I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of cold showers.
When I discovered what it can do to your body and mind, I started trying it in 2020 — just after some pandemic broke out.
I had heard of the name Wim Hof before, but never before had I felt the need to stand under an ice-cold shower. It could be life-changing. He explained it so clearly in some podcasts I listened to that it had to work.
But there are some things that I didn’t expect.
Don’t put your head in
Biggest mistake.
Don’t put your head in the cold shower when you’ve never done it. You’ll regret it. It will cause a brain freeze as you’ve never experienced before, so if you would consider it a life-changing experience, it is.
Once you’re getting more experienced, you’ll get used to the cold. Even around your head.
It causes you a headache afterward.
The whole remainder of the evening it hurt and I couldn’t properly think. Keep this in mind when you’re doing it.
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You’re going to feel high naturally
Your body isn’t used to cold temperatures.
So when you suddenly release an awful lot of cold water on your body, your body jerks. It has to get used to it and so it goes to work. Also, your body needs an awful lot of oxygen to get this done.
So you may start to feel tingling and tremors throughout your body. This is the natural high that cold showering can cause. At this point, your body thinks it is in danger and injects a shot of adrenaline.
Your body resets, so to speak.
This can feel pretty scary if you’ve never experienced this before so just sit back and recover from the shock.
You’re getting used to it pretty quickly
Something that surprised me was that my body gets used to the cold pretty quickly.
I expected to spend weeks training my body to become resistant to the cold water, but nothing turned out to be further from the truth. Within a week your body can be adjusted and you do it without any effort.
Sure, it’s still discomforting. But that moment doesn’t last as long as it did in the beginning.
To achieve that natural high, you might have to jump into a cold lake or take an ice bath because this also becomes increasingly difficult as your body starts to experience the cold as normal.
Breathing exercises, on the other hand, always work.
You have to keep breathing
Breathing is incredibly important.
This is not just letting air flow through your lungs, you have to consciously see yourself breathing. In this way, you control your body much better.
During the moments when your body experiences cold, it tries to adapt to the environment. This takes energy and through your conscious breathing, this is not at the expense of yourself.
Keep yourself calm by breathing in deeply and breathing out calmly. Try not to hyperventilate because then it takes so much more effort for your body to get used to the cold temperatures and you tend to quit much sooner.
Final thoughts & takeaways
Cold showering is an incredibly good technique for training your body against cold conditions. Your body improves your cardiovascular system.
Your immune system will also improve and you will notice that you feel fitter the more you do this every day. Going through the cold will make you stronger and more powerful.
Feel your inner strength growing. This is often accompanied by a few good cries that you utter. Let yourself go, look at yourself in the mirror and find yourself a wonderful person.
It’s a huge boost to your confidence.