Misogi

A misogi is a challenge you set for yourself, on one day, about once a year. You pick something so hard that you are not sure you can finish it.

A misogi is not a race. Nobody times you, and there is nothing to win.

Here is one real misogi. In 2013, a sports scientist named Marcus Elliott and the basketball player Kyle Korver crossed 25 miles of open sea on paddleboards. Korver had never been on a paddleboard before. The crossing took them nine hours, Outside magazine reported.

Yours can be much smaller than that. What counts is that it is very hard for you.

Misogi is a Japanese word for a religious practice. In the Shinto religion, misogi means washing the whole body to be cleansed of misfortune, wrongdoing and impurity. People may do it before a religious service or on a visit to a shrine, says the Encyclopedia of Shinto, published by Kokugakuin University in Japan.

The modern challenge is a different thing, and the rest of this page is only about the challenge. Marcus Elliott, the sports scientist, shaped it. A professor of religious studies told Outside magazine that the modern challenge is mostly a new invention.

Two writers made the challenge known. Charles Bethea wrote about Elliott and Korver in Outside in 2014. Michael Easter then wrote about Elliott and misogi in his book The Comfort Crisis, published in 2021, and still writes about it.

You choose a misogi by starting from the hardest thing you have already done, and then going well past it. Michael Easter says that what is hard enough is different for every person.

Start from what you have done.

Write down the longest walk, run, swim or ride of your life. Your misogi should be much longer or much harder. For a person who has never walked more than five miles, twenty miles in one day could be a misogi.

Choose something you can stop.

You may not finish, so plan for that. Pick a place where you can stop and get home, and take water and a phone.

Set the day.

Pick a date a few months away and write it down. Once you have a date, you can count the weeks you have to get ready. If the thought of not finishing keeps you from choosing, the page on fear of failure may help.

You train for a misogi by giving it a fixed number of hours every week, for many weeks. What you do in those hours should come from a coach or a training guide you trust, not from this page.

Plan the hours for each week.

Decide the days and the lengths before the week starts. For example: one hour on Tuesday, one hour on Thursday and two hours on Saturday. That is 4 hours a week.

Build up over weeks.

Start with what you can do now, and add a little as the weeks go by. That is why the day needs to be months away, and not days away.

Write down what you did.

After each session, note how long it was. At the end of the week, add the sessions up and compare them with your plan.

A misogi is one hard day. For a few weeks of strict rules, see monk mode. For three months of daily goals, see the winter arc.

Every fact about misogi on this page links to a source below. We read them on October 13, 2026. For Easter’s book we read his own words about it and the publisher’s page, not the book.

1. Bethea, C. (2014). The One-Day-a-Year Fitness Plan. Outside, December 9, 2014.
2. Encyclopedia of Shinto, Kokugakuin University (read October 13, 2026). Misogi.
3. Easter, M. (2021). The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self. Rodale Books, May 11, 2021 (the publisher’s page for the book).
4. Easter, M. (2026). Misogi Guide: Updated. Two Percent with Michael Easter, August 12, 2026.
5. Easter, M. (2023). What’s Your Misogi? Two Percent with Michael Easter, February 16, 2023.