Time in the ocean – 12’30”
I have now done 3 consecutive days in the ocean, and have already learned a lot through the process.
As I take those first steps towards the cold water, my body instantly wants to recoil, tense up, to fight against the cold.
It is very similar in a lot of ways to the way we steel ourselves for a difficult conversation with a partner, friend or colleague.
The anticipation of pain, difficulty, suffering, causes us to change physiologically.
We go in with a preconception of how it will go. We’ve already had the fight in our heads.
Yesterday, as I approached the ocean, my body wanted to recoil and tense up, but I was able to consciously quieten that instinct in a way that I hadn’t been able to before.
Day 2’s dip was a fight the whole time, I had to force myself to take each step into the water, and I managed to fight for 5 minutes. It took most of that 5 minutes to work my way slowly towards dunking the shoulders. I never put my hands under.
This time I was able to do more than double, and it didn’t feel like a fight. I walked straight in, all the way up to my shoulders, and met the cold as an equal.
I wasn’t there to fight, I was there to experience.
And my whole experience was different.
I didn’t experience ‘cold shock response’ this time. This, apparently is responsible for around 20% of deaths due to cold water immersion. It’s a hyperventilating, gasping panic that lasts for between 30s and 2 minutes.
Instead, I’m already finding I am able to simply observe my body’s response.
It’s fascinating to me to see how the levels of resistance show up and then drop away.
At least three times yesterday I felt a noticeable shift. A deepening of the experience. A letting go. An opening.
The last half was a profoundly relaxing and meditative experience, just bobbing there, breathing deep, observing the reactions of passers by.
THE LESSON
So what do I take away from this today?
I think it is surrender.
The biggest thing I have learned so far in this experiment is that the more I am able to just be with the discomfort, instead of actively fighting against it, the less discomfort I feel.
What happens when we can train ourselves to go into uncomfortable situations without tensing up, catastrophising, and worrying about the outcome?
Do those challenging conversations and situations become easier to navigate if we can avoid the ‘discomfort shock response’? (I just made up that term, but I think it is quite apt!)
Is it possible that the simple shock of the discomfort could be responsible for derailing projects, relationships, conversations, and that relaxing into those uncomfortable situations allows deeper vulnerability, deeper connection and deeper understanding?
If we are able to meet our discomfort and observe without reacting, we widen the gap between stimulus and response, and in doing so we reduce stress, improve relationships and experience more creativity.
Do you need to go in the ocean to achieve that? Of course not.
You just need to sit quietly and observe the sensations in your body. Be present to discomfort, curious about it.
See if you can experience the discomfort – physical pain, repeating thought patterns, emotional unrest – as an observer, without trying to change it.
And see if, over time, this has an impact on how you be in the world.