The Art of Swimming & Surrender

How I Stopped Fighting and Started Flowing

I used to think success came from just pushing harder and doing MORE. That if I just kept going — putting in more effort and digging in with more willpower — eventually something would give and I’d have a breakthrough.

And a swimming pool provided me with that breakthrough moment…

It’s London, 6am…

Years ago, I was living in London. I was working as a personal trainer and sports therapist, but mainly I was deep in my studies of Naturopathic Osteopathy — which, at its core, is all about getting your body out of its own way so it can flow and heal itself. That’s what I was immersed in every single day, and yet, before class, I was in the pool across the street every morning, doing exactly the opposite.

I was completely all-in on the self-improvement mantra, “discipline and hard work leads to success”. It was the only way I could recognize achievement.

Chasing my next personal best in every area of my life simultaneously — which, for a Type A achiever, basically means all of them, all of the time.

The Water Was Winning…

Swimming didn’t come naturally to me, and that was very frustrating…

No matter how many laps I forced myself through, all I was doing was fighting the water. I’d look across at the other lanes (big mistake!) and there were other people flowing length upon length, effortless and graceful… and then back at my own, where I was hauling myself through twenty lengths, gasping for breaths, and arriving at the end completely spent. And not satisfied with my efforts!

My obvious conclusion? I was the problem. Just work harder. The water is stronger than you right now, so you just need to become stronger than the water. Do more. Be better.

As you can imagine, that did not make it any easier… and I did not look or feel any more graceful doing it!

The Book That Changed My Life…

The Art of Swimming finally made its way into my life. It’s a book based on teaching The Alexander Technique - a philosophy of movement rooted in physical awareness, alignment, and ease - and applying it to your swimming stroke.

That book changed EVERYTHING.

Instead of forcing my body through the water, I was encouraged to work with it, and allow it to support me. To collaborate with the water rather than try to conquer it, stop resisting it and start aligning with it instead.

Overnight — I’m not kidding, it was overnight — I went from struggling through twenty lengths to gliding through sixty and feeling better and more energized at the end than at the beginning. There were small intentional tweaks, a completely different approach to the same task, and suddenly I was flying up and down that lane.

I wasn’t working harder - in fact, I felt like I was using a lot less energy - but I stopped overriding the natural intelligence that was already there.

If It’s True in the Pool…

That moment changed more than my swimming stroke.

If this is true in a swimming pool, I thought, where else is it true? In my work? In my relationships? In the way I was trying to grow and build and show up in my life?

I’d been approaching all of it the same way I’d approached the water — brute force, more effort, more learning, more willpower — as if the resistance itself was the problem, and I could simply outmuscle it.

I say this as a true recovering think-a-holic. Overthinking wasn’t just a pastime for me — it was practically a profession - and my identity was firmly wrapped up in being the one who solved the problems, got the job done, always knew the right answer - the one everyone could rely on. I had a very loud, persistent inner voice that consistently convinced me that:

“Effort and worthiness were the same thing.”

Ease Isn’t What You Think

What that moment in the pool taught me was that it doesn’t have to be that hard… all the time! In fact, it could even be easy…

“Ease — real ease, not the lazy checked-out version — doesn’t mean doing less. It means getting into alignment, so you can do more with less friction, and work with your own flow, instead of against it.”

What Grew From That Moment…

A few years later, I was up a mountain in Colorado studying nature-based coaching, and something clicked inside (again!). What has eventually evolved into The Growth Cycle™ is the living expression of that one realization that day in the pool.

It’s a practical map of your own personal evolution — one you move through every year, whether you know it or not. It’s not a productivity system or a goal-setting framework - it’s a way to understand what season of growth you’re in and what that season is actually asking of you today, so you can move with your energy flow, rather than against it.

One day you look back, and you realize you can’t find that old version of yourself — the one who was fighting the water — anywhere. You’re not quite sure when she left, and honestly, you don’t want to invite her back in.

She’s just not you anymore.

I’d love to know — where in your life are you still fighting the water? Drop it in the comments.»»

With gratitude,

Kate

P.S. The Growth Cycle™ grew out of that moment in the pool — it’s the framework I built to help you stop guessing which way to swim. If that caught your attention, you can find out more at MyGrowthCycle.com.

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© 2025–present Katherine Vanden Bos. All rights reserved. The Growth Cycle™ is a trademark of Katherine Vanden Bos. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed without prior written permission. Content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical, psychological, legal, or financial advice. This content may not be used to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models.

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