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A.J.Haywood

Masochism or fun? Ksenia, 23, jumps into ice pool with hooks pierced into her skin

By Olga Gertcyk

16 February 2016

For several minutes she is suspended from a Novokuznetsk bridge before falling 15 metres (49 feet) and taking the plunge.

'With hooks at the back and in the cold it was difficult, but Ksenia did not give up.' Picture: Konstantin Pachkov

The extreme sport is called Suspension BASE Jumping and it involves piercing the skin to implant hooks to which the ropes are attached. The video shows Ksenia Smirnova jump into the Tom River from the Ilyinsky Bridge, wearing only shorts and a bikini top in a temperature of minus 11C

She emerged from her chilly soaking seemingly none the worse for the experience. Organiser Andrey Efremov revealed Ksenia had to make the jump twice because the first time she missed the hole that had been cut in the 60 centimetre thick ice.

'With hooks at the back and in the cold it was difficult, but Ksenia did not give up,' he said.

Ksenia said she first did such a jump 18 months ago, adding without further explanation: 'I decided then that I would not do this just for my own pleasure, but for the realisation of an interesting idea.'

Suspension jumping in Novokuznetsk

'I decided then that I would not do this just for my own pleasure, but for the realisation of an interesting idea.' Pictures: Konstantin Pachkov

This maybe true but most observers could see no pleased in her leap into the murky Tom. Indeed they expressed anger.

'Crazy and masochistic,' was one comment. Dmitry added: 'It's just stupid. You can't buy life and health. People die of smaller wounds and here...

'Is life so boring that people do such stupid things? If you're bored, get a bank loan and try not to pay it off. You'll have enough adrenaline.'

Ksenia is a member of a group called Zemlya Pryzhkov or Land of Jumps.

BASE is an acronym for - Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth (for example a cliff) - from which extreme jumps can be made.

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To know more about this strange and bloody thing and why people are doing this read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/the-therapeutic-experience-of-being-suspended-by-your-skin/262644/

Some points from this article:

People from all over the world have been hanging themselves from hooks for perhaps 5,000 years, most often as a sort of religious or shamanistic penance.

Devotees at the ancient Hindu festival Thaipusam, suspend themselves as part of a practice called vel kavadi, a rite in which worshippers undergo some form of hardship as an expression of debt bondage to the war god Murugan.

In North America, the Mandan tribe's young warriors had to prove their strength in an annual rite of passage, called the Okipa ceremony, during which they were suspended from the roof of the tribe's lodge by ropes attached to skewers in their chest, back or shoulders.

Recently people has reinvigorated the Okipa ceremony.
This has been largely shaped by a man with the name of Fakir Musafar, who was born on an Indian reservation in the US. For him, suspension is a way to move beyond the body into a higher spiritual plane.
Though others distance themselves from the spiritual, and instead choose to hang for the sake of hanging.

The feeling of shock is what many who suspend are looking for -- the rush of endorphins, serotonin, and other chemicals that results in a sort of high. Some see it as a spiritual experience. Others find it exhilarating, and laugh while they are suspended. A subset of those who practice suspension do it as a type of performance art, choreographing lurid and shocking spectacles that are performed in front of audiences.

This article reports of an Australian man who became an acclaimed international performance artist thanks to his suspension art: http://adm.monash.edu/records-archives/archives/memo-archive/2004-2007/stories/20050803/stelarc.html

Henri Roquas, Netherlands

17/02/2016 06:46

Why?? An insidious unpleasant feeling can only be felt from looking at this...it isn't fun it is surreal...humans and animals have taken puncture wounds with no choice only than to protect, survive etc...so why!!

Carmen, Ireland

17/02/2016 05:03