As part of Aspire’s 2016 Channel Swim Fundraiser, I have decided to swim 22 miles—the length of the English Channel—over a course of twelve weeks. This is to fundraise for people who live with debilitating spinal cord injuries, and this means a lot to me, emotionally, physically, and mentally.

I have never swum this much in my life before. And I haven’t taken on an athletic challenge since 2008, the year I broke my back. Then, I used to dance; I even wanted to do so professionally. Now, I have lived with constant back pain for at least six years: pain that has affected my ability to sit, sleep, and carry a laptop and groceries. Pain that has led me to explore a slew of mind-body practices, see an array of healthcare professionals, and pain that has also left me feeling less confident in myself. In fact, twice, when I started getting more physically active and dancing again, twice, I sustained minor stress fractures to my feet. For the last eight years, I have been accident-prone, frequently on crutches, and frequently needing help.

And I’ve been really lucky to receive that help and support from loved ones all around me. I'm very grateful.

Today, I am deciding to take my health into my own hands, with swimming. Because I am realising that I can. Because I had a rough summer with more injuries, and don’t want any more scar tissue. Because my healthcare professionals are giving me the green light, and because swimming is gentle. And mostly, mostly because I am really lucky—every day—that I do not have a debilitating spinal cord injury, as so many others have. I can move and breathe and stretch, back pain, ankle injuries, and all, and I am going to use these gifts. This is what I first thought when I heard about Aspire’s Channel Swim fundraiser for people with spinal cord injuries.

Swimming did not come naturally to me, and I am not a strong swimmer. But I can learn. I can learn to love self-expression in water the way that I love performing abhinaya on stage. Funny story: I once got deathly afraid of water; I would forget how to hold enough pressure to not let water rush into my breathing canals, and I would feel like I was drowning the moment my nose went under. Around the same time, my college roommate, Mary, who was a water-polo player, told me, “Daksha, you like meditation right? I think you’ll like swimming”. So I found myself a private coach the next summer, Uncle Joseph, who taught me again how to keep the water out. Who stood guard and assured me I wouldn’t drown. Bit by bit he coached me. He told me that breaststroke had changed (!) and now I needed to learn micro-kicks. He told me backstroke was a good stroke for women to learn (!) despite my protests against re-learning and practising the frontcrawl and backstroke (I still don't like them). And, he humoured me. He taught me how to dolphin-kick and swim a stroke of butterfly, just because I found that as elegant as dancing on stage. Bless him.

So now, I begin my Aspire Swim Challenge. I will probably have to swim 30-45 minutes every day for three months to meet my goal. This is huge for me. My personal goal, in addition, is to swim 50m of butterfly by the end of this. Currently, I can swim about 15m.

I ask you, if any of this resonates with you, to please support me and Aspire’s charitable cause. How much you give does not matter. That you do, as befits your means, is all I ask.

Thank you.

~*~

What Aspire says:
Every eight hours someone is paralysed by a Spinal Cord Injury and Aspire provides the essential equipment, advice, housing and grants that spinal cord injured people need to live their lives independently. The more I raise, the more of a difference I'll make, so please be generous!