Learning to sense movement and change in watery environments

In this ethnographic research paper, the author suggests that swimmers, like all sport practitioners must develop a "feel" for their practice. This "feel" incorporates the skills and sensory perceptions to assess and assist their interaction with the medium of their sport, in this case, water. Learning to feel is an ongoing dialectic process of making sensory knowledge developed through an accumulation of regular immersion and occasional absence. According to the author, material, social, and emotional aspects of sporting activities are entangled in the development of sporting identities, and in the interactional connections between athlete and their environment, be that water, snow, grass, trees, pavement, or air. Incorporating methodological approaches to how sport and recreation participants "feel" their environments, and the mediums of their activities, can strengthen how sport ecology research and sport managers understand the sensory aspects of sports.

CITE: Heath, S. (2022). The quality of water: perception and senses of fluid movement. The Senses and Society, 17 (3), 263–276. doi: 10.1080/17458927.2022.2135358

#Swimming #SensoryEcology #Movement #Environment