Plunging headfirst into the sacred ritual of a sea swim and sauna …
When I moved back to Ireland from Brazil in 2021, and when Covid finally gave us room to breathe, I thought all these people throwing themselves into the sea, or worse, actually sea swimming, were absolute fully-fledged lunatics. The Dry Robes irritated me so much I wrote them into a short story where the narrator was far more cunning, and much less forgiving than me. So the fact that I’m writing this piece not only shows growth but also how ready I am to admit that I was so wrong it’s embarrassing.
I was asked recently: but would you not move back to Brazil? The first thing I thought of was the sea and the sauna (sorry family and friends). It has become such an integral, meaningful and satisfying part of my life that I couldn’t ever give it up.
I have never been religious, have always been actually anti-religion, but have always felt like I could be persuaded into something spiritual. I didn’t want to close the door completely. Growing up in the shadow of the Catholic Church, spirituality often felt like something formal, prescribed and slightly intimidating. Something that required rules before it offered comfort. Something rigid and boxed in that didn’t make room for everyone.
And, now, reflecting on my plunge into the world of sea swims and saunas, I see there is something spiritual about the whole thing. But it feels like the opposite version of the spirituality I grew up around. Firstly, the sheer connection to the land we are lucky to live upon. Shores and shores of sort-of-sandy beaches – but so much sea! A land where we can tog off and go into the sea in all our beautiful bodily shapes without repute. And a land that finally has saunas.
No one asks what you believe. No one asks if you belong. You just arrive, slightly cold and awkward, and sit down beside strangers who quickly become allies.
There’s a thrill to the shock of the cold – a moment when we plunge, scream, laugh, whoop and howl out loud, and not seem ridiculous. I enjoy that. It is childlike and the giddiness reminds me of when I didn’t overthink every single thought. Hand in hand with a friend, screaming ourselves into the waves and hearing the sea scream back. That terse, stretched moment before I dive in and then the soundlessness of the world beneath water – the echoing of whatever I was thinking suddenly lost to the pull of the tide. And, not always but sometimes, when I come up from the water the view I look upon has shifted or is the same yet I appreciate it slightly more.
There’s something funny about the comparison too. Churches were always quiet places where you had to behave. The sea is the opposite. It allows for shouting, laughing, swearing under your breath when the cold hits your chest. It forgives all that immediately.
I enjoy the run back up to the sauna and its spirituality – for me now a sacred space. I’ve learned more from within the small curved walls than I ever have from inside the walls of a church or, heaven forbid, a confession box. It’s a place to share, to give something of yourself and in return to be given something back. And just like pubs or churches, we all have our favourites. Mine, Otto’s in Myrtleville in Cork (@saunatic_myrtleville) with Sara’s in Robert’s Cove a close second (@swede_sauna). Unlike churches, there’s no sense that you’re being watched, measured, or judged for turning up late or not turning up at all.
These new rituals seem to be everywhere now, and are inclusive and welcoming, something church life has never been.
It isn’t just the sauna, the size of it or the distance to the sea, but in how it’s treated as an important vessel. Against my will, I think of the thurible and the horrible incense of a church, but it’s the same approach without the heaviness, the repent, the sin. The way the air is cleared out, cleansing the energy. The way the salts are laid out, the oils, water, electrolytes (often a cure to my hangover). It’s a safe space. A place where honesties are welcome; connections encouraged. I meet the same people every week, many I never see outside of that space, with whom I’ve shared parts of my life with that some of those closest to me don’t know.
In a strange way, it reminds me of confession – a healthier version. No barrier between you and the other person. No hierarchy. No penance afterwards. Just people talking because the heat and the sea loosened something. Maybe that’s what I’ve realised slowly over the past few years: that people still want rituals. Even those of us who insist that we don’t believe in anything still end up needing somewhere to go, something to repeat, some rhythm to mark the week. The difference now is that these rituals feel chosen rather than imposed.
You see it in the way people now gather. The WhatsApp group that pings every Thursday evening about the Friday dip. The same faces turning up in the same order, towels slung over shoulders, shivering with what’s to come. The nods, jokes, small talk that eventually becomes something else. Freeing.
And it’s not just the sea and the sauna. These new rituals seem to be everywhere now, and are inclusive and welcoming, something church life has never been. From meditation apps reminding people to pause for ten minutes and mindfulness classrooms that hold more than a parish meeting to gym routines and classes followed with almost devotional commitment.
None of them call themselves religion, of course. But there is something familiar in the repetition of it all – the sense that people are looking for grounding, community, a moment in the week that feels set apart. The difference is that nobody is telling you what to think while you’re doing it. You are free to be yourself without guilt.
For a short period of time, you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, which is not something I ever felt sitting in a church pew growing up.
I can see it happening in my own life too. Somewhere along the line, I started playing padel and can feel the quiet addiction encroaching. I see what it means to others and what it might one day mean to me: where regular bookings are a must, familiar opponents become friends, and the panic if a week goes by without getting on a court. It’s oddly ritualistic: the messages trying to organise a game, the predictable complaints about the Irish weather, the small thrill of arriving under the lights in the evening knowing you’re about to spend an hour running around a glass box chasing a ball like it actually matters.
Afterwards, there’s always time to talk about the game in forensic detail that nobody outside the court would care about. Who missed what shot, who got lucky, who’s improving? It’s trivial, but also somehow important. I’ve realised that what draws me back isn’t just the sport, it’s the fact that the same small group of people keep turning up.
I started yoga recently as well, which I would once have absolutely mocked. If you’d told me a few years ago that I would willingly lie on a smelly mat in a room trying to focus on my breathing, I would have laughed at you. But it’s quiet and unexpected.
The strange thing about yoga is how quickly it becomes less about flexibility or exercise and more about noticing your own body again. Slowing down long enough to realise where you’re holding tension, your shallow breathing or how rarely you actually stop moving. It asks you to turn inward instead of outward. That’s where it all connects – the same shift, interrupting the constant loudness of daily life.
There’s something else about it that’s difficult to describe without sounding a bit ridiculous. A form of transcendence. Late last year, there was talk of the council taking the saunas away. There were petitions, which I signed. All they’ve done is to foster an environment of community and promote connection. In many ways, they do what institutions once promised, but rarely delivered.
These rituals sneak into our lives without us noticing until we suddenly realise how much they matter.
Isn’t it a healthy alternative to pubs? Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing better than a pint of Guinness afterwards, I’m Irish after all.
During the week, when I’m waiting in traffic on school runs or helping the girls with their homework, or when the dirty dishwasher gives me the eye, I think of what’s waiting for me only a few days away. I might not believe in God, but my Friday evening ritual is almost godly. It’s the closest thing to belief I’ve found. Not in a doctrine or a sermon, but in the certainty that I’ll run into the sea with people who were strangers not that long ago, and afterwards we will sit sweating in a wooden hut, talking about everything and nothing, while the tide continues doing what it has always done. Which, for me, is religion enough. @hollowaywriter2
