Plunging Into Winter
My Swim with the Coney Island Polar Bear Club
Bonnie Tsui in Why We Swim writes that, “Swimming is, by our human definition, a constant state of not drowning.” In New York City, there doesn’t seem to be a better metaphor for day to day life, but for every swimmer — and New Yorker alike — even though the day to day is keeping afloat, there is much more to swimming than surviving.
“Absolute intensity and immediacy,” is how Dennis Thomas describes plunging into the winter Atlantic Ocean off Coney Island. Dennis, a tall lanky man with a gentle persona, is the president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club. Founded in 1903 by health advocate Bernarr McFadden, the Coney Island Polar Bears are the oldest cold-water swimming club in the United States. McFadden, like many at the time, believed that swimming in cold water had a number of health benefits. In fact, the ‘water-cure’ has come in and out of vogue for centuries.
In 1853, Russell Thacher Trall founded an entire medical school dedicated to water therapy in New York City. The New York Hydropathic and Physiological School practiced what is known as hydropathy or the water-cure. The school taught the power of submerging in water — both hot and cold— to cure pain relief, nosebleeds, fever, infections, tuberculosis, salivary flow problems, and even neurological disorders. In the 1850s, hydropathy was a popular alternative medicine, and about 200 of these hospitals opened around the United States. Trall published a book in 1851 called The Hydropathic Encyclopaedia: A System of Hydropathy and Hygiene, an eight volume series dedicated to the water-cure. Swimming was highlighted as a critical part of the medical practice:
For the large class of invalids who are consumptive from feeble lungs and contracted chest, and for a still larger class of dyspeptics who are costive from torpid or contracted abdominal muscles, there is not better exercise than that of swimming. All persons, too, whether invalid or not, ought to know how to swim, on prudential considerations.
Today, swimming is still recognized by most health practitioners as an ideal way to stay fit because of its low impact and high reward ratio and cold water once again is becoming increasingly popular now amongst the alternative medicine communities. Rebecca Mead, in a recent New Yorker piece, “The Subversive Joy of Cold-Water Swimming”, highlights the recent trend of cold and wild water swimming, saying that more and more people are claiming that swimming in cold water can boost the immune system as well as improve general mental health. Just this month, Cambridge researchers announced that cold water swimming could even produce a protein in the blood that could protect the brain from degenerative diseases like dementia.
Dennis tells me that even though he hasn’t seen any scientific evidence to the health benefits of cold-water swimming, he has not had a winter cold since joining the club in the 70s. But his plunge into the ocean every Sunday in the winter months is less about the physical health benefits and more about what it does for his mind. Dennis says, “in New York, I think people carry a lot of stress, they worry about jobs and relationships and the subway is late, and all that but when you go into this water, you cannot think about those things, everything goes away because you are so absorbed in the intensity of this moment of just you being there in this very cold water.” Dennis tells me that a lot of the members hated winters in New York until they joined the Polar Bear Club; he says it was their way of dealing with the cold city, and now they can’t wait for winter. For Dennis and the other members, it is not about just surviving through the New York City winters anymore, but instead fully embracing them.
I joined the Polar Bears for one of their winter plunges on a sunny but cold morning in February this year. Steve, a large and jolly man in his 50s greeted me with a “this looks like a swimmer” as I approached the meeting spot on the promenade outside the New York Aquarium. Steve had the dad-bod look — large and round-bellied but tall enough to carry it comfortably. A dry-erase board told me that the water was 40º F while next to the air temperature it said: too warm. ‘We prefer snow,’ a short round woman with gray hair and perfectly round glasses to match said as she read the same note next to me. She was already in her bathing suit and a white shower robe, I was in two sweaters, a pair of leggings, a pair of jeans, a beanie, two pairs of socks and a ski jacket, with my bathing suit underneath it all. I was nervous, but happy to be outside in the sun, with the salty ocean in front of me, while Roger Mill’s King of the Road blared out of a speaker from a bicycle that was parked on the promenade.
A happy crowd of about 50 people gathered by the Aquarium. Dennis had told me in an earlier interview that the club was a lot more diverse now than the old days. It used to be exclusively men but now women make up about 40 percent of the membership. I could still see the remnants of the old membership — men who looked like Steve with names to match — Tony, Willy, Mike — came up to me with stories of the old days. “We once had to shovel a path through the snow to get to the water to swim, there were only 12 of us back then,” Willy told me. Tony advised that I take off my spectacles before going into the water, as they once had a friend whose lenses popped right out when an unexpected wave hit them during a plunge.
