AASP NEWSLETTER.Volume 21.

Issue 3 Fall/Winter 2006

Mind Over Water: Challenging Physical

and Mental Life Threatening Beliefs!

Dr. Patricia Wightman. Head of the Sport Psychology Department, CENARD, Argentina

LONG DISTANCE SWIMMING FEATS

Author’s Introduction: The CENARD in Argentina is similar to the USOC

Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Athletes get all of their check-ups and training controls done there.

 As head of the Sport Psychology Department since 1990, Dr. Wightman

 has worked with many athletes and teams including the men’s

 basketball team that won a gold medal in Athens.

There is a staff of permanent sport psychologists and

others that come and go with teams and major events.

Maria Ines Mato worked, before crossing the English

Channel, with relaxation, breathing, visualizing, cognitive

behavioral therapy and all that this implies. She also

trained afterwards with biofeedback, meditation, yoga

and other techniques, especially to get control of her

body temperatures. This information was gathered at the

CENARD in an interview and conversation.

She has corrected and approved all that was written and has given

permission that the information be shared in this public forum.

Maria Ines wants her work to be known.

The following article is based on the work and extraordinary

achievements of María Inés Mato.The swimmer talks about her

experiences in the freezing waters, mental preparation, overcoming

obstacles, flow, and feelings of transcendence.

María Inés Mato is a 39-year-old open water swimmer who lost

part of her right leg in an accident at the age of four and started

swimming when she was six. She competed in regular long distance

events until 1992. That year she was invited to swim in an open

water event in the Paraná River (Argentina). She explained, “the

first time I swam in a river I was fascinated and I knew it was

something that I wanted to do all of my life. The texture of the

water, the current, the landscape, the speed of the river, the

reflections of the sun. I realized that it was a place I wanted to be.”

Since then her life has been divided in two periods with different

motivations and goals. From open water competitions, she passed

to individual long distance crossings which are not competitive in a

traditional sense. Thus, her first challenges were classic open water

events: the English Channel, the Belt Channel (from Denmark to

Germany), Manhattan Island and the Strait of Gibraltar. She is now

in the Guinness Book of World Records and has also been recognized

as an Honorary Citizen of Buenos Aires and other cities.

Along the way, she developed her own training method which

included multiple approaches to mental training. “I started to realize

that I could swim for a long time training very little. But really, that

had nothing to do with omnipotence; I knew that I could compensate

for not training in the water with a mental workout scheme that

gave me great confidence for what I was going to do. I understand

that for someone who observes from the outside this might seem

out of reality.” She started working with Sport Psychology at the

CENARD (Argentine National Training Center for Elite Athletes) before

crossing the English Channel (08/25/97). She and her team had to

work on goals, overcoming obstacles (even from official personalities

who doubted that these ideas or dreams could come true), using

relaxation, visualization and desensitization.

                                                                             Patricia Wightman and Maria Ines Mato, CENARD

For her feats, she has been inspired by different sources. For example,

in 2001 she studied the legends and history of the indigenous Yamana

Tribes, who lived in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia.

The word “yamana” means “spirit of the water.” The Yamanas were

a tribe of canoe Indians. They lived almost entirely on birds, seals,

fish, mussels and limpets. The women cooked, fetched water, paddled

the canoes and fished. The men tended the fires, fished, made and

mended the canoes and prepared material for them. The women were

good swimmers, but it was a rare thing to find a male Yamana who

could swim. Members of this tribe often lived in places where for

many miles there were no beaches on which it was possible to haul

up their canoes. They were compelled, therefore, to anchor them off

the rocks in the best shelter to be found. This anchoring was done by

the women. After the canoe was unloaded and the husband had gone

up into the forest to collect fuel for the fire, the wife would paddle

off in the canoe a few fathoms into the thick kelp (a large species of

seaweed), which makes a splendid breakwater. She would secure the

canoe, and once it was safely anchored, she would slip naked into the

water, swim ashore and hasten to the fire to warm herself (all this at

a temperature 6° Celsius).

The Yamana women swim like a dog and had no difficulty getting

through the kelp. They learned to swim during infancy and were

frequently taken out into the water by their mothers in order to get

them used to it. In winter, when the kelp was coated with a film of

frost, a baby girl out with her mother would sometimes make pick-aback

swimming difficult by climbing onto her mothers head to escape

the cold water and frozen kelp (Bridges, 1988). The purpose of The

Lakuma Project for María Inés was the revindicating of human rights

and making evident the role of women in this tribe. It was sponsored

by Amnesty International and the Unesco (03/03/2001).These feelings

were so strong that Maria Ines returned to the south to swim by the

southern wall of the Perito Moreno Glacier.

