Swim4Akhirah
Nina Abeysuriya (@beingontheinside) – our inclusivity advocate – chats to Ola Alghazzouli.
America based Ola is a certified personal trainer, functional fitness specialist, swim instructor, podcast host and biology & health promotion graduate to name a few of her talents.
She creates and hosts the podcast Purposeful Fitness with Coach Ola. In the summer of 2020 Ola launched the Swim4Akhirah Campaign (Akhirah is an Islamic term to describe the belief in everlasting life after death) to speak about swimming for Muslim women and those who desire modesty in the water.
The vision of BeFit4Akhirah is to work with Muslim communities, schools, health professionals, non-profit organizations, & families to promote a holistic healthy lifestyle within the teachings of Islam.
I asked Ola about her experiences of swimming and where her love for the water first began.
Ola started swimming in the ocean and in the pool at age 6 in Damascus, Syria. There are many life events, stressors or circumstances that lead us to outdoor swimming, those things we may want and do leave on the shoreline. For Ola, swimming brings her a lot of peace and calm to her mental health. She says ‘It helps me cope with my anxieties and manage my stress. Hence helps me move forward with depression and feeling low energy’.
Part of the focus on swimmers’ interviews is curiosity into what are the social, emotional, and physical barriers to swimming, and starting the conversation about them. I asked Ola what she believes these are in outdoor swimming. She gives us several things: Access to the pool and open water, the skillset of swimming, the right clothing material, and a fear of water. All of these can hinder or prevent someone from finding the right conditions for them to explore swimming as a pastime, as a sport and also a life saver.
Part of Ola’s intention with BeFit4Akhirah is to start the conversation and give space to women within the Muslim community to allow them the choice to swim in the right conditions.
I experience a level of self-consciousness in my swimwear and the emotional battle of body confidence, and ‘appropriateness’ comes into my decisions around my own swimwear choices. For women who wish to respect and honour the teachings of there cultural backgrounds this brings multiple dimensions. This is in fact its own major barrier. In Islam, the human body of a very personal realm and is connected to the concept of honour, dignity, and privacy. This is also true in other eastern cultures.
Whilst dealing with her own barriers to swimming and perhaps intercultural contradictions about whether women should be swimming, Ola has encountered prejudice and discrimination in the swimming world. Sadly, this is still very much the case, but amazingly she has turned her experience into the manga carton featured below.
This is what she says about it. ‘MY TRUTH in what I went through in 2018-2019, and this is my reason why bringing further diversity within the aquatic world is personal for me. I want this anime/manga story to be an inspiration for the girls and women that dress like and look like me’.
Ola has advice for anyone who wants to get into the water but may feel it is not a place they feel comfortable – ‘Be comfortable in a pool first then try to get into safe open water where it is clean and there are not a lot of waves. Then you can progress into wild swimming. In addition, make sure you have the life-saving skills in place, you have the right crowd around you, and that you are not alone – especially when wild swimming.’
In the work Ola does with her purposeful fitness she enables women, families, and young people to be strong mentally, spiritually, and physically. To create a welcoming environment for women of all ages and to speak up about their mental health, spiritual health, and physical health without judgment and without fear. I would like to think that there is more advocates of physical fitness and personal training out there who have such a holistic and purposeful approach in their ethos. Cultural sensitivity in swimming coaching would be a good place to start to address some of the barriers, inadequacies and racism that exist within them now.
Thanks to Ola for speaking to us and sharing her words and hope. You can find out more about her and her work here:
Representing Muslim Women In The Swimming World by Scopio