Floating

“Floating”

Since becoming an adult, a childhood memory of floating has become my personal visualization for times when calm is required. It is my “happy place”, if you like. I merely need to remind myself to return there, if only in my mind. Its calming, healing powers are blessedly free and amazing and have aided me in times of overwhelming stress, sadness and pain. I can return there immediately and the cost of fare is only a deep breath and the closure of my eyes.

I am a child again. I have ridden the summer rec program bus to the lake and have found a quiet corner of the cordoned off water where no one else seems to be. I fluidly slip back into the cool, clear water, spreading my arms out wide, feeling the lake surround me, envelope me, cool me, soothe me. The water covers my ears and distorts my surroundings. I can still hear my friends squealing and splashing and yelling to one another as they catapult themselves from the floating docks, but now their exuberance is buffered. Their existence comes secondary to my own breathing, which is now slow, deep, and even, my face and toes are the only things above the surface of the glistening water.

It is here in this blissfully suspended state that I remain, silently permitting the current to determine my path while allowing my mind to wander. I scrutinize whatever clouds might be in attendance, examining them to find a familiar shape among their white, wispy layers of ever-changing fluff. I watch the leaves at the topmost branches of the trees nestled near the camps bordering the designated beach. They sway to and fro, seeming to acknowledge me, to wave to me, as if they are happy to be recognized and noticed at all.

From time to time I simply close my eyes, enjoying the feeling of being cocooned and rocked gently by the lake, acutely aware of the sound of my heart beat. Ba boom . . . . ba boom . . . . ba boom . . . . ba boom. I am keenly conscious of the sound of my own breathing. In . . . . out . . . . in . . . . out . . . . in . . . . out. Time stands still for me somehow. For a suspended moment, I am a part of the lake and of the trees and of the clouds and of the breeze. I am a child of nature and of the earth and all is well and perfect.