Cold Hands, Warm Hearts
Transfer Beach Dippers brave the cold for health benefits.
BY MARINA SACHT It’s a grey November day, and the wind is blowing bitterly cold across the ocean, kicking up a mixed chop. It’s 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday, but assembled at the beach are over a dozen people. The water temperature today at Transfer Beach reads eight degrees. They drop their coats and walk into the ocean. The screams of terror and squeals you’d expect don’t materialize. Instead, there’s the sound of laughter, relaxed conversation between friends. The swimmers are part of the Transfer Beach Dippers: individuals who have found benefit in cold water immersion. From health benefits to comradeship, there are many reasons that cold-water dipping has been embraced by the community. There’s 275 members on the
TBD Facebook group, with many others practicing privately. Maryse Morgan started two months ago. “I really wanted to show myself that I can do hard things. And so that’s what I tell myself the whole time I’m driving down here in my car. Yeah, I can do it. I can do it.” She laughs. The reward afterwards? “Invigorated. Alive. Accomplished. I feel great.” Leesa Poffenroth was inspired a few years ago by Wim Hof, a motivational speaker and extreme athlete known for withstanding low temperatures. “Some of my coldest dips have been around Squamish in the mountains with the icy runoff, and yeah, it’s fresh,” she says. But after a time, you become acclimatized. “It is so good physiologically, mentally, emotionally.”
Photo: Bob Burgess
Science backs her up with evidence that exposure to cold speeds up metabolism, reduces inflammation, swelling, and sore muscles. Other benefits experienced by dippers include improved quality of sleep, focus, and immune response (www.wimhofmethod.com/). When Susan Woodhouse’s family said she wouldn’t last a month, she proved them wrong. It’s been over a year. “I come for health benefits and it makes me feel good. Although the other day I was saying to somebody, is it the health or is it just sort of the self-satisfaction of meeting a challenge?” Shannon Patrick started because a loved one was having severe depression and she’d heard that dipping helped improve mental health. “So, we started coming down here, and then I ran into
