Parenting Through the Waves

By Mandy Henderly

On most mornings throughout the week, you can find me in the pool. I try to swim 1800-1900 meters five or more days a week. Yes, I am a yoga teacher, and I absolutely love the physical practice of yoga, but, for me, I had to loosen my grip on the physical practice of yoga in order to allow all of the benefits of the other limbs of yoga to come flooding in. On a day to day basis, my asana practice is a lot more gentle than it has ever been before.

And that’s why I’ve gone back to swimming. Since I’m getting older, I know that I have to keep moving my body, and as my relationship to the physical practice of yoga shifted, so did my relationship to exercise. Swimming has always been a physical practice that has called to me because of its meditative, gentle nature.

So, I bought a new lap suit, goggles, and a cap. Rejoined the YMCA, and got in the pool.

There are so many benefits to swimming laps. It’s truly an exercise that engages the whole body, and the resistance of the water creates a muscle toning effect as well. My heart rate gets elevated, but without the damage to my joints that as an almost 40 year old I have to start to consider. When I swim, I feel alive, energized, and yet relaxed.

My children love to swim and have passed many a day over the summer diving into the deep end and retrieving dive sticks off the bottom of the pool. I’m proud to say that I taught both of them to swim, and if either of them wanted to be on a swim team, they would excel. Yet, to my chagrin, neither of them have a desire to.

In fact, my son has gone completely the other way with youth football.

Where swimming is mostly a solo sport, football is all about the team. Where swimming is all about endurance, football is explosive. Where swimming is about ease and grace, football is about aggression.

Anyone who has been a parent before will quickly tell you that walking this path is about accepting the fact that you are out of your depth nearly constantly. It starts the minute your baby is laid on your chest, and then it just keeps going. However, I am more out of my depth with youth football than I have ever been before. It’s a sport I don’t understand. I cringe everytime I see my son tackle or get tackled, and while the other parents on the sidelines recount their football glory days, I listen awkwardly, knowing that I stick out like a sore thumb.

While everything about this situation feels foreign and as uncomfortable as wearing a wool sweater in August, my experience in Tantra tells me that this is where the good stuff is. It’s only through allowing ourselves to sit with uncomfortable experiences and feelings that we burn mala and free shakti—allowing for our expansion. Moreover, my job as a parent is not to create children who are smaller versions of me. Yes, it’s true that they look like me, they are, in fact, their own unique people. Their talents and dreams are separate from mine, and they deserve their own chances to flourish and explore.

If I had wanted to, I probably could have dissuaded him from football. However, that would have taken away his sovereignty—his ability to stand make a choice for himself. By squashing the part of him that wants to play football, I would have also been squashing his ability to trust himself and differentiate himself from me. Yes, our job as parents is to guide and teach; however, it’s also really important to recognize that we are trying to work our way out of a job. In order to create humans that know themselves, their talents, and their hearts, we need to give them opportunities to strengthen their trust in themselves, their problem solving skills, and their ability to think critically. Most importantly, we create their suffering as well as our own.

Life is inherently risky. Whether it’s football, mountain biking, or, yes, even swimming, each sport carries a degree of risk. And, as much as we parents want to keep our kids safe, safetyism comes with its own risks. By seeking safety above all else, we produce kids who lack resilience, trust in themselves, and critical thinking skills. These are the skills necessary to be independent, well-adjusted adults. 

Yoga tells us that the waves of life are inevitable, but that suffering is optional as long as we find a way to ride the waves. While I’m still dealing with my own discomfort around football, it’s my discomfort to deal with, not his. This first football season can be an experience of Spanda for both of us if we are willing to ride the waves together.