Hot & Cold for Healing
You are the master of your flesh, not the other way around -- harness powerful healing modalities with discipline
Preamble
I write about healing from debilitating and late stage disease with health boosting modalities here, here, here, here and here. I also coach people through their own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transformations. Let me know if I can help you.
I’m not a doctor. Go see one if you trust them and think they can heal you and then do what they say. Only you have authority over your health and wellness.
In addition to all the modalities and processes described in the above five articles, I am now also doing cold therapy. Frequent infra-red sauna therapy is the flip side of this, which I’ve been doing for many months, to great effect. Both are crucial for full healing.
Cold Shock
Despite that the heavily agenda-driven, censored, and spook-tastic Wikipedia wants you to think cold exposure is a death sentence and holds no value, research says otherwise.
In addition, there are people who have survived what “should have” killed them, according to what, more and more, seems like erroneous “science” of the past.
Wim Hof, a famous cold-exposure master, coaches people through immersing in sub-freezing temps, hiking in the snow barefoot and practically naked, and cold-water immersion and has documented the physiological benefits of such. Doctors were absolutely flummoxed by Wim Hof’s ability to transmute toxic injections in moments, while submersed in freezing water.
There are plenty of documented “survival” stories of people who spent 80 minutes to 4 hours submerged in water that disbelievers would have assumed would be a death sentence. Anna Bågenholm spent 80 minutes in death-defying cold, trapped under the ice, before being rescued. Her heart stopped and her brain went into deep near-death states. She survived and had no long term damage.
Perhaps the reason some are able to survive is not a “miracle” or a state of being “special” or “super human”, as many have claimed about both Wim Hof and Anna Bågenholm, but more so that these people are able to control their mental, physical, and emotional responses.
This level of control becomes even more likely in any given human, given practice of such states of being. To be sure, reading Wikipedia or Snopes’ ideas of what submerging in ice water will do to you is not the way to prepare for such very human, easily possible, and healthy responses.
The Cold Science
Despite the haters and the traditionalist materialists who are so slow as to be nearly pointless in today’s toxin-ridden world, there are nothing but sloughs of studies highlighting the benefits of Cold Therapy, including many outlined on Wim Hof’s site.
Most of the current and recent studies are focusing on cancer treatment, meaning that, despite positive findings, benefactors in the pharmaceutical industry encourage garbling and skewing of language in order to indicate there may be a correlation to the cold-shock proteins we create when exposed to cold and the development of disease. Don’t fall into the trap of that hype, trust the science under the skewed language, the data itself, and the science NOT produced by or skewed by those connected to the haters.
To summarize the science available to everyone in databases like PubMed, cold shock therapy and cryotherapy:
Increases Immune Response
Builds Long-Term Robust Immune Response
Improves Sleep
Improves Happiness
Reduces Stress
Reduces Anxiety
Reduces Depression
Increases Mental Clarity
Decreases White Fat
Increases Brown Fat
Increases Metabolic Functioning
Increases Confidence
Reduces Intensity of Perceived Pain Long-Term
This is just what’s on paper, documented, studied, peer-reviewed, and acceptable to the materialists who aren’t broken or in someone’s pocket.
The Hot Take
Off the books, in the realms of people who choose to immerse themselves not just once for a winter-polar-bear-dip, but regularly, multiple times a month, week, or even day, there’s even more.
A spiritual type of confidence seems to come over people. A reconnection to the power of their will starts to emerge. A feeling of oneness with nature arises. A trust in the body, mind, heart, and in fact with Fate itself often occurs.
To be sure, the majority of these more psycho-spiritual dimensions most likely come about because people in our modern world are literally dying for a lack of a rite-of-passage. We forgot to keep the ages-old traditions, present in literally every culture, of honoring ourselves when achieving new levels of self, of purpose, of accomplishment, and of connection to something bigger, deeper, and beyond ourselves.
Physiological mechanisms supporting these experiences of a more meta nature also exist, but it doesn’t hurt to bring back a challenge, the overcoming of the challenge, and the message to ourselves that we can do ANYTHING we put our mind to.
So Do It
When I started cold-water therapy and immersion almost ten years ago, I lived on a river and would plunge into the frigid waters frequently, but I would get back out again pretty quickly. Back then, the exercise was simply to show myself I could survive. As many have said: you’re going back into a warm robe, a warm house, and it’s therefore easy to do the quicker plunges.
I then began to turn on a cold-blast, fully turning the knob all the way hard right, at the end of every shower. I brought the time of the cold-blast from 10 seconds, to start, to eventually 3 minutes and more.
Though life happened and I got out of the habit, I’m back to it. I began the same process again and am now at full cold showers, no heat for even a moment, beginning to end.
It’s easier than you think. Your mind is the biggest hurdle. That sounds like a difficult hurdle, but it isn’t. Here’s how to do it:
Know: tell yourself over and over that you’re not only fine, you’re THRIVING in the cold
Breathe: like all instances of overcoming your senses in order to dip into the deep levels of self, breath is the key. Breathe slow, deep into the belly. Not so slow you pass out, not quick either. Breathe like a normal human being but intentionally and fully. Do not let your breath become a hyperventilation or you’ll go into resistance to the cold
Don’t Shiver: just stop it. When the shiver comes, simply relax. If you tense, you’re going to keep shivering. Breathe, relax, and keep breathing and relaxing. If you cannot stop the shiver. Stop the cold and try again next time
Open Up: relaxing into the cold really is the essence of this practice. You are more than capable of just being cold and not reacting to it. Your body learns to love it. when you find a tension or resistance occurring in your physical body, bring your attention there and release the tensed muscle or push yourself deeper into the stream of cold instead of backing out of it
When you’re done, you’re immediately warm again. To repeat: you’re in a warm house, with warm towels waiting. You’re fine. You’ve lost nothing and gained so much. Most of all, you’ve regained the truth: you are stronger than your desire for comfort.
Comfort Kills
We are not only dying for lack of rites-of-passage, we are dying for what we believe is comfort. Fast food, sugar-filled garbage, easy snacks, easy outs, laziness, and the least possible effort are our culture’s default.
To be fair, it is also important to nurture ourselves with comfort, sometimes essentially so. But that level of nurture is not the toxic lifestyle we think it is. That level of nurture is taking the time to walk, to exercise, to cook and eat a nutritious meal, to soak in minerals, and to nourish our body, mind, heart and soul.
It is just as important to discipline our bodies and minds with commitment to overcoming reactionary, comfort-driven addictions and weaknesses. We used to be humans who could run 26 miles in the snow, barefoot, taking down a massive beast in order to then bring it back to the group and feast. Now we are often fat, slowly decomposing, piles of mental illness and decay. But we can do something about it.
Being mildly uncomfortable for 5-10 minutes while showering is nothing and has the potential to transform nearly everything.
Try it. Let me know your results. Mine were listed above, as I’m no different from the rest of humanity — I bet you’re not, either. Trust.