María Inés had discovered that cold water was her habitat. She

explained, “the motivation behind all this had to do with cold water.

I create an imaginary context where the air is warmer than the water

but I do not deny that the water is cold. With my trainer, Claudio

Plit, I learned to differentiate the cold water from what is inside my

body…even if my body is frozen. With each breath, heat enters my

body which I retain. I see myself red from the heat. People don’t

accept cold water. I accept it and think that the outside is cold but

the water protects me. To achieve this I have always demanded 100%

from myself in each workout. Water has always signified a place

where I have a particular mental perceptiveness, an attentional state

that I do not have when I am out of cold water.” This particular

frame of mind and the mood state it ensues helps her to avoid the

fear of cold water.

María Inés is fully convinced that the body registers and develops

a memory through time. A memory of past competitions, years

of training and life experiences. “A confidence is built based on

all these physical experiences which later can be recalled. I can

recognize water at any temperature. Cold water does not produce a

feeling of ‘something unknown.’ The body integrates all the physical

experiences as well as the mental elaboration that has taken place

with regards to your personal experiences. The memory is an

organization, not only isolated tracks. Fear occurs due to unknown

scenarios or beliefs, for example the settlers of the Antarctic think

that ‘man overboard is a dead man.’ This is not true for me...if

you are prepared. Today I believe that to evoke is different than

to visualize. Evocation is a corporal experience. I registered my

experiences consciously and this helped me to be able to gain

control. Whatever happens I register it.

“In those cold waters it is necessary to tolerate the first 3 minutes.

At times there are headaches or pains in the limbs. In each practice I

forced myself to analyze what was happening to me. All these years

I have controlled what has happened to me. Visualization for me is

the mental image of what is to come. The future. Ever since the idea

began of going to the Antarctic, I began to see the place. What is

the water like? It is not unknown. Evocation and visualization were

joined in the Antarctic. Sometimes the athletes do not trust these

two paths. When this is achieved, a very magical thing takes place.

It is moment that contains something of the past, the present and

the future. It is a lot of work for many years. In honor to the truth I

really prepared myself.

“The Antarctic was much more dangerous. In Bariloche I swam at

first at night in a river that joins the Ventisquero (a glacier). The

water was calm. While swimming in the dark I could not see my

movements and I had a feeling of being frozen. This prepared me for

the Ventisquero which turned out to be direct contact with the sky.

That was the lab. I already knew how to raise my body temperature

having studied Eastern techniques, mental control, and other skills

already mentioned. I elevated my body temperature to 39º C (102.2º

Fahrenheit) before entering and it only fell to 37º C (98.6º F). It was

fresh water; it was a very strange sensation because I did not feel

my body. I just swam. It was swimming in total anesthesia. I felt

a connection with the mountains, the Tronador Mountain, the sky,

the ice wall, the Ventisquero Glacier, and the loose pieces of ice. I

let myself go. I was in contact with the sky. I was more connected

with these scenes than with the water. Actually, it seems that I swam

too far away from the support team. Dr. Nestor Lentini (who was in

charge of the team) was at a greater risk of a heart attack than I

was, since he could not monitor neither my body temperature nor my

heart rate! It was awesome, something transcendental. It was flow

(January, 2006).

“Another experience was the Antarctic. You float better in salt water.

In the Antarctic, before being lowered to a small boat, I prepared

for 20 minutes doing smooth and asymmetric Yoga movements.

I also stretched and meditated. I went down to the boat and I

swallowed the sensor (Corp-Temp 2000) that registered the internal

temperature. Antarctica is much more vertiginous, but we couldn’t

wait any more time and I threw myself into the cold water because

the climate was good. There I swam 20 minutes without a neoprene

suit (that prevents hypothermia). Suddenly while I was swimming

three seagulls appeared. They formed a circle above me and one left

the flock and approached me. I had visual communication with the

seagull! People generally do not allow themselves to experiences

things like this.”

The physiological aspects of the Antarctic experience will be

presented in 2007 at the American Association for Sports Medicine

Conference. This project was possible thanks to the support of

Claudio Morresi, Argentina’s Sports Secretary and Mariano Memoli,

National Director of the Antarctic (02/06/06).

One of the most outstanding things about María Inés is the

significance she finds to what she does: “Basically, everybody has

something that they would like to be but they don’t dare. If there is

one thing I would like, it is to help people open up their minds and to

stop being so structured.”

Reference

Bridges, E. L. (1988). Uttermost part of the earth: Indians of Tierra

del Fuego. New York: Dover