The other day I splurged. It didn’t involve chocolate or shopping or a massage. But it did technically take place at a spa. I took 25 mil of my hard-earned teaching money (that’s about three classes worth) and left my stifling apartment and walked down to a fancy hotel and paid my entrance fee so I could use their rooftop pool… all afternoon. And I have to say, considering the peace of having a blue pool all to yourself, free fruit and water, plush towels, and city views peeking through pillared slats with every head turn for air, it was the best 50 bucks I can remember spending on myself in a long time. (Just so we’re clear, I first tried the much more affordable pool, but the same week my somewhat dire need to find a body of water happened to coincide with the local club’s renovation schedule. I’ll be following up next week.)

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We resist these indulgences, don’t we? It’s wiser to save our money, to donate our time, to do an honest day’s work. But we need to occasionally let go of what we should do and embrace a healthy dose of what we need. Sure, this need happened to be over-priced and certainly not scaleable, but the pure joy–of slipping into that water, gliding back and forth for laps on end, taking a rest, reading a newspaper, and heading back in for more–was much needed, for the mind and body that went up in an elevator to the 15th floor of a Santiago hotel, were certainly not the mind and body that exited back onto a bus-strewn street.

I’ve never really been a swimmer. I spent many years being a runner, but frequent foot and knee injuries in my late 20s curtailed my long evening runs and some 15 years of logging miles around a reservoir in Boston, along SF’s Marina Green, and up my hometown trails. I still needed a way to release and unplug and simply move, so I took to morning walks on the beach, an ocean‘s roar most welcome company. Healthy or not, I let go of that long-standing need to pound the pavement in order to feel spent. Somewhere along the way, I heard that your body benefits just as much from three miles of walking as it does from three miles of running, and whether or not that’s true, it has definitely been true for me. My aches went away and I still lodged free those mood-elevating endorphines and, most importantly, got the mental space to clear away the anxieties and complexities of life long enough to breathe deep and let go.

Since there isn’t an ocean to walk along here in Santiago, I started this post to tell you about swimming, another low-impact way to benefit your whole body. And to tell you that my best friend is an incredible swimmer who has been in the water all her life, competing in both swimming and water polo, teaching swim lessons, and now raising money along with The Night Train Swimmers (NTS), an impressive team of open-water swimmers based in Northern California who compete in solo and team swims all over the world in order to raise money for charitable organizations. Recently, she and her group succeeded in the first all-female open-water swim from the shores of San Francisco Bay to the jagged rocks of the Farrallon Islands. Yes, those islands you can just make out from Ocean Beach on a clear day.

She is a swimmer.

So is my my old SF roommate. To watch her in the water is to watch an athlete at her best. She competes in open-water swims as well, so there’s a healthy edge of fearlessness and confidence to her talent. When I visited her in her adopted home of Sydney, Australia a few years ago, I’d join her in the early morning for a walk through the city, past the botanical gardens, and to an Olympic-sized salt-water pool. Sure, I headed straight to the slow lane and didn’t mind; I’m a person who’s comfortable knowing her limits. By the end of two weeks, a built-up endurance and an energy level that could carry the weight of the rest of the day convinced me that I was becoming a swimmer.

Well, the full-fledged metamorphosis may have been slightly delayed, but thanks to months of heat and smoggy air and dodgy traffic, I don’t feel an inner runner returning, but maybe, just maybe a swimmer. After all, there’s a reason water is used for cleansing, for baptism, for the stirrings of life, for the functioning and survival of our very bodies. It’s pure and timeless and more powerful than a single you or a single I. There isn’t anything quite like that feeling of immersion in and movement through crisp, clear water.

But now I’m realizing what I’m really trying to tell you about–and understand myself–is this idea of letting go. Of the conditions that encourage it, of the moments when we are able to do it, and perhaps, too, those times when we can’t for whatever reason. When the wound is too deep or the work too stressful or the miscommunication too severe. But in the pool, or on the trail, or at rest in a peaceful place, we can sometimes let go of even the deep wounds and stressful work and severe miscommunications. We can feel flashes of the lightness of childhood, when we might have spent entire summers in and out of the community pool, our hair matted and our skin dried by the sun. We can have the critical distance to finally know what to do about a lesson plan or a relationship or a wrinkle in the adventure. And we can simply focus on the breath and stroke and self-generated momentum coalescing in such soothing repetition that the “complete” letting go has occurred without our even willing it to, soon followed by the “peace” and the “freedom.”

I hope you’re finding what you need, letting go of what you can, and finding new, inspiring aspects of yourself rising to the surface. I say, go ahead and indulge them.