“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Last year when I went to the gym, I was called the Scuba Planker. I did an exercise called The Plank. The Plank is done by placing your elbows on the floor with your forearms in front. You rest the weight of your body on your elbows, supported by your toes, keeping everything else in your body in a straight line off the ground…….holding it for as long as you can. It is very hard. At first I could hold it for 30 seconds, working my way up to holding it for 2 and a half minutes.
It is difficult. I did not want to be doing it except that it is to strengthen the center part of your body. No one in their right mind would want to be totally present while doing it. And because it hurts the longer you hold it, I visualized I was under water. Therefore I was called The Scuba Planker.
I would pretend I was snorkeling for sea glass, close to the shore. I would imagine that I was picking up each piece, investigating it, putting it down.
I was having a hard time emotionally one day, and while doing this exercise, I went into my visualization and I started to look around, not at the bright sun-lit sea glass, but out at the foggy blue water. As I struggled to get through my two and a half minutes, out of the opaque water came a shark!
Ouch! But why complain? I am the one who invented this visualization trick in the first place! Almost better to feel the pain and be in the real world of the gym than have a shark coming at you!
Click link below to see my friend Tom Campbell’s musical tribute to “Scuba Planker” (courtesy of Dan Shewbridge)
http://mildpanic.com/2013/11/scuba-planker/
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 
Two and a half minutes!!! You’re joking! I am pleased when I can do a minute.
you are right there is something about putting your mind into a different place, be it visualisation, or just a deeper space, to block out the present. I really don’t know what it means when something unexpected arrives in that space though!
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I don’t know what it means either! 🙂
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That’s amazing! I doubt I have the coordination for such a pose. I’m impressed! 🙂
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Oh you would. Start with small amounts of time! 🙂
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Water is a wonderful place to be in or virtually escape to! I am also impressed 2 1/2 minutes, wow!
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Thank you. Yes, I truly can do it. Have impressed lots with it. It really is mind-over-matter as I said. Just be somewhere else. This seems to be a theme….:)
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[…] part of her “Afloat” art series, a story about how she got the nickname Scuba Planker. Check it out here. I thought the name “Scuba Planker” would make the basis of a cool drum chant, to be […]
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(Hollis, here are some details about my blog post above – Tom)
Those rounded blue objects look like the little electro-pads the physical therapist affixes to the afflicted part of your body to administer mild shocks. It’s probably not a good idea to swim in a pool with those things either on your person or dangling in the water – just as an FYI. (I think I got a fortune cookie once that said, “You will be electrocuted in a swimming pool.” But I could have dreamed that.)
I love the nickname Scuba Planker! I turned the name over and over in my mind until it became first a mantra and then a rhythmic pulsing beat. This could become a chant, with drummers pounding out a tattoo as you hover on your elbows — a minute, 1:15, 1:30, and so on — with everyone exhorting you on with a hearty “Scuba Planka! Scuba Planka!” (I hear it that way, with “planka” — a sort of affirmation that you are a “playa” and not a “hata.”)
I hear this chant as a repeating pattern, crudely notated this way:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
SCU | ba | plan | ka | (repeat 4 times, accenting the first beat)
Then everybody shouts:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
HUH! | (rest) | (rest) | HUH! |
I was inspired to transcribe this chant in “official” music notation for my Mild Panic blog. Check it out: http://mildpanic.com/2013/11/scuba-planker/
Keep on plankin’!
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I am very flattered you have given my visualization another medium and dimension. And have actually broken it down for all of us to actually “do” (for lack of the right word.) I will definitely reblog this one because of your comment. I am, in case you do not know, in the process of reblogging for ten days, my most successful ones. (in my opinion) then I will finish out the one hundred. See Post Ninety-One! In the meantime, I will check out yours. Thanks!!!!!
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I am adding this to my comments since I failed to mention it in the beginning! I find this fascinating: The man who came up with the term “Scuba Planker” for me was my trainer at the gym, Daniel Shewbridge, and who is also a well-known up and coming drummer in a band! He was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. And being a trainer was just a day job. What I find so exciting, is that I am blinded by my visual sense, to the music in words. (You can see that here…. ha ha!) And YET! Another musician, Tom Campbell, picked up the music in “Scuba Planker” that I am sure Dan also had innately in his “being.” Thank you both!
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Thanks Tom!!!!!!
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Reblogged this on Hollis Hildebrand-Mills and commented:
Reblog Number Four
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