Quote Originally Posted by Running Mommy
Yesterday I did ok, but I can feel that I lift my head too much and my hips sink like stones, it's not the smooth turn like on my left. I suppose with practice I'll get there, but MAN... I just wanna swim!!!
Yep, lifting head and sinking hips are sure-fire triggers for being discouraged with your swimming! I generally think of the body as a set of planes, and I try to apply some general rules to those planes:

-head rotates on neck, so ears only move on that plane/wire going through them
-hip bones stay in a plane (roughly), facing the bottom of the pool; they NEVER rotate with the head; one drill that can help with this is using a pull buoy but not kicking, so your legs are deadweight, and focus on pulling and breathing while twisting from your core and not your hips
-I think of there being two planes, one on either side of my body in the water (like big panes of glass), and my arms never go outside of those planes; they also never cross the plane that goes down the center line of the body when you are pulling
-shoulders are on an independent plane that rotates in the direction that you're breathing on the strokes on which you are breathing, but are always rotating around the plane down the midline of the body. But the rotation starts in the core, not the hips.

I'm a mathematically-spatially-visually inclined person, so this geometric visual works for me; your mileage may vary. But thinking through this has even improved my swimming: I just got back from a 1500-yd swim in 29:40 that was the longest/fastest swim I've done in eons!

LK