Cold Showers

Transcript

Seems something kind of odd, maybe doesn’t seem spiritual or something like that.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like cold showers is some kind of path to happiness.

But there’s something interesting. Of course it’s kind of a fad these days, especially with Wim Hoff the ice man this fascinating man who developed these amazing breathing techniques to help him be more in contact with his body.

Apparently learned how to activate his immune system at a laboratory setting and was able to remove E. Coli from his body. Crazy stuff that Wim Hoff can do and a lot of the time it starts with cold showers.

I remember one time I was staying in England. I was staying in Leeds with my friend and what happened? The water heater broke so for a week or more we were without hot water.

It was winter, it gets pretty cold in Leeds. Later it got cold enough to snow.

So the guys were heating up water on the stove and taking the kettle and pouring it into the tub to sponge bathe themselves.

I thought “Well I clearly have an advantage in this situation” and I just walked right into the bathroom and took a cold shower even though it was 10 degrees c outside, maybe lower.

Eventually I managed to convince my friend Dan who I was staying with to take a cold shower as well.

And he thought “That’s really cool actually because when you take a warm or hot shower and you step outside of the shower you feel cold. But when you take a cold shower and step out you feel warm. It’s interesting.”

I’d like to say that taking cold showers is this mini super power. When it gets cold they aren’t used to the cold. They start shivering and they need blankets and to sit by the heater and all this stuff.

And I’m standing there in a t shirt like “What’s the big deal?”

Here’s the crazy thing too. If you take cold showers for awhile, once you get used to it you actually crave it.

I would walk around Leeds and be like “Hey now, I’m wearing a jacket and I want to take this off and feel the cold”.

And Dan looks at me and says “Well see how cold you feel in 5 minutes.”

After 5-20 minutes I was still good. I am not trying to brag because it is something quite simple.

The difficult thing about it is the thought. It’s not that taking a cold shower is that difficult, it’s not. There’s nothing inherently difficult about it.

Just as Shakespeare wrote “There’s nothing good or bad except that thinking makes it so.”

So when you’re getting prepared to take a cold shower, you step back and take a breath. Maybe even do those Wim Hoff exercises like I did the first time but then when you get into the cold shower, there’s no problem, once you get past that thought.

It is the thought that causes us discomfort, the fact that we resist. I always remember there’s that scene in the first season of the OA, as a young child maybe 9 years old and his father who is a mob boss says “I’m going to show you how to not be afraid of the cold”.

And he takes her out and digs a hole into the ice and tells her to go in. And she does, she goes into the hole and the father says to her “What’s the only way you can deal with cold? What’s the only way you can not feel pain in the cold?”

And she responded “To be colder than it is” and some people have this conception that say if you’re trying to keep warm when it is very cold that you’re supposed to imagine you’re hanging out by a fire or something like that.

Generally I find that is not the right way to go because that is actually driving you in the opposite direction. You’re actually resisting more reality, you’re trying to create a fantasy that avoids what you’re going through.

If you do the other thing and you say I’m not going to resist, I’m going to feel the cold and be colder than it is, actually you start to feel pretty comfortable.

You start to enjoy these adverse experiences you’re going through which is really interesting.

And so it’s what we learn, it is this big lesson when we take a cold shower if we can set aside our prejudices or preconceptions of what a situation might be. Then we might really enjoy it.

That’s why I like taking cold showers. Not always the easiest thing to do but maybe try it. You might like it.

Thanks so much for listening and I’ll talk to you soon.