Splitting the waters | So that our body meets the territory

“Just before I release everything and enter the water, there is this final breath that I take. It’s all the love I have that meets that of the territory. »

This is one of the many passages of Splitting the waters which I have highlighted. Vanessa Bell’s book, published at the beginning of the month, allowed me to put into words the passion for swimming in cold waters that I developed thanks to The Presslast winter^⁠1.

These days I look forward to the return of cold weather. I miss slipping into a hole dug in an icy bank and leaving a part of me there.

If until now I spoke of the St. Lawrence River as a black hole that sucks me in, Vanessa Bell managed to make me understand in a more pragmatic (and much less frightening) way what I experience, each time. that I immerse myself in it.

“Water has this property of washing away our worries, of bringing us back to our own existence. When I am there, only my body and the elements exist. »

And if I’m talking to you about it today, it’s because since my column last February, many of you have written to me to find out how to get started with swimming in cold water. With Splitting the waters, the poet finally offers a concrete and accessible guide. This is good, since autumn allows us to slowly acclimatize to the cooling waters. The swimming season is finally here…

Splitting the waters is a fantastic book to demystify the practice. The necessary equipment, mental and physical preparation, safety, benefits, risks, everything is there. It is also a relevant guide for anyone looking to deepen their experience. “It’s a plea for us all to be briefly extraordinary,” writes Vanessa Bell.

There is indeed nothing ordinary about swimming when the beaches are deserted. For the author, it is even an endurance sport: “I followed a lot of online seminars,” she explained to me. Particularly in England, where there is a large pool of researchers who want to study the benefits of cold water on the body in a non-empirical way. Listening to them talk, I wondered why we didn’t consider it a sport. I have done ultratrail (running in nature over long distances) and I use the same mechanisms to develop mental strength, then the same breathing. It requires long-term work, in both cases. »

Vanessa Bell has been assiduously engaged in her new endurance sport for five years now and there is, in the story of each of her swims, a true communion with the living.

She writes : ” […] the calm that settles within us, as if the water had shared part of its strength with us, is a rare sensation that calls us to escape from our heads to concentrate solely on our body, our behavior, our breathing. It is a new way of approaching life by being fully aware of ourselves and what lives around us. It’s no longer us in nature, it’s us with nature. »

The poetry of Vanessa Bell (Of rivers, Landmarks) is intimately linked to the territory. It will come as no surprise that she was moved by the unprecedented access that swimming in cold waters allows. But beyond the relationship with nature that activity can nourish, there is the relationship with oneself.

I’m a fearful person, but every winter week I remind myself that I’m brave enough to wade through a river at 0.5°C. Activity allows me to tame my fears and understand the power of my body.

“I know that my body is capable of many things,” agrees Vanessa Bell. Before, my leitmotif was: “I gave birth, I’m capable of doing that!” Now it’s: “I swim in January when it’s -40, I have the strength to do that.” »

I point out to Vanessa that in Splitting the waters, she mainly tells us about swimming between women. Is there a link to be made with this idea that we can learn to trust ourselves?

The feminine dimension, however, goes beyond mythology. “In the book, I would have liked to talk more about premenopause and menopause. It was as if I had rediscovered the practice at that moment. I don’t like the idea of ​​pushing the limits, I prefer to go to meet oneself and remember that we are constantly regenerating. »

Swimming between women, according to Vanessa Bell, is about sharing experiences relating to our physical life, which is often hidden.

“I’m not looking to be in pain, but I accept the painful dimension of the activity. Living in a woman’s body means living with a lot of pain that is not considered. We can recognize that these pains are real and that we can deal with them. When I talk about thermal shock, I write that we can try to stay in the water for a minute because once we exceed this threshold, something else can happen to us… This is applicable in everything. »

Everything ends up passing or at least transforming.

Although my desire to forget myself in the arms of icy water and emerge with a new version of myself and an ever-renewed respect for nature remains intact…

“I tell myself that that’s what swimming in cold waters is all about: a lifelong encounter. »

This is the sentence that I highlighted with the most admiration, in my copy of Splitting the waters.

Splitting the waters

Vanessa Bell

Editions de l’Homme

208 pages