Welcome back to 🌿🌙 THE EARTHY WRITER: My Rewilding Year’ 🐝✨

This is episode four in which I’ll share with you some surprising lessons I have learnt after wild swimming for 21 days. 

In this rewilding-episode you’ll learn:

  • How to pay closer attention to your body’s needs and embrace your feminine nature
  • Why the “Wim Hof method” might not be right for you
  • The reason behind why it feels so good to swim and float
  • About the health benefits of wild swimming
  • Ten small but powerful ways how you can harness the healing power of water even if you don’t live by the ocean

About your host:

All Episode Links:

“Be Water” Bruce Lee Quote

Youtuber Jonna Jinton

The Wim Hof Method

“Cold Womb” in Traditional Chinese Medicine and why people who menstruate might be better off avoiding the cold during certain times.

Books (Affiliate Links):

Blue Mind

Why We Swim

Find more “Rewilding Books” in my library.

My favourite charity list: 

• IFAW 

• Seed Balls Kenya 

• African Parks Network 

• Atmosfair 

• Sheldrick Wildlife Trust 

• Jane Goodall Institute 

Sea Shepherd 

FYI: The YouTube videos are currently unlisted. That means only people with the link can find it. You can watch new episodes here on my website, share the link with others or open it in the YouTube app.

Listen on Spotify instead!

Episode Transcript 🇬🇧:

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

– By Bruce Lee

Introduction: My Wild Swimming Challenge.

Happy full moon, everyoneand thank you again for choosing to spend some time with me today. It’s a full moon episode and that means today I’ll be sharing with you everything I have learned while I was wild swimming for the last 21 days and I have a few surprises… I don’t know if they will be surprises for you, but there were surprises for me, and there were definitely some things that I didn’t expect will happen.

So before we go deeper into my learnings, let me tell you about the structure of today’s episode:

We’re going to divided into four different parts and

  1. the first part will be a quick introduction into wild swimming and why I chose to do this for my second rewilding challenge.
  2. The second part will be talking about the significance of water the spiritual meaning of water for us humans
  3. The third part we’ll talk about what I have learned from those 21 days of wild swimming that I’ve just completed.
  4. And then the fourth part will be 10 small but very powerful ways in which you can harness the healing power of water yourself even if you do not live by the ocean.

So, what I’m intending to do with this episode is to give you as much knowledge as I possibly can and as much tangible things that you can take away from this. Because I do think I do think water is so so important. And I do think yes, something has really shifted for me over the last 21 days, in quite a beautiful way.

Why I chose wild swimming as my second rewilding challenge:

So let’s start first off with the reason why I chose wild swimming as a challenge and it’s this reason already that had quite a profound effect on me because the reason I wanted to do wild swimming… so I sat down before I started my rewilding year… I sat down and I made an Excel sheet and I wrote down all the ideas for monthly challenges I’d like to do and wild swimming instantly came to mind. Because yes, it is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s also, it comes from… it definitely comes from what I’ve seen on social media and it all relates to Wim Hof. Wim Hof is the man when it comes to ice bathing and these challenges when it comes to water and breathing techniques. So when I set out to do this challenge, and you if you watched the last New Moon episode, you will remember that I also said it was going to be about me “suffering in ice cold water” and attempting a Wim Hof challenge, almost.

And the funny thing is that that did not happen. Not really. I did have a couple of cold days but the climate just didn’t play along. So basically for the last 21 days, the weather was pretty much perfect. I am new to the area, I haven’t lived here for that long, but I obviously checked the weather apps and I knew from the last two years that now’s when summer ends and it gets towards autumn. I thought this would be a great time to do this so that I don’t have to sunny days every day, But it ended up being like that, that every day for the last 21 days was pretty much sunny. I had a couple of windy days and the water here is still very, very cold. That’s just how it naturally is because we’re so close to the Antarctic. But yeah, it didn’t end up being what I set out, or what I wanted it to be.

Why the Wim Hof Method might not be for everyone.

The other interesting thing is that while I was doing this challenge, I also did a lot of reading. Books and a lot of blog posts. I did some research on wild swimming, ice bathing, and what I learned was that especially for women there hasn’t been much research done with regards to ice bathing and what effect that cold water can have on women. Because our bodies work a lot differently to men and while there’s a lot of women who swear by ice bathing, for example I follow Jonna Hinton she’s a very famous YouTuber from Sweden, and she has this really inspiring videos where she cuts a hole into the ice of the lake where she lives and then she will go in to swim, to do ice bathing.

