Cold showers with an intention— Day 1
There’s something endearing about Wim’s delivery of “Day1: Cold shower” monologue. He’s really making this easy on us when he says start slow and don't stress out. However, over the past 6 months it’s when I cold showered and set an intention, much like I did with my meditation, the cold water shower had that much more impact on mind and body. Let me explain.
Much like meditation is not an active way to quiet your mind, the cold shower is not an active way to tolerate the cold.
It’s much more than that. Wim didn’t get into this in his video, this is my personal experience.
For starters, I make it a point to set an intention for my daily meditation sit. Not that I am attached to its outcome, but a way for me to remind myself of what’s important at that very moment. In the same way, as I got comfortable with my cold showers, I felt this being more meditative than just getting cleaned up. I don't come prepared with an intention before my shower. I think of one as I walk in. Sometimes, I’m even surprised that out of all the intentions I could have chosen, I’d pick one that my thinking mind would have never picked. Making me wonder who is the “I” that is really choosing today. My intentions are typically small, achievable, and inadvertently help starve my ego. Hence, in the time I spend during the cold shower visualizing my intent manifested, it makes my cold shower that much more enjoyably deeper and meditative.
Today, I decided to treat myself to an ice-bath instead and extend my bath to 8.5 minutes. Honestly, given the 1–1.5 gallons ice from the ice maker, the water wasn't that much colder. I set the intention of not judging what comes up next in the class based on my past experience. So, why do I talk about my past experience in this post? Merely as a way to remind myself that it’s OK to use what I already know, as long as I take the experience as neutral, no judgment.
Takeaways for the day — I think I can get used to blogging (for myself). I enjoyed remembering a time in Tirupati (holy temple city in India) where we had to wake up at 5AM, cold shower in the outdoors & then visit the temple. While I didn't hate it then, I realize how I would have enjoyed it even more today.
