This is our 3rd year of New Years Misogi with the folks at Island Aikido.  The first year, there were lots of tears.  We had no idea what we were getting into.  The boys wanted to do it, so we prepped as well as we knew how.  Since then, we have learned a few things…wear shoes into the water (otherwise the sand feels like stinging needles into your feet), bring towels for immediately after and blankets and a change of clothes for in the car and have something warm ready to drink.  

The idea of the misogi is to conquer a fear and do something really hard so that later in the year when you are confronted with a problem, you can say “hey, I walked into freezing cold water on day one of this year, how bad can this be?”