-much.

Speaking of, I've been going to yoga quite a bit since we've been staying at the church. There's a yoga studio in Daylesford (nearby hippy town) that came highly recommended. A big part of this style of yoga (Hatha) is focused on breathing, which I've been keen to get into for a while. It makes taking in big lungfuls of air feel like drinking fresh spring water. Beautiful!

Lily's basic half-yogic breathing technique:

1. Give yourself 15 minutes. Lie down, wearing nice floppy clothes. Shoes off. Be warm. Close your eyes.

2. Start breathing from your abdomen ('ab-DOUGH-men') - put your hand on your tummy and start breathing in and out - slowly. Your tummy should expand outwards when you inhale and drop back in when you exhale. With each breath, inhale and exhale more deeply.

3. When you feel nice and settled and comfortable in your breathing, take one nice big slow lungful in- counting to 7 as you inhale - slowly. Count to 7 as you exhale, slowly.

4. When you've done that two or three times, start to notice where the air is entering your body. As you inhale, fill up your belly first, then fill up the middle of your chest, then fill the rest of your lungs up to your collar bone...s.l.o.w.l.y.... As you exhale, empty from your collar bone, then middle of chest, then tummy.

5. After two or three goes at that, take a pause after emptying each section of your out breath: inhale into your tummy...mid-chest...collar bone...pause for a second and exhale from your collar bone...pause...mid-chest...pause...tummy...pause..inhale...and go through that a few times.

6. When you're done and blissed out, take in a beautiful big unrestricted lungful of air.

Here endeth the lesson. I reckon it's pretty nice to give your breath some attention. That big lungful of air tastes lovely and clean.

That's Tim. He's ACE!

Me, givin it some

So, back to the water issue. I'd been in a kayak with Tim before this trip and I was surprised at how comfortable I felt. We'd gone out for a couple of hours on the Maribyrnong River in Melbourne - very calm, it was a lovely day for it. And there I was: on the water, paddling away, learning how to paddle and steer and not feeling at all tense. Weird! So I thought, well, I reckon I can do this. If I do fall in I'll be wearing a buoyancy vest, so I won't be under for that long...

It's hard to take a good photo from the front of the boat

Or from the back. In my defence, I was concentrating
very hard on steering. Would have been a cracking photo, too.

I can't gush enough about how brilliant being on the water was! Sure, there were times when I was nervous - the first surf landing coming in to Zoe Bay sounded like it was going to be pretty hairy when Dave described it. He had to give us very specific instructions on how to land on the beach. Come in at an angle...paddle, paddle, paddle...catch a wave, paddle, paddle, paddle...when the wave you're riding starts to tip the boat over towards the beach, lean into the wave...if you fall out, get behind the boat so it doesn't smack you in the head...etc, etc... So coming in I thought, oh well, here we go - this is going to be awkward and possibly a bit drowny. But...lucky Lily having Tim do all the work on that first one. He brought us in to shore straight on - like a pro - while I squealed with excitement...completely useless wondering when I should be leaning. Which way do I lean?!! I yell... don't think Tim heard me, which is probably for the best...

But the most fun were the launches. Again, I mostly sat like a muppet in the front of the boat, happily getting smashed in the face by oncoming waves while Tim did all the furious paddling to get us through it into calmer waters. It was SO COOL! Once Tim pointed out that it'd be rather nice if I gave him a hand, I got stuck in. But oh! That really was the funnest. Going head first into surf, the boat lifting up onto the wave and slapping back down the other side...being absolutely drenched for the entire day...awesome, awesome, awesome fun!!!