BY SEAN HEATH – Anthropologist Sean Heath is an outdoor swimming and cold-water dipper. He has recently moved from coastal Vancouver, Canada to inland Leuven, Belgium. Excited to explore the land-locked options for outdoor immersion, he was confronted with a blanket ban on all outdoor swimming outside of designated swimming spots within the Leuven municipality and Flanders region. Problematically, the only outdoor sites where swimming is allowed, outside of open-air chlorinated pools, are all closed during the fall and winter months. What is a swimmer/dipper to do? Why is there a ban? And how might avid swimmer/dippers use the waters they so crave? He explores these questions in this blog.

Outdoor Swimming is here to stay

It is clear that cold water and outdoor swimming show little signs of disappearing in the popular conscious any time soon. The popularity of outdoor swimming has exploded in the past several years with outdoor swimming, dipping, plunging and other cold water immersions such as cold showers and ice baths having reached a fever pitch in the popular zeitgeist. My ethnographic fieldwork in the UK, Canada, and Norway points to the growth of this activity and is corroborated by national and organizational surveys around the numbers of new open water swimmers. For example, the enthusiastic newcomers to the recreational pursuit I met weekly showing up to the Vancouver Open Water Swimming Association’s ‘practice swims’ during the 2023 outdoor swimming season. Or the 12,000 dippers at the Unox Nieuwjaarsduik Scheveningen in 2023. Several of these dippers I interviewed joined this cold water dip because they had read online, or encountered social media accounts proselytizing the science behind cold water swimming suggested that it is good for physical and mental health. However,  my sense is that the ‘difference’ of outdoor swimming is entangled with a ‘sensory ecology’ of swimming and how we and the environments in which we dip are bi-directionally affected.

Now, there are multiple factors which have colluded to skyrocket the popularity of amphibious practices (e.g., cold-water dipping in rubbish bins, cold showers, ice baths, and outdoor cold-water swimming). The first is that water, and immersion in this substance, is therapeutic for many, and has been for millennia. The second might be the bottling up indoors and the social isolation experienced by vast numbers of people during the lockdowns during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The third is that research into the health and well-being benefits of spending time in ‘blue-spaces’ is being communicated in droves in an accessible fashion by growing numbers of organizations (e.g., the Outdoor Swimming Society; Open Minds Active; Mental Health Swims). The fourth is that, while relatively emergent and not without risks, the quantitative science behind cold water immersion seems to point towards increased benefit to our human physiology. Popular press books like ‘Winter Swimming,’ ‘Chill’, and ‘Blue Spaces’ provide easy to read accounts of some of this latest science, presented in an accessible manner in combination with self-help wellness strategies. Other publications like The Outdoor Swimmer’s Handbook focus more on the practicalities of the activity itself, such as how stay safe while swimming in new environments, how to read tide charts, what clothing to bring for during and after a swim, and what the best post-swim treats are.

 Following the path carved by water in the writings of environmental anthropologists, I draw on my preliminary ethnographic fieldwork swimming, dipping, and plunging into cold waters to offer examples for envisioning our entangled future with water otherwise. I also offer a few practical possibilities for rethinking water stewardship strategies.

An explosion of outdoor swimming enthusiasm

Stuck indoors during repeated COVID-19 lockdowns, unable to socialize with our fellow humans and non-humans many began to feel a terrible angst from their disassociation with the outdoors. Some privileged few had a small patch of green in the forms of private gardens or close access to a public park. Many more people were simply stuck within the walls of their homes. However, this disassociation of lack of connection to nature, which we collectively ‘awoke from’ in this moment of turmoil, has a complex intellectual history dating back hundreds of years. In short, notions of human domination over the ‘natural’ world and philosophical notions of our separateness from other flora and fauna, created the prime conditions where being human involved an ever growing physical, emotional, and intellectual separation from ‘nature’.[1]  

As a species we have evolved in conjunction with our surroundings, with other living beings, flora, fauna, weather, geological and atmospheric processes. As the engineers-extraordinaire of our physical, social, ecological environments we have shaped the landscape to our needs. This includes engineering ‘blue-spaces’ to carve permanent concrete courses for waterways, ponds, and reservoirs throughout the European landscape. Within the city of Leuven this is most starkly evident in the penned in banks of the river Dijle and the Kanaal Leuven Dijle. Yet humans have also been penned in on land, away from the river. Sometimes this is accomplished with physical fences, and at other times with steep embankments covered in dense foliage. We have designed ourselves out of the very blue-spaces which provide for our well-being.

