This Year's Misogi Challenge

This article is about the Misogi challenge, or more specifically, what I did for my Misogi challenge this year.

(And I guess all I really want this article to say is that I swam a 10K Marathon. There, now you have it.)

Some of you know that for almost ten years now, I’ve grounded myself with a weekly habit: swimming 2k at least once a week. Rain or shine, I’ll find a pool and start counting the laps. A moving meditation, more so than jogging, since swimming doesn’t allow for podcasts and similar distractions.

Somewhere along the way I came across the idea of the Misogi Challenge: Once a year, you take on something so difficult and intimidating that it’s basically 50-50 whether you succeed or fail. And since my swimming habit is about to hit its first decade mark, I decided that it would be quite adequate for my first Misogi to be my first midlife crisis marathon.

I know, the Misogi challenge also sounds a little like a new-age wellness fad, but that’s the way it always goes.

If you also get your cultural references from Columbo episodes, then it won’t be a surprise that jogging in the 1970s was mostly dismissed as something for eccentrics.

And now, jogging is such an ordinary activity. Even my mom does it on Saturdays. In the same vein, in the 2010s, meditation was treated with the same suspicion, and now it’s a billion-dollar industry backed by clinical studies. Sounds like Misogi could be next in line, you heard it here first (or second, or what do I know, maybe you’ve known it all along).

In Shinto, purification is the starting point of almost every ritual. One of the most well-known methods is Misogi, which traditionally involves standing under a waterfall, bathing in a river, or using some other form of water immersion to wash away impurities—spiritual, or otherwise.

And of course, quite like mindfulness meditation, Misogi too has been reimagined to fit modern Western lifestyles. What began as a spiritual practice is now framed as a test of resilience, and even a form of self-discovery. The more modern version of the Misogi Challenge looks like this: Once a year, do something so difficult for one day that it reshapes the rest of your year.