There were as many women — young and old — on the boardwalk now as men but they were not as quick to give me unsolicited advice. Cindy— a swimmer who had decided to plunge wearing a silver glittered knee-high boots — did however tell me to start taking off my layers before heading down to the beach so my body could get used to the cold before we went into the water. Although many of the members had added some flair to their swimming outfits — a monkey mask, a gold crown, a judge’s robe — everyone swims in bathing suits, anything thicker like a wetsuit would defeat the purpose.
We finally stripped down to our bathing suits and made our descent to the beach. Although I had only met these people half an hour before, running down to the beach from the promenade — one big group of flesh — made me feel like I was part of their community. Maybe it was the fact that we all ran down to the beach together bellowing a ‘hoo-hoo’ warrior chant while a man blew into a conch shell. It could also be that as we did this, boardwalk civilians stopped to watch in amazement, them being the outsiders while I was part of the swimmers, the ‘in-crowd.’ Mostly, it was thrilling being part of a big group, in a city where I so often find myself acting as an individual.
Once on the beach, Dennis told me that it is customary to make a big circle to do some quick — likely useless — stretches and then repeat the Polar Bear Chant that can apparently change weekly: When I became a Polar Bear . . . I had a full head of hair or Shrinkage comes and shrinkage goes . . . Monday morning no one knows, and more recently: I hope everyone stays well . . . corona virus go to hell. Everyone knew it was my first time taking the icy dip, Mike came up to me to make sure I knew that while entering the water my body should be relaxed because if it was tense, I would feel the cold more intensely. Although skeptical I nodded while pretending to relax my already cold limbs. Steve said that it was important to keep my body directly facing the sun as I walked into the water. So imitating Steve, I walked — body slightly facing the right — into the water.
Every section of my body that touched water immediately went numb so that I couldn’t feel the cold. The top half of my body — as if it knew it would soon be in the cold water — soaked up the sun above us. A gentle-looking lady approached me flapping her arms above the water, she told me to keep my elbows and hands out the water, jump, and shout the warrior chant to stay warm — hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, she demonstrated.
Once everyone was waist-deep in the wave-less water, the group took each other’s hands to make another circle. If you last up until the 10-minute mark, you form yet another circle. I — a little smug that I had made it this long my first go — joined them in holding hands. After the 10-minute mark, everyone around me started finding partners to hold hands with and dunk together. Before there was enough time for me to feel awkward about not having a partner, a woman with a gold crown resting on her jet-black hair took my hand and asked if I would like to dunk with her. We went under the water together and that is when I felt it — the numbness fade and the cold set in. I came up breathless, but with a strong desire to dunk again, which I did twice more. After the third time, my head was banging, and every part of my body was stinging and awake. The pain was like stretching a tight muscle, incredibly painful but at the same time such a relief, dunking in the water felt like a muscle stretch for my skin.
Everyone makes yet another circle at the 15-minute mark but at 14 minutes the cold overpowered my determination to stay in the water, and I had to get out. By then I was uncontrollably chattering and my skin felt slightly burnt. I probably would have risked staying in if the same lady who taught me how to jump up and down at first had not looked at my face and immediately said “you need to get out sweetie.” She clearly saw on my face what I felt in my body.
Once everyone was out the water, still in bathing suits, we gravitated to the Aquarium wall filled with murals, “find a spot on the wall with dark paint” Steve told me, “those are the warmest spots.” And so in a long line, our wet skin stuck to the walls as we all soaked up the little bit of heat before getting back into dry clothes.
Manoeuvring my bathing suit off and my many layers back on under my towel felt like an impossible task. Cold to the bone, my body and even my thoughts moved at a glacial pace — I repeated in my mind what Dennis had told me previously, “no-one has ever died from a Polar Bear plunge.” Once I had finally finished getting my clothes on, Mike gave me a cup of tea from a big urn they had set up and told me I was welcome back anytime as his guest. I felt my body start to thaw. Everyone was slowly disappearing back to their individual lives and so I left feeling energized and content but also believing I may never be properly warm again.
Before this day, Dennis told me that each swim is the same, “they almost never vary, it’s you, it’s water, it’s cold.” The morning with the club felt in so many ways ritualistic. The swim — the belief and why everyone was gathered that morning — was framed with all these other traditions, the chanting, the circles, the wall. Like many belief systems, a community and weekly observance has been built around this simple idea of The Swim.
