Swimming can be one of the best exercises for you all the while being low impact and working every single muscle.
It can also be a very relaxing way to spend your time on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon…so having a dream about swimming has the potential to represent many different things in our lives.
If you’ve recently had a dream about swimming, it could have even showed up in the oddest of ways, like you imagining swimming in a sea of stars up in space or literally just randomly swimming in the middle of the ocean.
This is because your dreams are boundless and not confined to the constraints of your logical mind.
Once you drift off to sleep, so does your conscious state and the unconscious shows you what’s really happening on an emotional level within.
This post will help you better understand dreams about swimming and what they might be trying to reveal to you about your waking life.
How to Better Interpret Complex or Confusing Dreams About Swimming
To better understand what’s being revealed to you in the dream realm, you should first understand why dreams even come about.
As mentioned above, dreams are a place where deeper concepts are shown to you in what seems to be the oddest ways.
It seems to happen this way because in your waking reality, your logical mind has one job and one job only: to keep you safe.
Well, it might be better to say that it’s job is to make you think that you’re safe.
The logical mind acts as a computer and a filing system, computing all different types of possible scenarios before they happen, evaluating emotions and emotional reactions before you even have a chance to process them.
Comparing your knee jerk reactions to the standards of society and those around you.
If for some reason your particular reaction, emotional state, or energy is off with a person and it does not compute to something “safe” or “acceptable,” what your mind will do is push all of that emotion back into the subconscious mind, which stores it forever within the body.
When you finally get a chance to sleep and relax the conscious logical mind, the subconscious mind takes that opportunity to reveal what’s been piling up on an internal level, showing some very interesting images, symbols, colors, and especially feelings within a dream.
To better interpret your dreams, it’s important to pay attention to all of these things.
It’s the small details that could change the whole meaning of a dream for you.
In fact, here are some great questions to ask yourself when you’re first trying to dive into exploring the meaning of a dream, especially if it’s a wild one about swimming:
- What emotions come up for you when you think about swimming in real life?
- Did you enjoy your swimming experience within the dream?
- Can you remember anything specific about the water you were in?
- How big or small was the body of water you were in?
- Did you swim with others or by yourself in your dream?
- Can you recall anything about the temperature of the water?
- Are there any other details about the dream that stand out to you?
- Were you swimming in public?
Of course, there are many other questions that may come up as you begin to jog your memory about your swimming dream.
Take time to write out your answers in a dream journal to begin to find patterns of hidden messages that your dreams may be trying to share with you.
The Symbolic Meanings of Dreams That Include Swimming
More often than not your dreams hold a deeper meaning than most people can guess on the surface.
The fact that dreams about swimming involve a large body of water in most cases can give you a hint as to what your dream may be mainly focused on — the element water.
Water is extremely healing in many different teachings including astrology and spirituality.
It’s representative of the emotions, or energy in motion.
Water is fluid, taking the form of whatever it’s in, showing us different states of being.
It’s mutable in the way that it can freeze, melt, drip, spill, etcs.
The problem is when the energy in motion becomes stuck, or when people experience emotional blockages.
As explained above when diving into explore the deeper meaning of your dreams, when your conscious mind isn’t ready to process something or doesn’t feel like it’s safe to do so at that moment, it pushes it back to the subconscious mind and the body stores that energy as something that needs to be processed later.
You can even see physical manifestations of emotional blockages, causing sickness in the body.
It’s interesting that swimming is an exercise that pushes us to use almost every muscle in our body if we swim for a considerable amount of time, weightlessly moving stagnant energy out of our body on a physical and emotional level.
Here are some of the deeper meanings that may be associated with dreams that involve swimming.
Flowing Through Your Emotions
We spoke of how dreaming about swimming could be symbolic of needing to work through emotional blockages, but it could also mean that you’re willing to try to guide yourself through this emotional time in your life.
While some emotions may be extremely high and happy, others can be really low frequency and hard to work through.
The type of water that you happen to be swimming in can reveal a lot more about the meaning of your dream then you may have originally realized.
For instance, if you’re swimming through murky waters, you could be dealing with sadness or grief, maybe even confusion and can’t see through the water clearly.
You may be able to understand what emotions are showing up in your dreams if you take time to evaluate how you’re feeling in your everyday life.
If you’ve been feeling a nudge to do any type of energetic cleansing and are swimming through clear waters, this could be a sign that your mind, body, and soul are all communicating the same things to you.
Your dreams could be inviting you to take a certain action in your waking life.
An Urge to Have More Fun In Your Waking Life
There are some days where swimming is simply a leisure activity that people gather to do together.
