The Body Remembers What We’ve Moved Away From
- Anna-Karina Schmitt
- May 5
- 3 min read
Two weeks ago, when these pictures and videos were taken, the lake was still cold.
The moment I enter the water, everything fades. No noise, no overthinking—just sensation. Breath. Body.
The water just above 10 degrees. Cold water has a way of bringing me back.
Out of the mind, into the body. Into presence.
One day later, I returned and added small hangs—staying down with a bit of weight around my neck, not moving, just holding onto a rock. Watching my heartbeat.
At around three meters—just where the water turns noticeably colder—my heartbeat slows. Drops. Softens. The gaze turns inward. All tension dissolves. A deep state of meditation appears. Sometimes it takes me a 1.5-hour yoga practice to reach something similar beforehand.
That’s what makes it powerful—when practice is done with awareness. When it adapts gently to your system instead of overwhelming it.
It always depends on where your nervous system is at. How resilient you are. How much your body can actually hold. And whether it trusts that rest will follow challenge.
That’s something we have to build step by step. Slowly. Intensity comes later.
The sensation is still so vivid that I can describe it now, two weeks later—even from Tenerife, where I’m currently for running camps and my own training.
Freediving—and being in the water in general—has become more than a sport for me.
It’s a teacher.
A mirror.
A space where I meet myself without distraction. It has shown me where I hold tension, where I block myself, where I avoid feeling.
And at the same time, it has shown me what ease feels like.
What flow feels like.
What it means to truly connect with myself.
More than Performance
Competitions and records are moments in time.
They are numbers—like entries in an accounting book.
You can measure them, analyze them, compare them.
But they don’t stay.
They give a moment of satisfaction, maybe even a rush.
And then life continues. You return to the present.
That’s why the deeper question matters:
Why do you train?
Because no medal, no record, no external result can sustainably improve the quality of your life.
What stays is something else entirely:
The way you handle pressure
The resilience you build
The awareness you develop
The relationship you have with yourself
For many, sport becomes a turning point—not because of results, but because it reconnects them to something real.
Training as a State, Not a Goal
What if your training wasn’t just about reaching a peak moment?
What if every session could feel like that moment?
Not by forcing it—but by conditioning your system.
Because getting into flow is not just about discipline.
It’s about balance. Regulation. Health.
Your nervous system matters.
Your recovery matters.
Your internal state matters.
If your system is overwhelmed, no amount of willpower will create sustainable performance.
Cycles, Not Perfection
We are not meant to be perfectly balanced all the time.
Life moves in cycles—up and down, expansion and contraction.
The question is not if you go out of balance.
The question is:
Can you come back?
Or does your practice slowly drain you?
Signs of imbalance are often subtle at first:
fatigue
brain fog
recurring pain
feeling overwhelmed by small things
These are not weaknesses.
They are signals.
Coming Back to What Matters
At its core, it’s always the same. Whether it’s swimming, football, yoga, or anything else—it’s actually not about the sport itself, it’s about what it brings you into presence. Focus. That feeling where body and mind reconnect and you stop overthinking and just are.
I deeply believe we’ve moved quite far away from our original rhythm as humans.
Away from nature, from instinct, from simplicity.
Today, so much is structured, controlled, mentally driven—and for good reasons, it gave us safety and progress.
But there is always another side to that. The body doesn’t forget what it originally knows.
And that’s why we still feel it so strongly.
In the water. In movement. Even in stillness.
There is this moment where something shifts, where you drop out of your head and back into your body. Where things become quiet, simple, clear.
That’s why it feels so good to practice (whatever you like doing). Because practicing it’s something deeply familiar.
Like returning to a state your system already knows. A state where everything works together again, without forcing it.
The Real Question
What stays with you long-term is not the result.
It’s the quality of your practice.
So ask yourself—honestly:
Does your training keep you healthy and happy?
Does it add to your life, or take from it?
Does it give you space to be yourself?
Because if the quality is right,
performance will follow.
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