The wellbeing benefits of sea swimming. Is it time to revisit the sea cure?

ABSTRACT

Sea and open water swimming is rapidly growing in popularity and many participants are extolling the benefits to their mental and physical health. Despite the wealth of anecdotal reports, little empirical research has been undertaken exploring the impact of this activity. To gain access and understanding of the embodied, emplaced and temporal experience of swimming I developed a novel mobile method. I carried out ‘swim-along’ interviews, and follow up land-based interviews, with six regular sea swimmers. Using a lifeworld phenomenological analysis based on the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, I identified three significant dimensions that reflected the experience for the swimmers interviewed. They found sea swimming transformative, causing changes in mind, body and identity; connecting, enabling a sense of belonging to nature, place and others; and finally re-orientating, through the disruption to the sense of time, space and body swimmers can find alternative and expanded perspectives about themselves and their world. All these effects positively impact on wellbeing and indicate that sea swimming offers benefits that go far beyond just a way of improving fitness.

KEYWORDS:

• Sea swimming
• open-water swimming
• phenomenology
• Merleau-Ponty
• mobile methods

Acknowledgments

This paper was completed as part of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for a Masters in Clinical Research with Brighton University which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research and Health Education England. Attendance on the course was made possible by the support of colleagues at Sussex Partnership Trust and in particular Andrea Cohen, Consultant Clinical Psychologist. I would also like to thank Dr Clara Strauss, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Sussex Partnership Trust; Professor Jorg Huber, Professor of Health Sciences at University of Brighton; and Dr Charlie Dannreuther, Lecturer at University of Leeds, for their contributions in shaping the ideas for this project. Finally, I would like to thank all the pilot interviewees and participants for giving up their time and sharing their experiences so openly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research;

Notes on contributors

Hannah Denton

Hannah Denton is a counselling psychologist working in adult mental health in Sussex Partnership Trust. The research described in this paper was undertaken as part of a Masters in Research, completed at the University of Brighton and funded by the National Institute of Health Research. Research interests include open water swimming, activity and community based intervention and their impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Kay Aranda

Kay Aranda is Reader in Community Health in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton. Research interests include health inequalities, community resilience, feminism and women’s health (gender and sexuality). As a recent co-applicant for an ESRC seminar series, she has explored and continues to research the value of materialist feminisms and socio-material and practice theories in relation to health, wellbeing and care.