Why on earth would you have a cold shower?
Two years ago, I was super stressed. I had three children under five, I wasn’t getting a whole lot of sleep and I could feel my classic signs of nervous system deregulation. For me these look like; shorter patience, a need to clean all the time to feel in control, snappy with my partner, waking in the night even when I’m tired and feeling very noisy in my head.
I had been seeing articles and images of people doing cold immersion and breath work and something about it really appealed. My husband and I decided to investigate it together and found a Wim Hof course in Luggate, Otago. For Scotty the bonus of muscle recovery appealed as he was training for the 1-day Coast to Coast at the time.
The course was a full day of learning the science behind the practice, learning and practicing the breath work and then finally exposing ourselves to the cold with around 15 other men and women.
We didn’t just run out into the 3-degree temp, jump in the ice bath and then run back to the fire like I assumed we would. We were out there in bare feet, in our togs, doing a strange hilarious little dance around a paddling pool while our classmates all did their 2 minutes. We were an eclectic bunch and we bonded over our shared experience of pushing through pain and the euphoric feelings this gives you.
It felt like it took me a day to thaw out and it was really tough but since that day I have grown stronger in the cold, I have a new appreciation for what my body and mind can handle, and I have felt the direct benefits from my daily cold exposure which keep me doing it.
Scotty still does his breath work followed by his cold shower or bath – he is really loud and almost yells as he is doing it. It’s just the way he processes the challenge. Me on the other hand, I’m dead silent. I go inward, much like I did in childbirth and breath my way through it.
I expose myself to the cold daily for one main reason = Increased parasympathetic activity. Taking a cold shower or having an ice bath regularly can increase your resilience to stress.
When you get into the cold water and your body starts to adjust, the vagus nerve is stimulated, which is a nerve connected to a lot of organs by the parasympathetic nervous system. When I increase my PNS activity I notice a massive difference in the way that I feel, the way I respond to stress and a calm but super alive feeling in the hours after the immersion.
There are lots of way to increase your parasympathetic nervous system, this is just one of them, but it can be incorporated into our lives so easily through turning the tap around when you have a shower, it's worth giving a go.
Like anything, it’s not a one trick secret sauce. Make it a practice, by practicing. Start small, build up, do it daily. We have a chest freezer set up in our garage that is set at 2degrees, but we only got that after a year of using the lake and cold showers.
If you are wanting a proven tool to reduce stress, maybe this is something you could try too.
