The Cold

Ah, yes. The cold. It has done something very strange to my sensibilities, you know. I’m a reasonably bright woman, with young children to imprint and all. I love my warm, comfortable home. I like a good bath, a man who can build a wood burning fire (Brett), and those seat warmers in my minivan—  

But  

Of late, I’ve been tossing new pictures on the internet with no more fanfare than one attaches to tossing a used cocktail napkin in the trash. Yet these new images are strange. They are unlike me, and yet I look so happy. These images that pop onto social media feature myself and fellow swimmers, faffing about on a frosty Maryland morning, in speedos. Swimmers who swim...in bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, or worse...dunk in nearby neighborhood streams. In the winter. 

In the very streams in which my own children play in the summer. This brings us to this afternoon, when the halfwhit North Arlington Mom writing this blog was now majestically seated in a partially frozen creek, surrounded by water, ice, rocks, and her first-born son holding a stopwatch, (with a few sideways glances by concerned passers-by).

I don’t care about any of that. My goal for the submersion into 30-something degree water is to still my mind. The “I haven’t done anything” mind.

In order to survive, the mind needs to be calm. I am trying to override the mammalian dive reflex to begin to hyperventilate...but instead to exhale slowly. Gently, and with love, to relax my muscles. Ahhhh, I feel warmth. Relax my mind, relax my senses. Feel the cold as stimulus, but do not attach a sensation in my mind, or, God forbid, an emotion to this experience. 

I am rewriting neural pathways of how I experience pain. As I continue to sit, I relax further, and now I cannot help it. I feel beauty, I feel love and I feel acceptance. I am not fighting...I am just being.  

Just a Mom experiencing joy

I am practicing the Wim Hof Method, and my goal is stillness. It is to learn. It is to practice patience, love, and listening to my body. I want to re-educate my body on the experience of chronic pain. 

When I was in that ice, of course it felt bad the first time. Cold water feels like little needles piercing your entire body. Nobody likes to be frozen alive; that is human nature. 

But did you know that you can re-educate yourself? You can teach your mind that the cold is just a sensation. It is just a feeling. It is good. As I learn more, this extreme cold does not pierce or slap me. Instead, it gently warms me, it makes my body buzz with energy, it pulls all of my positive aspirations out of hiding and presents them there for me to have. They’ve been there all along.

Miles tells me I have been in for 7 minutes. That is my record, and for today, it is enough. I emerge red...glowing. I feel hot, and my skin feels alive as though it is vibrating.

 

Just a very red mom, straight out of the ice 

I don’t know how or why this ice exposure is doing such a radical shift to my energy level, my pain, and my motivation but it does. Once I return home, gulp my awaiting tea and get through the after-drop, (a brief period of shivering as your cold surface blood begins to circulate)  I am ready to conquer the world. 

Next time you feel a little blue and want to try something a little crazy and a lot fun, text me. I’ll take you with me.