Totally Stockholm 1
he says before adding “I’m just a swimmer on the
whole”. Jack is following the motto about swimming as close to your home as possible, as he lives in a commune in Gamla Stan. That actually seems to be sound advice, which I also get from several other winter swimmers – make your bathing routine as simple as possible to make it become a habit. In contrast to many other people in the winter swimming Facebook groups, Jack says that he doesn’t do it due to health reasons, but that he rather experiences it as an addiction. “If I haven’t been swimming, I feel that the world turns grey and narrow, like an itching wool cardigan full of bread crumbs. That’s when I need to get in the water”. Jack estimates that he has been swimming about once a week, all year round, for the past two years. The habit began one scorching summer in Beijing a couple of years ago. “I was sitting in an office and was close to perishing in the 40 degree heat, and I felt that I just had to have a bath. But where do you do that in a giant and dirty city with 20 million people? By this little, constructed lake in the middle of Beijing, I saw a large sign saying ‘Swimming Prohibited’. But there were about 20 old Chinese people who were defying the ban and were inside the water. To their great surprise I joined in, and then continued swimming with this group of 60-95 year olds every day. In the winter it became pretty cold, it was minus 16 at its worst, but the pensioners were well-organised and 10 sawed up a great hole in the lake so we could swim around. When Jack and I go for a swim in Riddarfjärden, The Wim Hof Method we don’t have to saw through any ice, but Jack tells me that he experiences the same feeling he did after his swims in China: “That I love the whole world”. I can only agree, not even the extremely noisy sewer draining going on nearby, reminding us we’re in the middle of the city, can dampen my post-bath peace. Sweden has, according to the Swedish Maritime Administration, 48,000 kilometres of coastline, and on top of that, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute states that we have close to 100,000 lakes in our oblong country. You would be fairly hopeless if you couldn’t find your way to a spot to winter swim in, close to where you are located. Seeing as there seem to be almost as many reasons to try winter swimming as the number of Swedish lakes, there aren’t really that many excuses to not crush the ice and your fear of the cold simultaneously. Wim Hof is a 59-year-old Dutch world record holder, also known as ‘The Iceman’. Hof is known for his ability to withstand extreme cold. He attributes this ability to the practice of breathing that he has developed over many decades. This practice is known as the Wim Hof method. That method consists of three phases. The first phase involves 30 deep breaths – you take a powerful breath in, fully filling the lungs, then ‘let go’ of the exhale. You repeat this cycle at a steady rapid pace 30 times. At this stage, you may feel tingling sensations in your body, or slight light headedness. Once you complete the 30 deep breaths, exhale fully to empty all the air out of your lungs. Hold the breath here for as long as you can. When you feel the urge to breath, take a full deep breath in. Hold the breath for ten seconds, then let it go. The body may experience a normal head-rush sensation. These three phases are usually repeated for three consecutive rounds.