Cold Shower
Cold showers are recommended for several reasons. I will report my first hand experiences.
The How and the What
The first week was the adjustment period. I have been doing it for just over one week. I would bathe or shower as usual. Then, after I was finished with cleaning, I would turn the faucet knob right one inch at a time. I was easing into the cold. The warmth was still there, with increasing cold. Once the cold hit me fully, my body would get shocked and I would get a bit dizzy. At this point I would exit the shower and that was all for the first week. On the seventh day, I was getting used to the shock, and I figured that if I would not anticipate the shock, perhaps it would not be as shocking. It is perhaps like a gun: when you fire the gun at the target, you will have more accuracy if you do not anticipate the recoil. Make the bullet firing surprise you. The same with the cold shower. It worked! After I psyched out myself, I could stay under the cold for a while longer. Thus, the second phase - I do not get dizzy and exit, but I feel the cold, unanticipated, and I rotate under the spigot for a little more time, making sure that my entire body has flowing cold water on every spot - front, back, face, neck, etc.
The Why
Why take a cold shower when it shocks your body and is uncomfortable? There are some health benefits on cold showers - physical heath benefits like fat loss, better hair, better skin, etc, but I was after a more lofty goal: spiritual. I wanted to approach it as meditation.
I think in our modern world, we are not exposed to stimulants like our ancestors were. Thus, the little things have the ability to bother us. Pebbles in our shoes, greasy hands, sweat dripping into our eyes - these things may drive us nuts if we are not hardened to common irritants. A cold shower shocks every part of your skin. When it hits your face, you have the same reaction as it someone threw you into a cold river. Thus, it throws a large stimulant at your system, and thus, during the rest of your day, mild irritants are dialed way down to the periphery of your consciousness. That fat guy in the office who throws tantrums? Well, he is just part of the background noise, and you barely notice him any longer. When you exit your car and drop your cell phone on the concrete as you are walking toward a restaurant entrance - it no longer breaks your stride or injects stress hormones to throw you off for a few minutes because it is now just minor background noise, and does not irritate your senses because the cold shower conditioned you for shock, and irritants no longer register as irritants, but as noise.
Conclusion
Like hard exercise makes us physically tough. Like trials make us hardened characters. A cold shower in the morning is a good way to turn all your irritants into background noise. The irritants are dialed down from a 10 to a 3.
Is this worth the discomfort? Yes it is. When your mind and body can focus upon the task at hand and ignore the background noise and irritants, you have a large gain for a minuscule cost.
And, you get all the physical health benefits to go along with that. Targeted exposure to Eustress increases our effectiveness, and we live that much more intensely and excitedly.
///
Freddy Martini
No comments:
Post a Comment