The history of cold plunging around the world
At the Teppozu Inari Shrine in Japan’s capital, Tokyo, the new year is marked by an ice water bath. This Shinto ritual sees participants wear either a loincloth or robe and recite prayers as they plunge into the turquoise, icy pool. This ritual, which takes place on the second Sunday of each year, is actually not that old, having begun in 1955. As well as marking the new year, in the cold wintry air and freezing water the bathers ask for good health and wellbeing in the community.
The idea of renewal is one that draws many of us from time to time: the allure of a fresh start, often signalled by a new month or year, a change of pace or place. And it is a tantalising suggestion, that we might be able to begin anew in some way, and be rid of things or habits that we might want to leave behind. While we might be a little over the phrase ‘a new you’, we wonder how might we embrace and engage with the concept of renewal in genuine ways? Thinking of renewal as a symbolic concept that can nourish ways of thinking, rather than a prescriptive all-or-nothing, once-off opportunity might be a place to start. An ice-cold dip might be another.
Cold water immersion has deeper ancient roots in Japan’s Shinto faith in the concept of misogi, though the practice isn’t confined to Japan. As one article describes it, “Cold showers have played an important role in many cultures for various reasons. From the Spartans, ancient Greeks, and Romans, to Native American tribes, Japanese Shinto practitioners, and the Scandinavians, cold water plunges have long been part of traditional rituals.” The cold shower ritual is thought to have begun in Japan as early as the 8th century, when ascetic priests would stand under a running waterfall in all seasons, hot or freezing, as a form of purification. While we might associate the ice bath and cold swimming with contemporary wellness realms that demand pain as an ingredient of change, it’s possible to see, through these historical roots, how the act of swimming cold might also invigorate us. Embracing its symbolic and more abstract parts helps us to appreciate that change is slow, habits take time to make and break and that we don’t necessarily need to see ourselves as ‘then’ and ‘now’. A cold dip, or anything we do to embrace change, can be associated with a process of ongoing renewal - one that isn’t a once-off but is repeated according to rhythm, ritual or simply desire.
Like each part of bathing, the ice bath is simply an invitation. Removing any absolutes from how we think and feel about renewal, putting aside any harsh or concrete ideas about reinvention, allows us to inhabit our lives more fluidly, as an experience of ebb and flow, change and repetition rather than eagerly professing new after new. This doesn’t mean we resist change, but perhaps we don’t have to force it. As Virginia Woolf once wrote, “A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.”
Words by Katherine Brabon