Guerilla Singing, and Mindfulness 13th July

Organised by friends who live on Otmoor, a group of us meet in Charlbury at the railway station - most of us have travelled by train - and walk to the local church for our first sing of the day. We walk about 8 miles through the countryside, popping up to sing in the village churches in Spelsbury, Shorthampstead, and Chadlington, ending up in the pub in Charlbury for supper in the pub before getting the train home. Along the way I have a chat about swimming with another singer. She has been swimming regularly since childhood - used to compete - and says for her it is essential regular exercise, when she can take time to think through things in her head. She describes how she can swim very efficiently length after length, the way most of us can walk for miles - on auto-pilot. It strikes me again how I am still at a stage where I have to stay focused on the process to swim 'properly'. This means I can't be on auto-pilot, lost in thought (at best) or troubled by an over busy mind: the mindful process of each stroke and each breath takes me out of myself (?) - my mind - into my body, breathing, the water.