This summer, while teaching swimming on a magical Greek Island, I had an extraordinary encounter with Monachus Monachus, the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal. Only a few hundred survive and most people on the island had never seen one.
If at the age of 17 when I was already feeling burnt out from the hard slog of competitive swimming, you’d said to me that one-day teaching people how to swim would be at the heart of my life I would have never believed you. But life has a way of taking unexpected turns and here I am over 30 years later, having developed the Shaw Method and spending most of my time in the water – either working with others or refining my stroke, and gaining immense joy and satisfaction from both.