But ultimately, what I had to be really honest about when it came to this challenge was that that is actually not me that is actually not what what I enjoy and what my body enjoys. And I really do not enjoy the cold. I’ve never liked winter. I like being warm and especially towards the second part of my cycle, I tend to get really cold. I always get really cold hands and I always need to wear really big socks because my feet get so cold, and I’m really conscious of eating a lot of hot warm foods, lots of soups, and I drink lots of teas. That’s just who I am.

So when I started the challenge that was the second half of my menstrual cycle and I I really struggled with the cold and I realised that that is just not me. And if you remember from the first episode that I ever recorded, I also told you that I am not going to do these challenges if I do not feel like it’s the right thing to do. So to tell you the honest truth: I didn’t go swimming every day for the last 21 days. Because it’s simply not what my body felt was right for it and I just wanted to honour that.

Honouring our soft, feminine side

And the reason why it was so significant, this challenge I mean, was because I realised that about myself and that had such a cascading effect: I realised that it doesn’t serve me as a woman to do things the way the media tells me to do them, and also the way men tell me to do them. I discovered for myself that it’s very important for me to honour my feminine side and to really listen to what my body needs and to who I am. Even if other women are fine with doing certain things that doesn’t mean that I am because we are all so, so very, very different.

So, it wasn’t like I was doing a lot of soul searching over the last 21 days but it was more like I was really listening in I was paying attention to what else is coming up for me. What else am I doing that is that I’m just doing because other people are doing it or what else am I doing that doesn’t serve my gentle feminine soft side that resulted in me immediately deleting my Instagram app. Because the Yeah, that fast paced and that endless scrolling and the dopamine addiction that comes with with social media and with Instagram in particular. I think you know if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I struggle with that. And that is something that came up with me for me big time and I think for the next new moon episode, I’m going to do a whole episode about that and how I’m planning on restructuring my writing business going forward. Um, so yes, so that was a big one that came up for me. I’m realising now that I’m already diving into my learnings quite a lot and then veering from the structure. But I think that’s also okay. So yeah, I’ll tell you a bit more about the other things I’ve learned in the moment. But for now, let’s talk about the significance of water. And I’ll also show you a couple of images of my wild swimming adventures of the last couple of days.

The Significance Of Water

So, I’m about to talk about the significance of water and a lot of the things I’m going to say will sound very obvious to you. We all know that we need water to survive and that we should drink our eight glasses of water every day. We need water to prepare food, to cook our foods, to wash ourselves. So there’s… there is a need to survive. We need water, and not just us but all living beings need water. And it’s because of this necessity, because of this need for water which is so deeply rooted in our evolution that we naturally have a very very strong reaction and a strong pull towards water. We feel naturally safer when we are close to a body of water, especially freshwater, because we can drink it right?

Water symbolises safety, it symbolises an abundance of food. So, naturally when you look at a body of water, you feel safer and that is the reason behind that. The other thing that we might take for granted is that our body, our human body consists of 60% of water. What that means is, and let me really spell that out for you, is that we are essentially bodies of water. And when we immerse ourselves into another body of water, it literally feels like coming home. We are one body of water meeting another body of water and that is why, in my opinion, it feels so damn good to swim, to float, to become weightless. Because we are literally becoming one with Earth.

And I said during my new moon episode, I think we cannot embark on the journey of rewilding without taking water into account. That is because yes, the surface is 70% water but also because of this connection that we ourselves a body of water, and I think especially this sensation of floating is something that is deeply embedded in our nature because the first thing we experience when we come into this world is being in our mother’s womb. We’re literally floating for nine months.

My wild swimming lessons

So, what else have I learned during the last 21 days of my wild swimming challenge?

First off: I do not like calling these challenges, and that is something that I was aware of before I started this rewilding year: I don’t actually like the word “challenge” because, coming back to what I said earlier, “challenge” to me is a very, very male sort of word. It’s telling me that I need to push through something, that I might even have to push past my own boundaries and push out of my comfort zone, up to the point where I’m not honouring who I am as me, but also as a woman. So, while I will probably keep calling these challenges “challenges” just out of habit because it’s the easiest word to explain what I’m doing, I do want to be more mindful in my day to day, to pay very special attention to where I can soften. Where can be more gentle with myself? Where do I need to honour my space, my peace, my calm?

