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HYDROTHERAPY. Overcoming a life changing illness through wild swimming

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In the freezing lakes of Snowdonia, one swimmer found a way to outswim chronic pain.

Released in mid-2020 by the Bristol-based production studio Friction Collective, the short documentary Hydrotherapy follows Welsh swimmer Laura Owen Sanderson through the depths of a North Wales winter. Diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic musculoskeletal condition that causes severe, widespread pain from even light movement or touch, Sanderson turned her doctor’s advice for cold showers into something far more extreme: year-round wild swims in the lakes, rivers, and tarns of Snowdonia National Park.

• Sanderson manages her fibromyalgia symptoms through cold-water wild swimming across North Wales rather than the daily cold showers her doctor originally recommended.
• Hydrotherapy was directed by Fin and Jack Davies, produced by Lewis Smith, and shot by Josh Williams and Jack Davies, capturing Snowdonia’s bleak winter scenery alongside Sanderson’s transformation.
• Sanderson calls the practice “almost like rewilding yourself,” and her diagnosis pushed her into campaigning to protect UK wild waters.

A Diagnosis That Rewired Her Priorities

Fibromyalgia doesn’t announce itself with a single dramatic symptom — it’s a slow accumulation of pain that turns ordinary movement into an ordeal. For Sanderson, the diagnosis became a pivot point rather than a sentence. She realized she’d been living on delay, banking experiences for some future retirement that suddenly felt far less guaranteed.

“I wasn’t afraid of dying, I was more afraid that I hadn’t lived, that I hadn’t made the most of every opportunity.”

That line, delivered in the film, frames everything that follows. Rather than waiting out her condition, Sanderson decided to meet it head-on in the coldest water she could find.

From Cold Showers to Snowdonia’s Lakes

The initial medical advice was simple enough: daily cold showers to help numb the widespread pain that fibromyalgia produces. Sanderson found the routine at home unappealing, so she swapped the bathroom for the outdoors, immersing herself in open water throughout the seasons — including the depths of winter, when the tarns of Snowdonia sit at their most punishing.

The cold acted as more than a numbing agent. Sanderson describes the discomfort of each swim as something she had to work through mentally as much as physically, a process not unlike the way people train their brains to tolerate hard things rather than avoid them. Over repeated exposures, the swims became less about enduring pain and more about resetting her relationship with her own body.

The Making of the Film

Friction Collective’s crew — directors Fin and Jack Davies, producer Lewis Smith, and cinematographers Josh Williams and Jack Davies — built the documentary around the stark, moody landscape of Snowdonia in winter. The visuals lean into the bleakness rather than around it: grey water, bare rock, and Sanderson moving through it all with a steadiness that contrasts against the conditions.

The film doesn’t dress up fibromyalgia as something conquered outright. It presents cold-water immersion as a tool Sanderson uses deliberately and repeatedly, one that also carries the kind of mood-lifting effect that has drawn plenty of swimmers to cold water for reasons beyond pain relief, similar to the release some people describe when working through depression and anxiety through physical shock and adrenaline.

Rewilding Herself

Sanderson’s own phrase for the experience — “almost like rewilding yourself” — captures the shift the film is really tracking. It’s not just a pain-management routine; it’s a renewed, physical relationship with the specific rivers, lakes, and tarns she returns to across North Wales. That connection is what pushed her past personal practice and into advocacy, campaigning to protect the UK’s wild waters from the kind of neglect and pollution that would put swims like hers at risk.

Sanderson’s swims are tied to specific places in Snowdonia she returns to across the calendar, not a generic wellness routine — which is exactly why her push to protect those wild waters carries weight beyond her own story.