It would be wrong to think of exercise only as something to build muscle and ease anxiety. If we can, we should force ourselves out of gyms and off machines and into the natural world, knowing, or hoping, that we may stumble upon awe.
THOSE OF US IN our squad hardly need research to tell us about the joys and benefits of ocean swimming. Several of my Bold and Beautiful friends have stopped taking antidepressants: they call the ocean ‘vitamin sea’. One, who documents the creatures of the teeming bay with gloriously lit photographs, calls the swim her ‘happy pill’. Others use it to survive: several fellow swimmers going through illness, breakups or family traumas, have told me how they have cried into blurry goggles while swimming around the headland, before returning to hot showers and coffee, able to garner strength for another day.
As Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind, a book about the benefits of being in or near water, says, water ‘meditates you’. A study published in the British Medical Journal in August 2018 posited the theory that swimming in cold, open water could be a treatment for depression, which is again science starting to catch up with what we know — why else would I find myself, a night owl, rising before dawn to jump into black seas if it wasn’t an addictive high? The study was based on the experience of a twenty-four-year-old woman who found that a weekly swim in cold water allowed her to stop her medication. The authors were uncertain why this happened. One suggestion was that the water worked as an anti-inflammatory or treatment for pain; however, the explanation that rang true for me was a theory put forward by co-author Michael Tipton: ‘If you adapt to cold water, you also blunt your stress response to other daily stresses such as road rage, exams or getting fired at work.’
The awe found in daily swims does bring a sense of connection, as does the companionship. We are a strong community, a motley crew bound by a common love. The conversations of our diverse crowd — which includes judges, carpenters, models, priests, doctors, care workers and teachers, and ranges in age from five-year-olds who paddle on boards to veterans in their eighties — are also part of the cheerfully repeated daily ritual. We talk about the beauty of the sunrise, the presence of stinging jellyfish, the creatures we spied on the ocean floor or hidden in the weeds, whether a wetsuit is needed, the weather, the water temperature, the visibility and the swell. And we complain about how long it takes for the local café to make our hot drinks. Then we have the same conversations the following day.
In an era of increasing disconnection, digital-only relationships, and polarisation of political views, it is wonderful to sit among such a varied group of people — with many of whom you only really share one thing — and talk rubbish and riptides. I walk down the stairs at the south end of the beach each day knowing that I will see dozens of beaming faces before I put in a toe in the water, and that each of them knows how lucky they are to have, and to share, this experience. Often we hold bake sales or fundraisers for the local surf club or various charities. When I came back from hospital, members of the swim group would drop meals on my doorstep for months, walk my dog, feed the cat, plant trees in my garden and do all manner of things, unasked.
The importance of daily contact with people — the old-fashioned face-to-face kind — has been well documented by researchers, including American sociologist Robert Putnam, who lamented the decline in America of social organisations such as churches, unions and community groups in his 1995 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. In recent years, the number of people who say they have very few or no confidants or close friends has rocketed, with worrying implications for our well-being: greater isolation and loneliness have been linked to increased risk of chronic illness and dementia, alcohol abuse, sleep problems, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, poor hearing and depression.
A sense of community can also make us more resilient, not only improving our current state of mind but also protecting our mental health in the future. One of the world’s longest studies of adult life, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, followed subjects for eighty years — beginning in 1938 — and found that social connection and relationships are the single greatest predictor of health and happiness throughout your life. (The headline of a recent piece in the Harvard Gazette describing the findings was ‘Good genes are nice, but joy is better.’) The director of that study, Robert Waldinger, who is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School as well as a Zen priest, now ensures he deliberately invests more time in his close relationships than he did previously. Another study, published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry in 2017, concluded that the resources conferred by social connectedness can act as a ‘social cure’ for psychological ill-health’.
Why then don’t we all do more to foster a sense of community? It’s hard when you’re shy, or blue, or sick, or struggling — my own instinct is often to close the shutters and be quiet and solitary, too. But that instinct is not always the healthiest one. In order to endure, to survive trauma or even just to stay afloat when life threatens to suck us under, we need to know we are not alone.
It’s not just relationships with friends and family that count: connections with people who live on the same streets, work in the same offices or ride the same trains as us also matter. A 2014 study by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that even interactions with ‘weak social ties’ such as casual acquaintances — like members of a sporting club — were significant. Students who interacted with more classmates than usual on any given day reported being happier, for example.
I certainly know that the days I begin with casual conversations and a long swim in salt water are almost always better than those that don’t start that way. Ask any swimmer or surfer. The memory stays in my mind and on my skin (and, unfortunately for the makeup artists who need to get me ready to host a nightly TV show, in goggle rings around my eyes). Other swimmers concur: if they don’t have the chance to jump in the ocean before work, they are twitchier, less settled and less focused than on the days when they do.
THERE ARE SEVERAL SACRED aspects to how Australians submit to the sea. First is the way we are drawn to it, gazing out at its expanses, and lie down near it whenever we can. Second is the purifying ritual of plunging, and third is immersing in it and exploring its subterranean secrets. A fourth may be the surfer’s learned respect for its thunderous swells, tides and curling waves. Chlorinated pools will never have the same charm as the wide blue sea; the lane’s black line can become hypnotic but is also dull, and the water is heavy with chemicals.
After first having major surgery, I yearned to slip back into the sea. When I finally rejoined the Manly Beach group, I practically danced for the rest of the day. As my shoulders began to grow stronger, so did my mind. Swimming is a form of meditation. As the amazing Diana Nyad, who in 2013, at the age of sixty-four, became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the protection of a shark cage, told The New York Times, swimming is the ultimate way to deprive your senses: ‘You are left alone with your thoughts in a much more severe way.’
Sound is diminished, yes. But, for me, ocean swimming is the ultimate way to expand my senses — of sight, space and subdued sounds — and heighten my awareness. Afterwards, through my working day, images of a rippled sea floor and bearded sharks flash through my thoughts. I collect and recount underwater sightings for my children as a hunter would skins.