There’s not much more enjoyable than being out in the sun all day with the people you love, gathered around the pool with great food and drinks.
If you can recall any early childhood memories in the summertime, they may bring up some happy emotions of what it felt like to just be carefree by the pool or lake with your family.
If you haven’t had any time to do something like that in your waking life, your dreams could encourage you to let loose a little bit and make time to just relax by a body of water.
Whether you decide to actually swim for a long period of time or not, being by a large body of water and in the sun can be really healing for the body on an energetic and emotional level.
A Fresh Start or Rebirth
In certain religious practices or even spanning through spirituality, there is a process of cleansing that usually involves some type of water or spiritual liquid that you cleanse yourself in.
For those that go to church, you may be inclined to baptise your family within the church or even in a river.
Other spiritualists use different types of tinctures and potions to cleanse their crown chakra or take spiritual baths and energetically cleanse from head to toe.
Either way, water is an element that humans have always believed gives us a fresh start with the right intentions behind it.
You may even find it interesting that there have been studies that show that if you speak words into the water that you’re about to ingest, the vibration of the words that you are using can imprint the molecular level of the water, changing its structure.
So, there are many people and cultures that speak positive words into their food and water before ingesting it to ensure that the food and water will provide the proper nourishment.
Surviving and Overcoming Strife
The one thing that we all need is water.
However, if you dream that you’re stuck in a large body of water, like treading the ocean, you may feel like you’re not going to survive.
That particular type of water is not digestible, but overwhelming.
Again, paying attention to the details of your dream may reveal to you a lot more about your dream than you may have originally realized.
If you have a dream about trying to swim in the middle of the ocean, you could be fearful of what’s beneath you because you can’t see to the bottom of the sea.
Or, you could also be fearful that you may never find your way to land if you see yourself desperately searching for direction.
These could all be symbolic for the fears that you’re experiencing in your waking life.
If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck in survival mode in your reality or very stagnant, like you’re treading water in the same place, this type of swimming dream may come up for you.
If you happen to see a way out in your dream, like washing ashore an island or even a boat off to the distance, this could mean that help is on the way.
Your dreams could be encouraging you to stay strong because there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Perceptions and Reflections
While most of the dreams described above include either active swimming or or completely relaxing while swimming, there may be another way that dreams show up for you.
You may see yourself in a reflection in a large body of water while you’re swimming.
Or, you may see someone else’s reflection that stands out to you.
This type of dream holds the message that everything is a reflection of your innerworld.
Even when you meet other people, they still hold out a mirror to what you like or don’t like about yourself.
Just based on the simple laws of attraction, like attracts like.
So, if you’re been running into people that you don’t necessarily care for, this could be a sign from your subconscious to dive deeper into it.
The vibration that you’re holding could be attracting less than favorable circumstances and people that are trying to teach you a lesson that you’re trying to avoid listening to in your actual reality.
Once you change your perception, the world changes around you!
Most Common Dreams About Swimming
There are almost countless ways that swimming can come up in dreams, but here are some of the most popular findings from people who have experienced dreams about swimming in the past.
Dreaming of Swimming with a Pool That Has a Fountain
While you might’ve never swam in a pool with a fountain in your waking life, this type of pool may show up in your dreams because it has an important message from the dream realm.
Fountains represent renewal, starting over, and ending cycles.
If you’re really attracted to the fountain in the pool, you may be looking for a way to start something new or end a cycle in your life, cleansing yourself of the old energies from an old cycle.
Dreaming of Swimming By Yourself
If you’ve recently had a dream that you were swimming alone, this could be a very straightforward message from your subconscious that it’s time to take some time to yourself.
This could be especially true if you don’t remember having any fearful feelings in your dream, but rather calm ones.
If there is any way that you can bring that dream experience into your waking world, try to give yourself some time to process your emotions by yourself.
Dreaming of Filling Up or Draining a Swimming Pool
This is a much different dream about swimming.
You could find yourself fantasizing about swimming once you have your pool full in your dream, but you’re not actually swimming.
This type of dream could be symbolic of feeling emotionally depleted. If you dreamt of filling up the pool, your dreams could be telling you that it’s time to fill your cup up again.
However, if you dreamt of emptying a swimming pool, this could be a sign that someone or a certain situation is emotionally draining you.
What Have Your Dreams Revealed To You Recently?
As we mentioned above, there are almost countless ways to interpret dreams about swimming.
If you’ve had any other experiences about swimming in the astral realm that you would like to share, we would love to hear about your dreamy experiences in the comments below!