The Dharma of Swimming Sideways

What 'Right Action' Looks Like Inside a Storm You Can't Control

There comes a point when something has been hard long enough that you start to wonder whether continuing is strength or stupidity.

A rip current doesn't announce itself... It just starts pulling you away from shore. You fight it, desperate to reach land, until you're too tired to keep fighting.

We're not short on advice for this moment: Don't give up. Know when to walk away. Keep going. Let it go. All of it sounds wise until you're the one standing inside something difficult, trying to work out which piece of contradictory wisdom actually applies to you.

Sometimes walking away is clarity. Sometimes it's avoidance wearing a calmer outfit. Sometimes staying is courage. Sometimes it's just fear that's learned to sit still. We keep fighting because something matters to us, or because we can't tolerate the idea of losing... and from the outside, those two things can look identical.

So maybe the question never should have been, Can I keep going?

But: Is continuing mine to do?

We Moralize Both Answers

We've built an entire culture around making persistence virtuous. Grit. Hustle. Never quit on your dreams.

And wellness spaces have quietly built the opposite religion, where releasing is enlightened and holding on is attachment, ego, something to be meditated away.

Neither one tells you what to actually do on a Tuesday when the thing in front of you is still hard, and you still have to decide what to do.

Sometimes walking away is wisdom, and sometimes it's the story we tell ourselves so it doesn't feel like quitting. Sometimes staying is devotion, and sometimes it's just refusing to let go because letting go would mean admitting something else.

Neither instinct, on its own, is trustworthy... That's the part nobody puts on a mug.

Tenacity Isn't Always About Holding Tighter

I've been sitting with this for a while now, mostly because I've been looking back at the last couple of years and noticing something I didn't expect.

There were parts of me that simply refused to loosen their grip on Cove.

That's not the same as saying I was determined.

I wasn't waking up each morning deciding nothing could stop me. Far from it... Many days, I could barely function. I was scared and exhausted, and there were stretches of time when my whole world got very small, very dark.

And yet, some part of me kept crawling forward despite it all.

Not quickly.

Not gracefully.

But forward.

That distinction matters because we tend to treat tenacity as force. Clench your jaw. Dig in. Push harder. Prove them wrong.

But looking back, I don't think that's what really happened...

I think some part of me kept returning to the one thing I still understood during a period when almost everything had stopped making sense: This is mine to do.

Yoga has a word for that: dharma.

Dharma Isn't the Same as Finding Your Purpose

Dharma gets flattened, most of the time, into the Instagram version of purpose, as if somewhere out there is one perfect calling waiting for you to finally identify it.

That version is comforting.

It's also not what the word is asking.

Dharma is more demanding than that. It asks what right action looks like from exactly where you're standing—not from the life you wish you had or the circumstances you'd have chosen.

Here. Now. With the information, responsibilities, and limitations actually in front of you.

The Bhagavad Gītā takes this up through Arjuna, who finds himself facing a situation he does not want to be inside of. The teaching he receives isn't that right action will feel good or that it guarantees a particular outcome.

One of the Gītā's most enduring lessons is that we're entitled to our actions, but not to the fruits they bear.

You don't act because you can guarantee the result.

You act because the action is yours to take.

What happens next is not entirely yours to decide.

I understood that intellectually a long time before I understood what it could demand of a person.

I Built Something With the Bricks

For nearly two years, I lived inside circumstances I had no control over...

Other people got to decide what they said about me, what they believed, what allegations they were willing to make. Eventually, some of them tried to convince the world I was a criminal.

None of that was within my control. So I kept coming back to the part that was: My thoughts, my words... My actions. And slowly, without much of a plan, I built something out of every brick that got thrown.

I studied. I taught. I wrote. I learned. I kept practicing. And I built Cove, one unremarkable day at a time. Then something happened that I genuinely did not expect.

While people were working to make me smaller, Cove got larger. It stopped being an idea and became physical.

While some tried to take my place in this community away from me, I made myself a new one. While the accusations were still swirling, I doubled down on the practice they had no way of taking from me.

Eventually, that practice got an address...

Walls. A door. A room full of mats. Students who keep showing up, and teachers who trained to keep the ripple of these teachings expanding in Saint John.

I was acquitted, in the end.

But I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to write this part backward from that outcome and make everything I did along the way seem obviously right.

It wasn't obvious while I was living it. At the time, it felt like placing my trust blindly in an uncertain outcome.

Right Action Comes Before the Outcome

I didn't know, for certain, what the outcome would be for me personally. I didn't know what Cove would become, or whether it would survive the storm happening around its conception.

