How cold showers support my effectiveness as a powerful coach
A few months ago I stumbled on YouTube upon a guy called Wim Hof, aka “The Iceman”. He became famous for resisting freezing cold in all kinds of flavors. He holds Guinness world records for the longest bath in ice, the longest distance to swim under ice in the arctic ocean dressed with swimming shorts only and running a half-marathon barefoot on snow and ice. Just to name a few. One of the key techniques that enable him to resist the pain of cold is to apply a breathing technique.
He reports various kinds of positive impact on both his mental and physical health. He has a very strong sense of mental presence and he just won’t get ill even when he gets a virus injected. As he believes that anybody can benefit from dealing with and resisting the cold, he developed the Wim Hof Method (WHM), that you can apply supported by an App on iOS and Android. The New York Times bestselling book What Doesn’t Kill Us tells the story of how the investigative journalist Scott Carney took an assignment supposedly to debunk the WHM but ended up learning Hof’s techniques.
How I got started
As someone committed to explore the depth of the coaching stance, that kind of personal resilience strongly resonated with my ambitions to continuously strengthen my capabilities to deal with unpleasant feelings effectively. I already identified a whole ago that this as a key to create deep connections with individuals. It allows me to initiate informal coaching conversations.
Consequently, six weeks ago, I decided to stop taking hot showers. For a few days I enjoyed to resist temperatures between luke-warm and cold and I started to feel the positive impact. Once I got used to that I switched to really cold water (hot water tap switch off). For a months now, the showers I take are consistently cold. And you know what — I love it.
Impact
What has changed for me ? First of all, when I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to step into the cold shower. Not only I feel kicking fresh afterwards, I also feel an increased sense of freedom and independence. Walking in freezing temperatures outside doesn’t feel cold anymore. I feel ready to cope with any challenge that the day might bring about. I feel truly self-empowered.
Obviously, the most important impact is on the mental level. If you view your consciousness as a mental reality that is physically carried by your body and your brain, that is a system that operates with the social reality as the environment. Systems theory tells us that ideal conditions for a system to operate are given when the inside world and the outside world of the system are balanced in an equilibrium. It maximizes the flow and throughput. And that’s essentially what happens with me. We can translate this into an increased sense of presence. And that’s exactly what I need to be effective in my coaching conversations.
What’s next ?
I clearly see that adopting cold showers enabled me to lift my level of personal resilience. Of course that’s not the whole story — deep inner work is still needed to continue the journey. But utilizing the cold is a highly pragmatic instrument that I’d like to explore even more. Let’s see how.