So, that was a huge learning for me. And I feel a deep sense of relief that I’ve finally discovered that, and it just brought home so much why I want to do this rewilding year. So, already in the second month I feel like I have learned a very big lesson.

The other thing I’ve learned is that doing this podcast was a very good idea because I never would have… I never would have done it otherwise. And I never would have gotten to the stage where I actually learned something valuable because I tend to be lazy and I tend to not make the effort, to always pay attention to that personal growth. And I I enjoyed the challenge. I enjoyed jumping into that cold water, it feels so good afterwards, once you come out, you feel so proud of yourself, you feel that sense of achievement. You have been immersing yourself in another body of water and that just felt incredible. And it’s something that I definitely want to keep doing because to do something first thing in the morning that is benefiting you, that has no other purpose other than improving your life and making yourself feel better. And that doesn’t have to be wild swimming. I know many of you do not live by the ocean or a big body of water where you can go for a swim, but to do anything like that to get up half an hour earlier, to read a book to do some yoga to meditate to go for a walk to make yourself a nice cup of tea and just literally sit with yourself. No cell phone, no nothing. Just you taking your time to improve your life and better your life.

And I know you know this, we all do. But so often we do not take this time, and I’m a person who likes to announce things and I probably announce them too early. It’s been quite a learning curve for me to not expect excitement in return whenever I announce something because I announce a lot, not just to you but also to my family and to my friends and to my husband. So I announce things and I am the only person who is excited about it because I’m the only person who knows what’s going on in my own head. But I do think, and this is another lesson, I do think there’s value in looking for an accountability partner, in looking for someone who helps you keep on track. And in my case, that’s all of you. And that’s why I’m doing this podcast. So, it was a nice confirmation that this is a good idea.

Another thing I’ve learned which translates to so many areas of my life is that for the first few times when I when I did when I did go out swimming, I would hesitate for a very long time. I was so afraid of that cold water that I took forever to get into the water and at some point that almost got annoying, right? But I got a lot better, and again that is because you you are watching me and you’re holding me accountable. Otherwise I might not have gone.

But I knew: eventually I’m going anyway. So, I might as well go now.

Because the suffering and the fear of the water is so much worse. Like, as soon as you jump in, you’re okay. As soon as you jump in, you’re fine. And then you just do a couple of strokes and very soon it just feels amazing. And you have this window of time of like 10,15 minutes when your body warms up and you just immerse in the water and it just feels absolutely fantastic. And what I what I managed to do towards the end of the challenge was that I just jumped in and it was great and I just enjoyed it and I managed to translate that to other areas of my life. Especially writing.

Beating Procrastination with wild swimming

Whenever I write, I tend to procrastinate a lot. I clean the house. I take a shower. I go for a walk. I… you know… I go on Instagram, I answer emails or do anything, as long as I don’t have to write. Because there’s a deeply rooted fear of not being good enough on the page.

But I know that I’m going to do it eventually. And whenever I start writing, I love it. I do not know what it is about humans that we fear these things so much that are actually good for us. But the wild swimming really helped me, and the cold water really helped me to work on this mindset, to work on this mindset to get over the procrastination quicker and get things done.

And then the last thing I’ve learned, and this one is is obvious, is that the health benefits cannot be underestimated. I am a better person when I’m going for a swim. I am a lot calmer, it is good for my mental health, it is good for my immune system. I feel more inspired, I feel healthier, and the wild swimming also then translates to other choices that I make that are healthier. When you do one thing, it affects other things in your life. It’s like a domino, you know, that starts to move and then all kinds of other things start to move as well. So, I’m just so glad that I did and then it also didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. Because again, coming back to the beginning, the biggest learning I achieved by doing this wild swimming challenge was to reframe my idea of “challenges” and reframe my idea of how I want to live my life and what I actually need to thrive as a woman, and as an introvert, and as a highly sensitive person.

But again, that is something I’ll do a whole episode on because I think there’s a lot to say and I also want to do a little bit more reading and gather my thoughts because that is all still very, very fresh. But now, that was all related to what I learned and that was my own experience. And I really wanted to give you something to take away as well even if you don’t live next to the ocean.

