![cold_lady.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUQCUoU2wQfHuRgEPvPDXUzrxB3iJyZ5afRwDVeDgb6tg/cold_lady.jpg)

I'm sitting here waiting for my cold bath to run. Why? Because I'm finally getting on with the Wim Hof Method, the process by which you fire up your immune system with a course of meditation, deep breathing and exposure to the cold.

The meditation and the breathing are easy, the cold however . . .

## What Is Cold?

It's just a sensation right? To most people it's an unpleasant one, but why?

I mean, it's just cold, in the short term it's not going to kill you, yet the sensation you get when you're cold encourages you to get warm.

But what is that sensation? How do we define it?

Pain?

Yes pain, a type of pain, not the ow-I've-stubbed-my-toe pain. Or the lingering pain of a broken limb, or the gnawing pain a bout of food poisoning brings on, but yet it is a pain.

Why?

I suppose we are evolutionary wired to always seek comfort. Cold in the long term *can* kill you, especially if it is extreme. Therefore it makes sense to have a biological aversion to getting cold.

Better safe than sorry . . .

## Sensation Anatomy

At the end of the day cold is just a sensation, like warmth, like hunger.

Therefore cold is like warm, both are sensations, both draw a physical and a mental response. One is pain the other is pleasure, but are they really that different?

Pain is only felt because the reptilian part of my brain is trying to protect me from death. However intellectually I know I'm not going to die from a cold bath.

Therefore I must use my intellect to override my evolutionary responses . . .

I guess this is what's known as mind over matter.

## Grin & Bear It

I will smile when I get in, I will anticipate the cold, but I will tell myself that it is fine, and the sensations I feel are just that, sensations.

Pain is not real, it all happens in the head, it's just a safety switch.

There are people born with rare genetic conditions whereby they don't feel pain. You can hit them, burn them, freeze them, shoot them and they won't feel a single tiny speck of pain.

The parts of their brains that are meant to register the sensations they are feeling as pain, don't function.

Therefore I know that it can be endured, even if those parts of the brain are working perfectly.

Cold is warm.

Pain is pleasure.

Let's go!

DO YOU MIND THE COLD? PERHAPS YOU HATE THE HEAT? WHAT ARE YOUR MOST AND LEAST FAVOURITE SENSATIONS? 

AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!


>Title Image: Alexandre Croussette on Unsplash

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