You will say every bad word you’ve ever heard. Then you’ll start compounding them. A bespoke vocabulary of fury. You will believe you are literally freezing to death, and you won’t even notice that you just misused “literally.” Thoughts will splinter from your brain like shards of ice. And you will pay for the privilege. I know all this because I did it—nearly 4,900 feet above sea level, cocooned in the snowy ravines of the Swiss Alps at a brand-new spa in a brand-new resort, opened by the Six Senses in the village of Crans-Montana, where, among many other health-and-wellness extravagances, there is a cold pool chilled to 10 degrees (Celsius. It sounds more appropriately painful than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is also accurate.)
Submerge your body for two minutes, I was told. This pool will energize you, they said. It will reduce inflammation and kick-start a lagging circulatory system; it can treat hypertension, injury, and all kinds of ailments, they tell you. This pool will make you live longer!