10 ways how you can harness the healing power of water, even if you do not live by the ocean.

What I’m about to give you are 10 ideas, I hope they’re not obvious ideas that you know already. 10 ideas or concepts or little inspirations of how you can be more conscious about water in your everyday life.

  1. Number one is I would invite you to drink water more consciously. Oftentimes when you drink it’s it’s something that happens while we’re doing 10 other things. We never really pay attention to this beautiful thing that’s going down our throat and then it’s literally keeping us alive. So the best thing to do is to start your day with a warm glass of water. You can put some ginger in there or you know some lemon and just really pay attention to that first glass of water because after we’ve been sleeping, we’re completely dehydrated and we need to drink a big glass of water, too. flush out all the toxins from the liver and he had to just rehab it the brain. I like to imagine when I drink that first glass of water in the morning, where’s it actually going? You know and you can really feel you can always turn it into a meditation to really think about where’s this water going? How’s it helping me? How is it supporting my body and setting me up for a great day.
  2. Number two is related to that: you could sit down and do a water meditation. So, you can either sit down next to a body of water, be it the ocean or be in a lake. If you don’t live close to water, you can just listen to a recording of waves or a stream, or even rain, and do a meditation. And what you can experiment with is, remembering that we are ourselves a body of water. Some people are freaked out by it and don’t like it but you can actually start feeling your pulse and picture how your blood, which is essentially 60% water, how that actually flows through your body. It’s something that throws us a lot of people out and at first I was a bit I didn’t I never liked feeling my pulse it was sort of weird. But when you do it a couple of times I do think it helps helps you to reconnect with your own body because of something if you like it or not like in here, this is all blood and water and it’s actually a great thing to to have to have a relationship with what’s going on inside your body.
  3. Number three is relating to my last form episode which was how to manifest with the moon phases. What you could do is during the full moon, you can take a glass of water and put it out under the full moon and leave it out there so it gets charged with the energy of the full moon. And then you can either use that water to water your plants you can drink it yourself or you can perform rituals with it or use it for cooking and it’s again you the water won’t taste any differently. But I think it’s a beautiful way to combine. For me personally it’s just a beautiful way to combine what I’ve learned about the moon and one of my lines about the water.
  4. Number four is sacred cleaning. So whenever you either clean yourself in the shower, you wash your face also when you clean your house which usually requires water, make it consciously really think about the cleansing effect that the water has on you especially if you had a long day. We all like to take a long shower and it makes us feel better really imagine that water running down your body but also when you clean your house. I find that that makes the chore of cleaning your house. Actually a beautiful one you making an effort to let fresh clean energy into your house and water sets will assist you.
  5. I think number five is next number five is twofold. So the first half is water gazing. You pretty much you look for a body of water in your in your neighbourhood. You sit down and you just gaze at the water. And then the second half that you could do is you do then water offering for example it could be flowers or it could be you know a piece of wood that means something to you. Anything that is obviously good for the environment and not bad for the environment and you release it into the water with your wishes with your intentions, what you wish for the water, and what you wish for yourself. It’s just another way. Look, it’s all about just making water more conscious in your daily life. And that is I think a beautiful practice to communicate with a body of water.
  6. Number six is if you want to overcome that procrastination that I talked about, you want to work on that: Take a cold shower, start with a normal warm shower but then the last minute maybe even just last 10 seconds to start with you turn your shower cold. It’s a great way obviously to strengthen your immune system and I know you know this already, but it really helps with the mindset of procrastination you do is something that goes against, you know, this, this inner animal that doesn’t want that doesn’t want to be challenged in that way. So by doing that you are teaching yourself resilience.
  7. I think we’re on to number seven now but I’ve lost count. Anyway, another thing you can do is you can get yourself a copper bottle which is great because you’re using a reusable bottle but copper is also said to charge to water positively and some people also believe it slows ageing.
  8. Number eight my personal favourite, get more hugs because when you think about it, you hug someone you hugging another body of water. research has actually shown that women more so than men need to think at least 20 hugs a day we need that that human contact because it can literally lower our anxiety. So whenever you feel anxious, you can also just have yourself research has shown that that helps as well. But yeah, if you can hug another person as much as possible, and get in touch with another body of water.
  9. Number nine: rain therapy. So the next time it rains instead of thinking it’s miserable and not enjoying it. Actually go outside take your umbrella, put on your wellies and you know jump from pattern to pattern and embrace this beautiful rain. Even toss the umbrella and feel that rain on your face. Have a hot shower after so you don’t catch a cold but embrace that and think about all the good that that rain is doing and how it helps the plants grow. Here in Western Australia we have prayed for rain right now. My husband and I we live off rainwater tank and our rainwater tank has run out twice now it’s completely empty of we need to then order water from the town to fill that tank again. So that really it’s so interesting ammonia realising this now how that happened during my my my water well swimming challenge but yeah, we ran out of water. And over the last 21 days I really had….

