Swimming, watches, breathing under water

[ButterflyWoman]

Okay. Weird dream. I can't work out what all of it means, though I can guess at some of it. Any intuitions welcome, as I'm sure this is important and I'm meant to work it out.

In the dream were a couple of dream symbols I haven't had in a really long time: a swimming pool, and being able to breathe underwater. The swimming pool is a symbol of wanting to change, wanting to be "reborn" or transformed, similar in concept to baptism (in fact, I used to have these so often that I came to call them "baptism dreams"). In the dream, the water is always inviting and while I can't always swim in it, I always want to. Sometimes circumstances prevent it, sometimes the person or persons I'm with won't let me get in, sometimes I do manage to get into the water, but I know from having had many of these dreams that it's about transformation, usually spiritual.

In this dream, I did get to swim, and found to my surprise that I could breathe under the water. I used to have this dream fairly regularly, and I always took it to mean that I could adapt to a situation that should have killed me, or something along those lines. I could avoid being "drowned", in other words.

The pool, in this dream, was a rather big one, and I was swimming in it. I can't recall the precise circumstances around it, but I think the pool was actually on top of a building, like you sometimes see in big cities (and I've actually swum in a pool like that, though it was many years ago). As I noted, I was able to breathe under the water, to my surprise. I even heard myself breathing, and I couldn't work out how I was doing it, but I definitely noticed it.

The dream was patchy, but there was a woman who was a mother figure (i.e., not my actual mother, but she seemed motherly to me), and she reminded me to take off my watch when I went in the pool. I said not to worry, that it's waterproof, but I took it off and gave it to her to hold. Then, she somehow managed to drop it in the pool. It was a sort of a tossing motion, but I don't think she meant to do it; there was nothing malicious (like, maybe she was trying to throw something else and got confused). The watch hit the water in the very deep end and I said "Don't worry, I can get it". It had fallen and landed on a sort of little ledge about three-quarters of the way down, and I dove down and got it and turned around and was looking up at the surface of the water and thinking it was a long way off, but as I swam back up I was breathing under the water the whole time and was surprised by that.

Not sure what to make of that at all. I suspect strongly that the watch is a symbol of time in some way. The motherly figure, now that I come to think about it, reminds me very much of a spirit guide of mine (she is very motherly with me). Being able to breathe underwater while being transformed when a spirit guide throws time... ?

I hope someone else will read this and work it out. It might be obvious and I'm just missing it. So intuit away, if you please. I'm open to suggestions. (I did ask that spirit guide but haven't gotten an answer; I'll meditate on it, as well, but input is always welcome.)

[CFTraveler]

I don't have great insights, but I want to share that I have the same types of dreams that you do, the only difference is that sometimes it's pools, sometimes the beach. (ocean). I do dream a lot of being able to breathe underwater and I also dream (a lot) of trying to go to the beach, only to not be able to, because I either get lost, the day is over, or when I finally get there, the beach is a fake imitation of reality (the latter happened after I became aware of dreamstate lessons and conscious projection) and have become lessons in landscape/reality-making.
But they started out as baptism dreams, and I did have an experience as a child in which I was at the bottom of a pool looking at the top, fascinated but not afraid(drowning) and was pulled out by a beautiful lady. Don't know if she was a living person, but she wasn't my mom or relative. I sometimes wonder if she is an addition to a memory I had and it was actually a relative that I don't remember, but that is besides the point.
At a certain age (prepubescence) I started dreaming of breathing under water and then had a mystical experience which ended those dreams.

From having Pneumaphor work on my dreams, I have to really think and apply to what he has taught me about them- But I find it interesting that we've had such similar elements in which I consider 'important' dreams.