I acted on what I knew, what I valued, and what I could manage to do at the time—not on some later certainty borrowed from a future I hadn't reached yet.

That's the part of dharma I keep coming back to.

Right action is still right action before you know the outcome.

The practice is in detaching from the fruits of your labour. Otherwise, it isn't really a practice. It's just outcome-worship wearing a nice hat.

Sometimes you do everything carefully, ethically, and courageously, and you still lose something you can't get back. Sometimes someone behaves badly and gets exactly what they wanted.

The outcome can't be the whole test...

That also means persistence isn't automatically virtuous. And I don't think this piece means anything if I skip that part.

There are things worth stopping. Identities worth releasing. Situations where what looks like tenacity is just fear that's found a more respectable name. Sometimes walking away is the right action. Sometimes staying is. No inspirational quote is going to tell you which one you're standing inside of right now.

That's discernment's job.

And it doesn't come with a shortcut.

Swimming Sideways

The parts of me that got stripped away in the storm haven't all surfaced yet. I'm not sure they're going to... I may lose even more before the storm passes.

But 😌 between the junior lifeguarding course I took when I was eleven and the copious amount of Bondi Rescue I've watched, here's what I can say about rip currents:

Your instincts can actively work against you. When the current starts pulling you away from the beach, everything in you wants to fight it straight on. The shore is right there. You can see it. So you swim harder, directly toward it.

Except the current is stronger than you are, and no amount of swimming changes the fact that you're being dragged out to sea. You can exhaust yourself completely fighting something you have no control over.

The way out is sideways.

You stop spending everything you have fighting the current head-on and swim across it instead, parallel to the shore, until you're out of the pull. Only then do you turn back in.

That's closer to the tenacity I understand now. It isn't endlessly swimming harder in the same direction. And it isn't letting yourself be carried out to sea, either.

It's a third thing: Recognizing the actual force you're inside of and choosing your direction based on that... not on how it looks, and not on how badly you want to already be standing on the shore.

What Is Mine to Do Next?

I used to think tenacity meant refusing to loosen my grip. I'm less sure of that now.

I think the harder practice is learning what deserves the grip in the first place.

What are you holding onto because it's genuinely yours, and what are you holding onto because you're afraid of what it means to open your hand?

Where are you swimming straight at something that will only exhaust you, when the more honest move is to change your angle?

And what keeps quietly asking for your participation, even now, after circumstances have handed you every reasonable excuse to walk away from it?

Cove has become a good place for weathering storms.

Not because we have the answers for getting out of them. But because this is what practice gives us: somewhere to study how to keep choosing our actions when we don't control the current.

For a long time, other people were busy trying to decide what happened to me. Dharma was asking different questions the entire time:

What am I going to do about it?

What is mine to do next?

That's not a question with an answer you arrive at once.

It's the kind of question a practice exists to keep answering... on the mat, off it, and in the rooms where we sit with people who are asking it too.

FAQ

What does dharma mean in yoga?

Dharma is often translated as purpose, duty, or right action, but it’s more nuanced than simply “finding your calling.” In this context, dharma asks what action is yours to take within the circumstances you’re actually in—with the information, responsibilities, and limitations you have right now.

How do you know when to keep going or let go?

There isn’t a universal rule. Persistence can come from devotion, courage, fear, attachment, or an unwillingness to lose and from the outside, those motivations can look remarkably similar. The practice is discernment: examining why you’re holding on and whether continuing is actually yours to do.

What does the Bhagavad Gītā teach about right action?

One of the central teachings explored in the Bhagavad Gītā is the relationship between action and outcome. We are responsible for how we act, but we cannot completely control the results our actions produce. Right action therefore has to be chosen before we know whether it will “work.”

Is tenacity always a good thing?

No. Tenacity becomes useful when it serves something worth continuing. There are also situations, identities, expectations, and battles that are right to leave behind. Simply enduring something for longer does not make the choice virtuous.

What does “swimming sideways” mean in this essay?

Swimming sideways is a metaphor for responding to forces you cannot control without either fighting them head-on or surrendering to them completely. Like moving across a rip current rather than exhausting yourself swimming directly against it, right action sometimes requires changing your direction rather than increasing your effort.

How can yoga help with difficult decisions off the mat?

Yoga can offer a framework for examining how we participate in circumstances we cannot completely control. Concepts like dharma turn practice toward questions of responsibility, discernment, action, and our relationship to outcomes—not just what happens while we’re physically practicing on a mat.