In 2019, Swim England’s Love Swimming campaign focused on the innumerable benefits that swimming can have on our health, from helping with weight loss, joint pain and, , the ravaging effects of arthritis and asthma, among other health problems.
Wanda learned to Love Swimming and the therapeutic effect it had on her own unique problems. Keep reading to find out more.
Wanda’s Love Swimming Story
For years, Wanda had been struggling with a myriad of issues. As well as asthma, back pain and chronic arthritis, she also suffered from other health problems that made it very difficult to get active and all of these issues were having a significant effect on both her physical and mental wellbeing, until she learned to Love Swimming.
She was really struggling, “I felt like my life had become planning around my health problems, and I wasn’t ready for that”
Battling Through Health Problems
Wanda was feeling very much at a low ebb. Her health problems, asthma, back pain and arthritis were leaving her “feeling like an old woman” even before she had hit 40. As a result of these numerous issues, she decided to see a physiotherapist who, along with advising her that she may have to walk with a stick for the rest of her days, suggested that she tried swimming as a way to relieve pain and improve mobility.
Learning to Love Swimming
So, Wanda went swimming but struggled initially, telling us: “at that point, I couldn’t really swim. It was very much a head up, splashing down the pool, flailing up and down.” In order to rectify this, she decided to learn to swim properly to ensure that she got the most out of her swimming sessions.
Love Swimming is Life-Changing
Diving into swimming has, in Wanda’s own words “been absolutely life-changing.” Learning to Love Swimming has made her whole life easier and the regular activity that swimming allows her has had a huge positive effect on her life as whole, not just her back pain and asthma, she feels like there is a lot more that she can do, a lot more she can achieve than before she began swimming regularly.
From where she was four years ago, she says, she really feels like she’s taken her life back. The sense of freedom that she gets from being in the swimming pool, gliding through the water and just enjoying being herself was joyous and something she hadn’t experienced in a long time.