I am so proud of myself and cannot believe I have completed an entire year of having cold showers every day.
2 minutes of cold water, every morning, after my normal shower.
In an average year I would say I usually have 3 or 4 colds, but this past year, since doing the cold showers – I haven’t had a single one. I think that is incredible.
I have felt so much more energetic – which is mental, as I have two children, who start the day at the crack of dawn, and the youngest one still likes to wake about 5 times a night. They’re exhausting in the day; they’re exhausting through the night. I am also back at work, on my feet for 8 hours a day, when I’m there, yet I feel more alive than ever.
Now I am going to preach! I cannot recommend this more. I remember, about 18 months ago, my friends at work, Charlotte, and Kyle, discussing cold water swimming, and how they would love to try it and I thought they were crazy. I made my feelings very clear on the subject. I am such a cold person, so cannot think of anything worse than making myself any colder than I need to be.
Side note - I have a theory that people with winter birthdays feel colder and people with summer birthdays tend to feel hotter – so far, I have yet to be proven wrong!
Then a couple of months after this, I was on my friend Amie’s hen do, in Devon. We wondered down to the sea front from where we were staying – and there were people swimming in the sea - in January. Insane. I couldn’t understand it at all. We had a huge discussion about how a few of the girls would love to do cold water swimming and that it’s meant to be invigorating, and hugely beneficial to your health, and that was when Ames mentioned Wim Hof. I had not heard of him before, so had a look at his Instagram and realised that my friends from work, along with my brother, were already following him.
I didn’t think too much more about it, other than these people were a little crazy!
Skip forward to May, 2 weeks after our little Luna bug was born, right at the end of Luke’s paternity leave, and my mum mentioned that Wim Hof had had a programme on a couple of weeks earlier called Freeze the Fear. We watched the first episode and were hooked!
From the following morning, I did a 15 seconds of cold water at the end of my shower, and it brought flash backs of 2014 ice bucket challenge. It was awful – how cold I ever do longer than 15 seconds?! I did that for the next 7 days, and then went up to 30 seconds. Brrrr.
I did this for a week, then 1 minute of cold water the following week. And then from the week after, until today, I have been doing two minutes at the end of each shower.
The winter months were tough. Especially the days I had work, when I was showering at 6.30am, it was dark outside, and the heating hadn’t quite woken up yet. We probed the water a couple of times to see just how cold it was, and on one of the cold days, but by no means the coldest, the water was 5 degrees. That may not be zero, but that is bloody cold.
On one occasion I could feel the shivering starting, and it became a little uncontrollable. But most other times, I feel a strange warmth from the inside, starting to push its way out. It is a lot to do with mind over matter, and if I tell myself that I feel warm, that really is what I feel. Once you can complete 30 seconds of cold water, I think you could go on for much longer. Your body climatises and your brain realises that it is not going to hurt you, you will survive this, and it almost brings an air of calm.
One of the benefits is that it is meant to put your body under such stress, that anything else you have to face in your day, shouldn't be as stressful. Wim Hof has obviously not met my children.
I would like to think that in general, I am not a stressed person, but even so, I feel less stressed (not including the children) than I was before.
In terms of the girls, I get hugely stressed, most days...! Well, maybe not most days, but probably half… That feels like too much – but what would I be like if I didn’t have these cold showers? Would I be 10 times worse?!
Knowing how stubborn I am, I’m not surprised that I have completed a year. This is by no means the end; this is just the beginning. A way of life now. There were mornings where I almost didn’t do it, but I would not be able to let myself pretend. I would let myself down and probably then give up all together as I am a bit of an all or nothing personality.
On two mornings I have woken up with a blocked nose, annoyed that my theory was going to fail, yet on both occasions, and these were the only times I really looked forward to the cold water, I did the cold exposure, and the symptoms cleared.
Our house has not been free of viruses. Luke has had a lingering cold since about 2021. I’m joking, but he does seem to suffer with them for long periods of time, probably because he can never fully rest and recover, he is always so run down. Aurora has bought her fair share of illness home from Pre School and passed it on to Luna – although to be honest, not as much as I was expecting from other peoples experiences with Nursery/Pre School.
These girls, especially Luna, like to give me full, sloppy snogs, with a tonne of dribble, yet still, I have not caught any of their illnesses.
Long story short, I think that the cold exposure is healing, magical and a new way of life for me. I strongly recommend that everyone tries it, especially if you are prone to colds and viruses. More energy, better health, lower stress, great for Mental Health. I can't think of any negative points, so it's win win!
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