Brain waves: Ann Limb in the deep end

‘I genuinely believed that the waters had transformed me.’

I visit the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, regularly. It’s a special place. The wind is more or less a meteorological constant, whether it blows in from the chilly North Sea or finds landfall from the west, still bearing moisture from the Atlantic. It’s rare for this island to bask in becalmed luminosity or sustained stillness.

But one such occasion occurred recently. I’d woken early to catch the dawn chorus. I walked a short distance to the deserted shoreline opposite the island church of St Mary’s. Divested of coat, towel and phone I stepped into the sea, clad in swimming costume and woolly hat. I’d wanted to do cold-water swimming for years. This was my opportunity. The water and air were icy cold. The dawn sun shone low in the cloudless sky. There was more movement in my own breathing than in the air surrounding my body. I walked unquestioningly and steadfastly into the deep crystal clear water. A single bell tolled out from St. Mary’s Church. It was glorious.

Oblivious to the consequences that were to befall me, I marvelled in the moment, in the magnificence and in the mystery of the ‘one-ness’. Emboldened by my own sense of achievement, I emerged from the water, grabbed my phone and returned to the sea to record this experience in full technicoloured solipsistic twenty-first-century fashion.

The video clips reveal a repetitive loop of the same thoughts spoken into the iPhone: ‘This is so beautiful’, ‘This is amazing’, ‘Where am I?’, ‘How did I get here’?, ‘Where’s my towel?’, ‘Perhaps I didn’t bring a towel’, ‘There’s the church’, ‘How did I get here?’, ‘It’s just so beautiful’, ‘I feel amazing’, ‘I’m not cold’, ‘Where’s my towel?’, ‘There’s the church’, ‘What is happening?’, ‘It’s extraordinary’, ‘I feel transformed’, ‘I don’t know how I got here’, ‘There’s the church’, ‘How did I get here?’, ‘What’s happening to me?’, ‘I feel transformed’, ‘I’m not cold’...

The short clips look and sound like a mystical experience, but there is also a verifiable medical explanation for what happened to me: Transient Global Amnesia (TGA), a characteristic of which is limited repetitive memories returning in a loop. As it happens, my TGA was shortlived. I found my way back to our cottage, changed clothes and lay on the sofa to warm up. My pharmacologically-trained sister immediately diagnosed the TGA. I have since read about several people who have experienced a TGA through cold water swimming.

My experience doesn’t detract from my own sense of untroubled bewilderment at momentarily not knowing where I was or how I’d got there. At no time was I frightened or distressed. I genuinely believed in that moment the waters had transformed me. My heart clings fondly to the mystical while my head tells me there is a medical explanation.

I do not think this is an either/or occurrence – I don’t think things work like that. A friend offered: ‘Hard to define what constitutes ‘mystical’ – perception refreshed giving a greater awareness of life as it is in the moment?’ It was certainly that.

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