Indescribable Cold: Imagining Cold Water Swimming

Senses vary in their openness to language. If smells and tastes are hard to describe, the intimate somatosensory modalities may elude description altogether. A human body can sense its position and movement (proprioception), the state of its inner organs (interoception), its pain (nociception), and its surface temperature in ways difficult to characterize. Traditional models of the five senses omit the somatosensory modalities, perhaps because these sensory systems produce feelings that resist words. How would you describe the sensation of coldness other than by saying you’re cold?

Readers and viewers of Amy Liptrot’s memoir, The Outrun, and Nora Fingscheidt’s film adaptation, will recall the powerful scenes of cold water swimming. The book and film engagingly depict Liptrot’s recovery from alcoholism on the Scottish Orkney Islands where she lived as a child. For Liptrot, swimming with other women—sometimes with seals—in frigid water causes transformative bodily sensations. At first, she calls the water “gaspingly cold” and writes, “the first time felt like it was burning my skin” (Liptrot 196). But she also finds that “to feel cold, with skin submerged in wild waters, is attractively physical” (Liptrot 196). The scenes of Liptrot (and actress Saoirse Ronan) thrilled by the cold may stay with readers and viewers because they invite audiences to imagine a little-discussed bodily sense.

Hayley Green, "Snow, Southwick Beach, Looking North," 24 February 2010.

Source: Hayley Green, "Snow, Southwick Beach, Looking North," Geographic Project Collection, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Human bodies sense temperature relatively, within a limited range. Combinations of signals from several receptor types let nervous systems infer differences between skin temperature and external temperature, especially if there are any sudden changes (Kandel et al. 423). Some thermal receptors become active when air (or water) is colder than the skin in which they’re embedded, and inactive when the external environment is warmer. Other receptors respond to a warmer exterior but not to a cooler one (Kandel et al. 424). Most people can start to sense coldness when temperatures fall below 31^oC (88^oF). In temperatures of 10-15^oC (50-59^oF) or lower, many people experience cold as physical pain (Kandel et al. 423). Signals generated by thermoreceptors move slowly, and they don’t give rise to detailed sensations. As Liptrot’s description shows, extreme cold can feel like burning. Interestingly, human thermal detection systems respond more strongly to cold than to heat (Kandel et al. 424).

Although immersion in cold water may feel painful, research supports swimmers’ claims of its invigorating effects. In a review of hundreds of studies, Beat Knechtle and his colleagues saw consistent evidence that cold water swimming benefits “the cardiovascular system, endocrine system, immune system, and the psyche” (Knechtle et al. 14). Knechtle et al. also warn that ice swimming is an extreme sport, and inexperienced swimmers can suffer heart attacks or drown (Knechtle et al. 14).

As The Outrun suggests, cold water swimming appeals strongly to women, who often swim in groups. In an online survey of over 1,000 female cold water swimmers mainly from the U.K., Megan Pound and her colleagues found widely shared claims of “mental and physical benefits” (Pound et al. 1). But what exactly is a mental benefit, and how does it feel?

The “free-text responses” of Pound’s participants convey emotions evoked by extreme cold in ways that statistical data can’t. “The elation after a swim is remarkable and priceless” responded one swimmer (Pound et al. 6). “Wild swimming completely resets my physical and mental state to calm,” wrote another (Pound et al. 6). For many women, the joy of swimming came not so much from the cold as from the company (only about 15% of the participants swam alone), or the freedom when they did swim by themselves (Pound et al. 1). “For the time I’m in the sea I feel me again,” commented one swimmer (Pound et al. 6).

Evocative descriptions of cold water swimming by a writer like Liptrot can complement medical studies of circulation or hormonal cycles by showing how icy water feels to one’s body. “Swimming shakes out my tension,” writes Liptrot, “and provides refreshment and change” (Liptrot 200). The somatosensory modalities that let bodies sense tension create some feelings best conveyed through metaphors. Liptrot concludes her chapter on cold water swimming by proclaiming, “now I shock my senses on a Saturday morning in a biting sea, plunging warm skin into cold water, forcing a rush of sensation, cleansed” (Liptrot 200). Physiologically, one could say that her cold-sensitive thermoreceptors are firing. In her own mind, she feels shaken, shocked, bitten, and cleansed. Liptrot makes her experience emotionally imaginable to readers by making it bodily imaginable. Approaching the elusive somatosensory modalities with words, she expands our knowledge of sensory experience.