Why I Believe Temperature Can Change the World
How to I Learned to Use Thermal Focus to Thrive in Boston Winters
During my senior year at MIT, after Wristify had first won the MADMEC prototyping competition but before EMBR labs was officially incorporated, I used to walk home every day after wrestling practice. As the season progressed and fall turned to winter, the temperature dropped and for the first time, I started paying close attention to the way it made me feel. Having just finished an intense workout and a hot shower, taking the first step out into the fresh cold air was always amazing. Over the course of the 10 minute walk, that refreshment turned to discomfort as my ears, nose and hands got cold. At the same time though, my chest, armpits and back would be uncomfortably hot from being bundled up in so many layers and would often start sweating.
One day, I remember feeling a drop of sweat slide down my back and thinking about how hot and uncomfortable I was. A moment later the wind whistled, and I felt a chill across my face. A huge smile broke out across my face, and I realized that I was somehow both hot and cold at the same time, literally sweating and with a freezing nose that would have made Rudolph the Reindeer proud. I remember making a note to excitedly tell the Wristify team the next day.
In the days and months that followed, I continued to walk home from wrestling practice and marvel at this new thermal experience. I came to realize that focusing on either my cold ears and nose or sweaty core would control whether or not I felt hot or cold during my walk home. I noticed too that my default focus was always the strongest sensation at the time–usually my cold ears–and it took mental effort to direct my attention to the weaker sensations onto my chest or back. (It was the movement of the drop of sweat that first caught my attention and made me feel hot that first time.) During these many walks home, I started to appreciate how rich our interactions with temperature are and began to believe the new way of personalized heating and cooling we had discovered was something big.
In the years since that wrestling season, I’ve come to better understand the phenomenon I stumbled across on those winter walks across Cambridge. I’ve learned that our comfort is not just a function of our core temperature but is more often than not dominated by the peak local sensation. That means that if even one part of your body is uncomfortably hot or cold, it can dominate your perceived comfort irrespective of your 98.6 F core temperature. My cold nose was my default focus and made me feel cold even though I was bundled up everywhere else to the point of sweating. In general, the local peak sensation is the default focus of our thermal conscious awareness, and that focusing effect leads us to conclude that how we feel overall is the same as how we feel in that local area of the body. With practice however, we can learn to direct our attention to different parts of the body and overcoming focusing effects by asking ourselves how comfortable each region feels.
Looking back on those walks home now, I realize it was those experiences that convinced me just how powerful a force temperature was on our lives and made me believe it could be engineered to make us feel better and live better. That belief made it easy to defer graduate school and commit to working on Wristify full time. Three years later, I’m more convinced than ever about the untapped potential of temperature and am working hard to convince as many people as possible.
If you want to start appreciating the power of temperature through the practice of thermal focus and don’t have a post-wrestling walk, then I recommend starting in the shower by adjusting your position so that stream of water hits different points of the body and asking yourself how the sensation feels. How do your feet, head, and the back of your neck compare? Starting is shower is helpful because you’ll naturally focus on where the water contacts your body, and with enough practice you’ll be ready to try adjusting your focus without any external stimulus. Start practicing today, and be sure to share your progress with us using #thermalfocus.
How to Practice Conscious #ThermalFocus
- Ask yourself how you feel. Are you hot? Cold?
- Notice the parts of your body that feel that sensation the most intensely.
- Mentally scan your body for the parts of your body that aren’t feeling that way.
- Place your focus on the spot that feels least uncomfortable and hold it.
Thanks to David Cohen-Tanugi and Matt Smith for help editing this piece.
