The bliss of the paired cold and warm

Dear reader,

I have, for the last two years, been doing a small practice in the bathroom that involves alternating cold and warm contact on the body, in a specific sequence, for about ten minutes. The practice is borrowed loosely from the Nordic spa tradition, simplified into a version that can be done in a normal home bathroom with no special equipment, and it has become one of the small reliable interventions that I do most weekday mornings.

The practice

Start the shower at a comfortable warm temperature. Stay in it for two minutes — long enough for the skin to warm fully and the small superficial capillaries to open. Then turn the water as cold as it will go, and stay in it for thirty seconds. The cold is sharp for the first ten seconds. The breath catches briefly. By the twentieth second, the body has settled.

Then back to warm for two minutes. Then cold for thirty seconds. Then warm for two minutes. Then cold for thirty seconds. Total: ten minutes, alternating between two-minute warm and thirty-second cold cycles, three cycles in total. End on cold.

Get out of the shower. The body, after this small alternating practice, is in a noticeably different state than the body that started the shower. The skin is alert. The breath is deep. The mind is, in some way, several degrees more present than it had been before.

What alternating contrast does

Several things that neither pure warm nor pure cold can do alone. The warm phases open the small superficial blood vessels and allow heat to penetrate to the deeper tissues. The cold phases close the vessels and force the heat back toward the core. The cycle, repeated three times, is in effect a small workout for the cardiovascular system — the small constant work of opening and closing the vessels improves the small efficiency of the system in a way that single-temperature exposure does not.

There is also a small lymphatic effect. The lymph system, which has no pump of its own and which relies on small mechanical movements to circulate, gets a small additional pump from the cycle of vasoconstriction and vasodilation. The whole body, after the practice, has had its lymph briefly accelerated, and the small accumulated fluid that the body collects through the night drains more efficiently.

The most useful effect, though, is psychological. The small repeated experience of voluntary discomfort followed by relief — three times in ten minutes — is a small daily training in tolerating small uncomfortable inputs without flinching. The body, by the end of the practice, has been reminded that small discomforts are survivable and that they pass. The reminder propagates into the rest of the day in small useful ways.

If you have a regular shower that has not been particularly stimulating, try this small variation for a week. The cost is small. The shower takes the same total time. The benefit, accumulated across days, is the kind of small structural improvement that I think most people would not predict from such a simple modification.

Until next morning,

M.