Fifty years later, as the world, with its escalating rings and pings, gets ever more hysterical, suspending yourself in water becomes ever more appealing.

For better or worse, the mind wanders: We are left alone with our thoughts, wherever they may take us. A lot of creative thinking happens when we’re not actively aware of it. A recent Carnegie Mellon study shows that to make good decisions, our brains need every bit of that room to meander. Other research has found that problem-solving tends to come most easily when our minds are unfocused, and while we’re exercising. The neurologist Oliver Sacks has written books in his head while swimming. “Theories and stories would construct themselves in my mind as I swam to and fro, or round and round Lake Jeff,” he writes in the essay “Water Babies.” Five hundred lengths in a pool were never boring or monotonous; instead, Dr. Sacks writes, “swimming gave me a sort of joy, a sense of well-being so extreme that it became at times a sort of ecstasy.” The body is engaged in full physical movement, but the mind itself floats, untethered. Beyond this, he adds, “there is all the symbolism of swimming — its imaginative resonances, its mythic potentials.”

Dr. Sacks describes a sublime state that is accessible to all, from his father, with his “great whalelike bulk,” who swam daily and elegantly until 94 years of age, to the very young. I recently watched an 8-year-old boy and his teenage sister swim their laps beside me. The boy shivered on land, lips blue and knees knocking. But when he hit the water, he was confident, focused, as fluent in the medium as a seal. For a little while, there was no talk and no tech. Just a boy in his buoyancy.

The enforced solitude is at odds with where we are as a culture. Our gyms are full of televisions tuned to SportsCenter and cable news. We’re tethered to our devices, even at bedtime. With that pervasive lack of self-control, who has the willpower to turn off technology for any meaningful period of time? I submit: Sliding into the water is the easiest way to detach from your phone.

This is not to say that swimmers are natural Zen masters. Bill Clinton told PBS recently that he and Hillary swim together every afternoon; if either dares to mention a political topic during the course of their swim, he says, “We will stop the other one.” I asked Dara Torres, who has logged countless training hours for her five Olympics, what she thinks about when she’s swimming. “I’m always doing five things at once,” she told me by phone (at the time, she was driving a car). “So when I get in the water, I think about all the things that I have to do. But sometimes I go into a state — I don’t really think about anything.” The important thing, she says, is that the time is yours. “You can use it for anything. It depends where your head is at — it’s a reflection of where you are.”

The reflection of where you are: in essence, a status update to you, and only you. The experience is egalitarian. You don’t have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benefits of sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.

So, quickly now: everybody in the pool. It won’t be long before Google Goggles.

Bonnie Tsui is the author, most recently, of “American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods.”