… My camera just gave up on me. I cannot record more than 30 minutes at a time, so it just stopped. But what I wanted to say was that we ran out of water twice now during this month, my month of rewilding which was focused around water so I didn’t realise something else but that really brought it home because what I’ve been doing for the last year for the last month is really thinking about my water usage. And you know, I’ve been thinking about how many showers I should take and how often I flush the toilet. I’ve been reusing my pastor cooking water to water my plants. So that’s been a huge topic and I’m only realising now how that yeah, how that coincides with my water wild swimming challenge. that is really wild, how that coincides with my water & wild swimming challenge.

Anyway, that does bring me to my idea number 10. And that is to think more about how you can give back to water and give back to the ocean because once we realise that we are a body of water that is connected to all the other bodies of water that are out there. What that means is that when they are polluted and they are harmed by our careless acts, we are harmed as well. So when we work to protect and save the waterways, we’re ultimately saving ourselves.

A couple of ideas: If you would like to get involved and help water and help the oceans, the first thing you want to think about is obviously your own water usage. So what that means is obviously taking shorter showers or the things I’ve just mentioned, but it can also relate to your diet and what you eat. So personally, I don’t eat meat because meat uses up a lot of water like all the cows that you need for the beef, they need a lot of water, so that is something you could consider. If You Dare i would suggest you watch the movie The documentary see spirit see. After that you probably stop eating seafood. Because what fisheries is doing to the oceans really is no joke. And a lot of people don’t know about that. Another thing you could do is something that I have called “Petition Friday”. So every other Friday, when I have a minute I’ll sit down and browse the internet and my favourite NGOs, to look if there’s any new petitions I can sign not just for the oceans, but also for wildlife and nature in general. It just gives me a really good feeling of empowerment that I’m doing something, whatever small bit, but if I can put my signature under something that might help preserve the ocean, why wouldn’t I do that? It doesn’t cost me anything.

Speaking of that, if you do have a little bit of money to spare, and maybe you go for one less cup of coffee, donating to your favourite NGOs is always a good idea and I’ll link a few in the description box down below that I trust and I think a great if you do decide to donate something many people aren’t aware of is that the best way to donate is to do it on a monthly basis. So it’s kind of like a subscription. You don’t just do it once, but you have a certain amount that might be smaller during that month, but because you do it ongoing. It helps these NGOs to plan so a lot of people will only donate once for a special occasion and that makes it a lot harder to plan with that money because they never know what is going to come in.

And then lastly, I wanted to recommend two books that I read for my research for this rewilding challenge and the first one is called Blue mind by Wallace J. Nichols. And that one dives deeper into the science behind our relationship with water and the health benefits when it comes to our physical and mental health and how it can literally change your life once you move closer to a shore like being next to water on a daily basis will literally change your life. And the second book is called forgot now while we swim by Bonnie Tsui, I hope I’m saying that right? That one is a bit of a lighter read but it’s so enjoyable to connect with the idea of this fascination that we humans have with swimming the act of swimming because we are not natural born swimmers. We need to be taught how to swim and the reasons why we do it. Yeah, it’s a great read that I that I would really recommend to you.

And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Like I said earlier I have Instagram currently deleted. Having said that I usually downloaded once a day to check in and see if everything’s going alright, and I’ll probably post posted a teaser of this episode on there. But yeah, if you want to reach out you can I’m trying to get away from social media a bit and I’m gonna tell you all about it in the next noon episode, which we’ll add in two weeks from now but for now if you want to reach out you’re always welcome to send me an email or to leave a comment on my blog as well, which has grown from this episode as well. Thank you so much for listening. I wish you a lovely weekend. And see you back in two weeks from now.