Morning Habit — Breath and Cold

Habit 2 of a Series

In my article last week I talked about my morning habit of reading. I love waking up, having a cup of coffee and picking up my NOOK or my book and reading for 20 minutes to a half hour. Many times this happens in the bathroom. 🙂 Why sit there scrolling mindlessly through Facebook when you can be reading?

Once I have read for a while, I am ready to move on to the next step. By the way, I am not telling you these steps so that you follow them — you should work out your morning habits based on what your goals and priorities are. I would just advocate some set of habits for your morning because it is such an important time to accomplish the things that are important to you.

So after I read, I typically follow that with a breathing practice followed by a shower. And my shower ends in cold water.

Wim Hof has popularized his practice over the last few years by doing seminars, writing a book and publishing an app that facilitates his technique (and his theories). I took a 3 hour seminar one Saturday morning about 8 months ago (Wim Hof on Zoom) and decided to incorporate his breathing technique into my morning routine to see how it would feel to do it on a regular basis. I have practiced various forms of meditation over the last few years, and find it a good way to go into my work day feeling balance, confident and able to keep whatever happens in perspective.

The Wim Hof method is described here, so I won’t go into the details. I am sure each person tailors the technique to their own body and mind, and for me this time of the morning helps me let go of everything and focus on the breath (and lack of breath). The most interesting time in this session is after doing 35 quick breaths and when I let all the air out and simply be in that moment without breath. There is an amazing calm that comes over me at that moment, the start of the “no breath” period. I hit the timer in the Wim Hof app and I am off into the world of “no breath”. I have some music on during the entire session, but during this period the music and slowing my heart down is my focus. (I have been really getting into music by Matthew Jaidev Duplessie on the Insight Timer app).

As I get to about a minute into “no breath”, I start to feel the stress of no breath (on a normal day). The tightness starts to come, along with a more frantic feeling in my brain. I am sure a lot of the stress comes from my own mind, and that is what I work to improve and change from session to session. But it inevitably comes, and for good reason — we have to have oxygen to live. But I truly believe we have much more control over how long we can go with out oxygen than most of us think and I believe much of that control comes from the controls we have in my mind which translate to controls on our heart and other parts of our body.

In any case, at about 1 minute in on the first round of breathing, I am feeling the stress of no breath. I typically can go another 10 to 15 seconds before I take a deep breath and hold for 15 seconds. Once I hit 15 seconds I relax and breath normally, then go into the next session of 35 quick breaths. I typically do 3 rounds of this before doing some stretching while continuing the music. On most days each round of no breath gets longer and if I do 3 rounds I may hit a minute forty on my last round. The app tracks each round and each session, so I can see trends in my practice.

I finish with an exercise of getting to my feet without my hands, putting a little twist in at the end to maintain flexibility, strength and balance each day.

What does this do for me? It puts a little “antifragile” into my day. It makes me aware of what I can do when there is not air coming into my body. I know now that calming my mind helps me in that situation and I actually enjoy the feeling of complete calm while no oxygen is coming in. It blends the music with the breathing for another world kind of experience where there are not deadlines, no concerns, just me and my breathing and the music. Some days this blend is mind-blowing, some days not so much. I wait to see what shows up.

Once I finish my breathing I take a shower. Another part of the Wim Hof method is exposing your body to cold. Again, this stresses the body and creates unique feeling that we don’t get in our everyday life. Now, before starting this practice, I vowed I would not be taking cold showers. There was nothing appealing in that for me, in fact I don’t enjoy most cold things in life — give me warm over cold any day. However, after a few months of this practice, a blast of cold water at the end of my shower almost doesn’t feel cold anymore. It is more like a stimulant that is “applied” to my body and creates a sensation that is really unique. I don’t even know how to describe it (obviously from that last sentence :-)) But, this is pretty much a daily occurrence for me now — and I love it.

So that is my second habit of the day — breathing, no breath, hold for 3 rounds, some stretching and then a shower with a cold ending. Preparing me for a mindful, “take what shows up” kind of day. Just to be fully transparent though, if my mind is not in the right place, I am tired or something is getting me down, I notice doing the breathing and a cold shower is more challenging… especially the cold shower. In fact, there are days (a few) where I don’t have the mental strength to turn the shower nob to cold. On those days I accept it for what it is, and turn it off. It will be there for me another day.

If you liked this article and want more of where this came from, please follow me on Medium. My goal is to provide helpful suggestions that you can apply to your life to make it more full, fun and interesting and help you thrive on change. I do this from the perspective that they work for me, maybe they will work for some other people!