Cold and the vigil
What they trained, and why never alone and never at the cost of sleep.
What did the cold bath and the vigil train, as disciplines beside fasting, and what is safe?
What it is
Two harder trainings stand beside the fast: cold water and the night vigil. Monks stood to pray in rivers and in the sea; pilgrims and sadhus bathe at dawn in the Ganges in midwinter; Orthodox Christians plunge through the ice at Epiphany; in Japan the rite of misogi is done under a waterfall. The night vigil is a watch kept awake in prayer through the dark hours. Each faith gives its own reason: a cleansing, a baptism remembered, a feast awaited. None is a test of nerve.
The teaching
As the night vigils of the faiths and their rites of cold water teaches it.
Watch and pray
The vigil is a watch kept awake through part of the night, in prayer or in readiness. Its pattern is the night in Gethsemane, when Jesus asked his friends: 'What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.' The psalmist rises at midnight to give thanks, and wakes before the night watches to meditate on God's word.
To keep vigil is to stay awake for something: a feast that is coming, a grief, a prayer, a person in need. The waking is not the point; what the waking is for is the point.
The night office
The monasteries made the vigil a daily office, sung in the dark before dawn. Benedict sets its hour with care: in winter the monks rise at the eighth hour of the night, so that they sleep a little more than half the night and rise with their food digested. The vigil is set inside the night's rest, not in place of it.
On the eve of the great feasts the night office grows long, and the Easter Vigil, kept in the dark of the night before Easter, is the greatest of the year. A new fire is struck, the Easter candle is lit and carried into the dark church, the long readings tell the story of salvation from the creation onward, and the night ends in the first joy of Easter.
Night watches in Israel and Islam
Jews keep their own night watches. On the night of Shavuot, the feast of the giving of the Torah, many stay awake until dawn studying it, to be ready to receive it again. Some rise at midnight for tikkun chatzot, a short lament for the destroyed Temple and a prayer for its restoring.
In Islam the night prayer, tahajjud, is made after some sleep, in the later part of the night. The Qur'an tells the Prophet to rise and pray by night, half of it, or a little less, or a little more, and praises those who leave their beds to call on their Lord in fear and in hope. In the last ten nights of Ramadan many keep vigil in search of the Night of Power. The night prayer comes after sleep and between sleeps, never in place of it.
Cold water as cleansing
Many faiths go down into cold water as a rite of cleansing. In Shinto, misogi washes away impurity: after preparing with exercises and chanting, the one who is purified stands beneath a waterfall or in the sea or a river, under the guidance of a priest, and calls on the gods. In the Orthodox churches the waters are blessed at the feast of the Theophany, the baptism of Christ, in January; a cross is thrown into the sea or a river and swimmers go in after it, and in the coldest lands believers dip three times through a hole cut in the ice in the shape of a cross. Hindus bathe at dawn as a daily purification, and at the great gathering of the Kumbh Mela pilgrims bathe where the rivers meet, in the cold of winter.
Each faith gives the water its own meaning: washing away impurity, remembering a baptism, renewing a vow, beginning the year clean. None of them teaches the cold as a test of nerve.
What the watch and the cold trained
The ascetics who prayed through the night or stood in cold water spoke of wakefulness and of mastery. The watch kept the mind alert for God, and the cold taught the body that its first protest need not rule. Both were taken up under a rule and an elder, and never as contests. The old commentary on the Hatha Yoga Pradipika even counts the cold bath at dawn, kept as a rigid rule, among the things that hinder yoga. Here as everywhere the elders praised measure above feats, and Benedict timed the night office so that his monks had first slept more than half the night.
The limits of the cold
Cold is the most dangerous of these disciplines, and the house keeps it small. At home it is a cool finish to a warm wash, a few seconds at first, never a plunge. Open water is never entered alone, never in the dark, never after drink, and not at all by anyone with a heart or blood-pressure condition without a doctor's word. The first moments in cold water bring a gasp, and so the face stays above the water and the breath is never held.
Shivering hard, numbness, or skin gone white means come out at once, dry off and warm up slowly.
Keeping an hour's vigil
A vigil, for a reader, is one quiet hour awake, early in the morning or late in the evening, with a candle or a text and no screen: a psalm, a page of a holy book, or plain silence. The night's sleep is kept whole on either side of it.
Sleep is never given up for a practice. A vigil is never kept before driving or work that needs a clear head, and nobody stares at the sun, at dawn or at any other hour.
How it is practised
The house keeps both small. Cold is a cool finish to a warm wash at home, never open water alone, and not at all with a heart or blood-pressure condition without a doctor's word. A night vigil, for a reader, is one quiet hour awake, early or late, with a candle or a text and no screen, and the night's sleep kept whole on either side of it. Sleep is never given up for a practice, and nobody stares at the sun.
Where it comes from
Bede tells how Cuthbert, in the seventh century, prayed through the night standing in the sea. Seneca called himself a cold-water enthusiast who opened each year with a plunge. The vigil is as old: the Gospels have Jesus ask his friends to watch one hour with him, the church kept the night before Easter as the greatest of its vigils, a squire watched his arms the night before he was knighted, and Jews study through the night of Shavuot.
What is known, and what is not
The dangers are the best documented part. Sudden cold water sets off a gasp, fast breathing and a jump in heart rate and blood pressure, and people have drowned within the first minutes; that is why it is never entered alone. About a day without sleep dulls judgement as much as being over the drink-drive limit. A Dutch trial in 2016 found that people who ended their showers cold took fewer sick days, though they were ill as often.
Its words
Ask the Oracle further
What did the ascetics who prayed in cold water say it was for?How can I keep a night vigil as an ascetic practice without giving up sleep?
Before you practise
Never go without water, and do not fast beyond a day without a doctor’s word; not at all if you are pregnant, under eighteen, diabetic, on medicine, underweight or have had an eating disorder. Never give up sleep for a practice, never enter cold water alone, and never stare at the sun. If food or your body has become a fear, please tell a doctor.
Its other branches
Fasting in the religionsWhere the body sets the limitSilenceTraining the willThe whole artSearch the tree
