A year ago, I decided to celebrate Mother’s Day by having a swim in the sea. For those who don’t know, March is the month of the year when the sea is coldest, the time lag in the earth’s temperature meaning it’s colder even than January, and although I have been a mermaid my entire life, that day I was stabbed by the cold, eviscerated of all body heat, emerging from the sea flayed bright red by the salt and the waves and the bone- haunting chill.
And my goodness, I felt incredible. It had taken every ounce of courage to get in and now, shivering on the beach with a cup of coffee, I wanted nothing more than to do it again and soon. That March day was sunny, with a little heat in the air and for a large part of it, I just sat in the garden and observed what that chilly dip had done to me physically. I could feel my bones glowing under my jumper. My muscles were entirely relaxed. I felt half the size I actually was and ferociously hungry. Best of all though, was the difference in my mind. It was as if someone had thrown a switch, reset everything, turned up the colour and the volume and made everything HD, but with anxiety and worries turned way down.
With the best will in the world, there was no way I was going to be sea swimming every day. I would if I could, but I don’t live by the shore and life doesn’t allow for that kind of trip on a daily basis. But I wanted more. I read books about Hampstead Ladies Pond, watched documentaries about winter swimming and wild swimming and read lots about the effects of cold water on the body and mind. All of this was just a form of longing, a kind of holding pattern until I figured out how to get what I wanted on a more frequent basis.
As always, I had to work with what I had. My showers got colder until I was finishing each one with three minute of cold tap water. They increased my resilience and certainly woke me up and gave me a brief shot of the effect I was looking for, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t submerged, I couldn’t float or relax, and it didn’t give the rawness that lasted for hours, which was what I craved. Mostly, it wasn’t outdoors and I realised that seeing the sky and feeling the weather was as much a part of the whole sea swim joy as the cold water.
Of course, my social media algorithms began showing me more of what I had been researching and reading about and before long, ice baths started popping up on my Instagram feed, mostly used by muscled male gym bods eager to show how tough they were sitting in a plastic tub brimming with ice cubes. They were the exact opposite of me, but the contraption they were sitting in looked workable: temporary, easily refillable, small and inexpensive. So this became my birthday request: a portable, plastic tub to be filled to the brim with cold water and plunged into every day. My family got it set up on the patio and filled it with water straight from the tap, probably waiting for me to shriek, demand the receipt and swap it for a hot tub. But I got my lipstick on (I’m not freezing my butt off without the fortifying power of lipstick) and in I went, and honestly readers, it was the best birthday present I’ve ever received, apart from my fire pit. I know. Fire and ice. I’m a woman of extremes with an urge to return to cave-living. Go figure.
It’s been nearly a year now and it’s life enhancing. On the winter solstice I played Christmas carols, and on Christmas Day I drank a mimosa in it while wearing a Santa hat. I broke the solid three inches of ice on top with a garden trowel and got in throughout January, being careful to pay attention to the moment when my body said ‘enough’. And it does, with perfect accuracy, adjusting to the drop in temperature of even one or two degrees in the winter, by lopping twenty seconds off the time I can stay put. I listen to my spine and my core, and I know when time’s up.
You can keep your spas, and white artificial environments where you can receive ‘treatments’ and where our capitalist culture sanctions relaxation. They cost money, they’re full of the least relaxed people on earth and two hours later you’re in your car with a lighter bank account and a vague sense of disappointment. I have something real. I can see my garden from the tub, and it’s like I’m sitting in a pond. I watch the bees in my flowers in the summer, the birds flying overhead in spring, the clouds racing and grumbling in the winter. I concentrate on what I can hear, the layers of birdsong and traffic and voices and insects that surround me, and sometimes, when it’s raining, I get to listen to the tap of the raindrops and watch the concentric circles in the water around me; not observing the weather, but part of it, connected. I notice everything, the wheeling of the clouds, what plant has grown, which birds are at the feeder. That resets your thinking about your place in the world, a kind of active gratitude and powerful noticing that’s more natural than meditation, And then you notice how steady your breathing is, how your heart and lungs settle quickly in the cold, the way your skin comes alive.
Look, summer is a delight and winter is a lesson in tenacity and endurance. It’s not easy to get into a swim suit and go outside when it’s minus three, dark, and frosty underfoot, and adding iced water into that equation seems like madness. But I put on some fairy lights and music, keep my eyes on the moon and three minutes later, I’m so glad I gathered up all the little bits of my courage, formed a decision and went in. My skin glows, I’m deeply relaxed (much more so than after a sauna) and I’ll sleep like a baby. And on those winter days when I’ve felt the rasp of a sore throat coming on, I’m in that tub for as long as I can stand and I swear I’ve felt instantly better.
It’s not a cure all and there may be valid reasons, medical or otherwise, why it’s not for you. No one likes the idea of cold water: it’s deeply instinctual to recoil from it, and trust me, if I fell into some by mistake, I’d be getting out of there and up against a radiator as fast as possible. But making a zen den, deciding to submerge in it, prepared, ready and knowing it’s finite, is something different. You need to feel this for yourself. It’s not cold in the way an underheated swimming pool, or disappointing bath is: it’s sparklingly cold, fizzing with ice, shocking, tingling, wonderful. It’s just a little something that might be worth trying, an extra boost in terms of your mental and physical health. The tubs are small enough for a balcony or even a tiny garden, and they fold up if you need to tidy them away. Don’t bother with big brand names – go cheap and cheerful because trust me, they’re all the same and your backside won’t know the difference when it’s minus two. Pop on your music, your best woolly hat and get in, right up to your shoulders. Swearing absolutely allowed. Let me know if you do!
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