Ice dipping in Plötzensee

On Christmas Eve morning, I joined a friend for my first ice-dipping experience in Plötzensee. I decided to combine it with my morning run so that by the time I arrived, my body was nice and warm.

There’s been a huge hype around cold showers and ice bathing in recent years due to their potential health benefits and I’ve wanted to try them for a while. I’ve swam in cold lakes on mountaintops in the summer but never in a frozen lake. Here was my experience:

First and foremost, we had to break the ice on the surface of the lake. According to my friend, ice bathing is so popular here in Berlin that usually, someone else would’ve broken it for us already. But since it was a Christmas morning, we were the first ones there.

Since it was my first time, my goal was to simply take a quick dip for about 30 seconds. I had a few goes until I managed to lower my body up to my shoulders and counted (really quickly) up to 20 seconds. It was a really interesting experience overall. My feet and hands were in pain but the rest of my body felt relatively ok underwater. I noticed my body muscles contracting, my insides slowing down and my breathing becoming more difficult.

Once I was out of the water, I noticed that I had to focus on my breathing more as I was still shivering and gasping for air. (It also took me a while to warm up even on my run back home and I had to wear my down jacket while running.)

My friend M who came with me today had been doing this for five years. While I was shivering outside, she attached herself to a bar with a string and started swimming on the spot, her body fully submerged under the frozen surface. For 10 minutes. It was fascinating to watch her as other people also came by to bathe in the icy water. A lot of them seem to come here on a daily basis.

The whole experience made me more present in my body and made me curious to discover more of the new sensation I felt in my body while I was underwater. Definitely an experience worth writing on the blog to remember.