THE SWIM ITSELF
"You know when you put an aspirin in water, and… the edges of it kind of dissolve a bit. I feel like that as I'm swimming… It becomes a bit difficult to tell the difference between what's the water and what's my skin."
I asked all of my participants to describe the sensory experience of getting into the ponds in the winter, and it was surprising to hear how utterly clearly they could all articulate this. Their descriptions were deeply individual and visceral, personally expressed but sharing many of the same themes and expressions. I have presented them here, some in full and some pulled out as quotes, and my own auto-ethnographic experience of a swim is in here too. Below is a recording of the sounds of the ponds to play as you read them.
There's kind of this like, slight dissolving feeling which then when you get out and all of a sudden you can feel like every single millimetre of your skin. It’s just an amazing feeling really. When I first get in I always get that sort of hit of the cold water on my legs and I try and breathe past it rather than letting it shock me. I'll get off the stairs as quickly as I can. And I get that instantaneous sort of chest tightening when your body kind of seizes off and the brains like what the hell are you doing? And then I'll spend the first 20-30 seconds just really focused on slowing my breathing down. I try to force myself to smile because I find that helps. I do a lot of breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. And I just try to swim quite quickly at that beginning point. And then once the chest unwinds and I can slow down my breathing properly, then I will slow down my swimming and just kind of, I don't know, not float, but I swim much more slowly around the rest of the circumference of the pond. I get to that point where you start feeling really cold and the water feels quite silky against the skin. And then I'll probably tread water for a minute or so. And then once I can feel the cold start to hit my feet and hands - even if I'm not cold in the rest of me - that's normally my signal to get out. Because I know if I stay beyond that point I'll be really shivery when I'm getting dressed. It's weird when you get out because you feel quite torn between warm and hot. Depending on how long you've been in the water. And then I always go straight to the showers and take off everything that I'm wearing and then just try and dry off and get warm as quickly as I can - normally once I start getting dressed that's when I start shivering, it's like my body has forgotten for a bit between being in the water and getting out in the shower that I've been in the cold and then suddenly remembers, and I'm normally quite shivery for 20 minutes or so after I've got dressed - like even if I feel like I'm warm I always try and drink a cup of tea as I'm walking out, and that tea is always spilling over the edges of the cup because my hands are shaking and it takes some time for that to subside.
"The first time it was like having a layer of skin ripped off my body. I think it probably wasn't even that cold."
I start to feel the cold envelop me from my feet all the way up. Your sense of touch gets completely disrupted. And when you go into the water, all of your blood goes to your core and your peripheries and your extremities as all of the vasculature shuts down. So then I guess... then hearing, just the kind of the babble of the other users in the pond - the gentle chatter is really ambient and lovely. The little splashes of the water. And you'll have all of the other sorts of wildlife. So that's another really rich sense, visually.
"The sense of oneness with the water after a couple of minutes. That’s both a wonderful part and a scary part - it feels like that’s the time that I need to get out.."
I get in as quickly as I can. Whenever I'm swimming, I always look out for the heron and I also always look for kingfishers. I've seen them quite a few times, just kind of whizzing up and down. Always feels like an auspicious day when you see the kingfishers. And always just like feels quite comforting to see the heron it's like oh, there is like some kind of guardian angel or something. I lower myself down the ladder. And then I think there's always initially a bit of like an ache - like the cold is a bit of an ache when you kind of push off and it's up to your neck. I think usually I'm just looking around for birds. Looking at the sun, looking at the sky, looking at the planes. I don't often have big thoughts in the pond. I've been there in periods of my life that have been really hard. And then I've sometimes thought about those things but I've also sometimes just been able to switch them off because it feels more important to think about swimming and breathing. And to think about like - like your body is under physical stress when you're in water that cold, so the thought process is like a kind of unconscious thinking, unconscious thinking and conscious watching. And then at the very end as I'm coming up to the ladder to go out, I dunk my head under which is always great. And then when I'm at the ladder, I like to put my feet on the ladder and my hands on the ladder. I always kind of hang down in the water for another few seconds before pulling myself up again and getting out. It always feels colder when you get out I think.
“You have this kind of like, just like all my muscle feels like they're floating for a while. Maybe like the whole day. Yeah. Oh my god, I love it. Ah, that is what I live for. Like that. It's almost that endpoint. That is the goal.”
I usually do two loops. And the first loop I can't think, can't really read the environment, can't like, take anything in. I'm just completely in the physical sensation of the cold and just like moving, but by the second one. It's like, my eyes wake up. It's like suddenly I can see what the weather's like. Or like I can see this stork bird hanging out somewhere or hear the sound of the water and the sound of if it's raining or whatever. So there's, like a two stage sensory experience. I guess the physical sensation is very dominant. But then it really becomes about what I can see - I don't know, I feel like I live in a really small one bed flat. And so my daily life is so crowded by my stuff being everywhere. Like wherever I look, there I am visually. The ponds is the opposite of that.
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Below is a participant's representation of the feeling of being in the water.
I think it was more sensorially overwhelming at the beginning. I mean, because I feel like I've gotten used to the sensations and what I can see, but then it changes so much over the course of you know, I've nearly done a year now. It's just so drastically different throughout the year. But definitely realizing that I have to do two loops in order to get the full experience, especially when it's like really painful. The first time is just making sure that you get to the ladder, but the second loop is like okay, like this is awesome. A big part of the sensory experience is the kind of like aftermath and the kind of layer of cold sensation that's on top of the heat and the burn and then the floating feeling that you get.
All my participants clearly identified touch, hearing and sight as the three senses engaged throughout the swim (as did I). I was impressed with how clearly each could describe their sensory experience, from entrance to exit, emphasising the ritual of their swims, a pattern they always followed. How clearly they could express the sensory experience of their swims exemplified to me how crucial the senses were to the practice, and how focussed they were on them as they swam.