It is perhaps not surprising then that people flocked to the outdoors in droves as soon as COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted and  social distancing guidelines remained in place. Suddenly, all the pool swimmers found that submersion in their bathtubs was insufficient to scratch that aquatic itch. In the UK, where I was during the multiple lockdowns,  young competitive swimmers and their parents scrambled to buy bungie chords and back-yard plunge pools. They did so not just to maintain a semblance of fitness, but for their physical health, and for the haptic sensory immersion water affords. A few creative and adventurous youth even took up sea swimming with one or two other swimmers from their squad. Social connection with their swimming peers and bodily immersion in water was critical to their well-being throughout these difficult periods. It was these youth swimmers who encouraged me to do the same. As such, I’ve become an avid outdoor swimmer and cold-water dipper.

Leuven’s Outdoor Swimming Desert

A recent article, ‘Gezocht: zwemwater!’, published in the online magazine MijnLeuven offers a stark view of Belgium’s Flanders region wide ban on ‘natural’ outdoor swimming and dipping. Only in designated areas can one take to the waters. Within the municipality of Leuven this is restricted to the Rostelaar Zwemzone ‘de Plas’. Even at this site we have further restrictions: No outdoor swimming after September 1^st. No swimming without a lifeguard present and on duty.

The reasons for the ban in the municipality and in the wider Flanders region? Several.

• Bad water quality in the local rivers, ponds, and lakes (such as the Dijle).
• The currents can be strong.
• We can cause harm to nature.
• And there may be underwater obstacles (e.g., rusting bicycles).

Now, before I dive into my critique it’s worth pointing out the good in supervised outdoor swimming sites. Having a lifeguard is a nice benefit, especially for new outdoor swimmers. A monitored areas gives additional benefits such as lack of conflicts with other water users such as boats, kayaks, and paddle boards, as well as avoiding encounters with rusty underwater bicycles.

Another benefit to designated swim zones is that the water quality is checked and that information sent to VMM (Flemish Environmental Agency) and the BDB (Soil Expert Service of Belgium). Water quality and how this affects human health in our leisure practices is understudied, but is gaining further attention. Policy such as the 2000 European Water Framework Directive, designed to protect water resources and water quality in Europe, offers hope for the sustainable futures for waters. However, leaving water quality entirely in the hands of governments and private for-profit companies excludes those with an intimate daily connection to water for recreation and leisure purposes. Take for instance the kayak tours of het Dijle, a recreational group permitted to use this blue-space. Should these recreators and tourists be concerned if they get splashed by the water? If they accidentally fall overboard into the river due to the stated ‘poor’ water quality? Should this activity also be banned? These are questions I have not yet found answers to.

Strong currents and underwater obstacles can be problematic but are easily remedied through basic safety measures, checklists, and a bit of caution. For instance,  best practice guidance, according to the Outdoor Swimming Society, is to always swim with a buddy. This basic safety step can literally be a lifesaver. Some other practical tips are to use an inflatable tow float, wear protective foot and hand coverings, or take a webinar course to identify river and ocean currents and tides. The approval of further designated dipping areas may be another solution to alleviate risks of underwater obstacles, as well as pointing to areas where currents are weaker.

I find the contradictory stated reasons of ‘bad water quality’ and ‘we could harm nature’ to be hypocritical. If the water quality is so poor that humans should not be submerging ourselves in it, then the water itself is already causing harm to all the other flora and fauna it comes into contact with. The position that ‘we’ the humans could be the problem causing ‘harm’ to nature is well justified. Take a look at large agri-business, manufacturing, and industrial production facilities polluting the water courses creating ‘bad water quality,’ or privatizing water sources for profit over the ‘public good’. Admittedly, het Dijle is not very ‘blue’ either as it runs through Leuven, the water colour appearing as rather sickly grey most of the time. Nevertheless, individual people, when engaged in education about a particular space can begin to more fully connect with it as a place they care for and want to revisit. This promotion of environmentally responsible behaviour is precisely the attitude shift we desperately need to cultivate in individual citizens during this time of great ecological crisis.

Due to the immersive nature of cold-water dipping and swimming my preliminary research indicates that this practice offers fruitful space for promoting human well-being in conjunction with environmental, or better yet, ‘planetary well-being.’ I say we mobilize the people engaged in this practice to benefit nature, the environment, the non-human, and more-than-human. Banning people from outdoor recreation will not engender an environmentally responsible behavioural shift in people. Galvanizing grassroots community members to care for the places and spaces they recreate outdoors can. We are simultaneously the worlds most destructive and constructive ecological force. We therefore collectively need to tip the scales towards the constructive side of the see-saw.

Let’s see where exploring the sensory aspects of connectedness to nature can take us!

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Horizons Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

[1] We are inseparable from nature. As a natural force, then, the built environments we create are also part of the natural world. I use quotations here to mark out the intellectual separation of human and nature.