Ice baths — Demystified
Ice baths. They are kinda becoming a thing these days. From athletes to celebrities all the way to self help gurus, everyone swears by them. Now it is so popular that maybe even you — the reader — wants to partake.
Whatever your reasons might be, if you are determined to doing one but scared to start, you are at the right place. I am now a certified Wim Hof Method instructor now (more about WHM here) and I help coach people in a potent breathwork and ice baths for the “gainzz”.
Before you dismiss me as being born with some inherent ability to tolerate cold, let me share an anecdote. Ten years ago, I was the biggest fan of the heat you’d have ever met! I used to turn up the thermostat to such high temps that people wouldn’t dare enter my room. My skin was drier than the bottom of the Death Valley! Now I made a U-turn and I love the cold! I have been consistently taking ice baths for the past couple of years, sometimes 2 mins, sometimes 10 mins, whatever the length and the temperature is, an ice bath is fucking intimidating. Every. Single. Time.
I could talk all about the benefits of ice baths, but you can find that stuff all over the internet. Instead, I will share the dance I go thru in my head before and during the ice bath and how I overcome a bunch of mental barriers to successfully do an ice bath. I hope once you read thru my account, you can evaluate any obstacles that discouraged you from trying an ice bath and more importantly, learn to love the process of overcoming the limits we set for ourselves. This is going to be a long one, but I promise a compelling one! So read along…
A typical ice bath can be broken up into three stages:
- Pre ice bath stage: The mental barriers to overcome and the preparation for a good experience.
- Ice bath stage: The challenges we typically encounter and the mindset I use.
- Post ice bath stage: The “integration” of the experience and recovery.
Pre-Ice bath stage
I usually take an ice bath in the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays before I eat anything (This is to not have to spend energy warming up my body and digesting the food I eat). My mind is trying to find every excuse to convince me how it is a bad idea! Sometimes it is the perceived pressure to start work ASAP (although this would perhaps make me far more productive for the rest of my day at work). Other times, it is the slightest sign of perceived infection or hunger, anything that makes me believe I might put myself in discomfort. The excuses are only limited by my mind’s creativity that day.
Some ways to overcome these initial hurdles is to question your mind. Is there really an urgent need for your presence at work? Is it really true that you are super weak? (Are you sick really?) If the answer is no, maybe today is the day to make my ice bath challenging than usual! I imagine how glorious it would be to have overcome perceived sickness and have had a successful ice bath despite it.
My typical preparation for an ice bath takes a maximum of 1 hour and the time it takes for me to come back to my senses and be functional post an ice-bath is a maximum of 30 mins. And the ice bath itself can take 10 mins (including the setup etc). So, I plan to set aside 2 hours in total. A day on which I am in a rush, I look at it as opportunity to skip all the prep before and jump straight it. It is far more challenging that way. Kinda like the time you take waiting for your mind to settle before bungee jumping yourself vs bungee jumping because someone just pushed you down from the cliff suddenly. Both are fun!
Looking at these perceived challenges as an opportunity is the first mindset trick I practice.
On other days, my entire mind and body drag their feet like a kid before going into the ice bath. I practice a different mindset switch. I let my mind be as sluggish as it wants, I simply act by filling my tub with water, add ice and jump right in! My mind can keep talking, I simply act despite all the nagging. NOTE: Always be gentle with yourself. None if this is forced. This is simply a practice to observe my mind and letting the scary thoughts go gently and still continue to act.
It is a powerful practice of observing the mind for what it is, just a thought machine, acknowledging that thoughts do not really have the power to stop us, and acting as you really committed to.
My pre ice-bath routine includes some or all of the following:
- Incense for setting up the space (I use a sage smudge)
- Set up my bath (water and ice in the tub)
- Heat up my post ice bath room to highest temp
- Set up a warm tea for warming up my body post ice-bath
- Have some food ready because I feel hungry after an ice bath
- Yin yoga for deeply stretching all my muscles and ligaments and for relaxing my mind
- Wim Hof breathing to activate my muscles near my lungs and to produce some endogenous DMT to feel like boss before stepping in!
- And finally, jumping into the ice bath while breathing deeply!
The Ice Bath
The moment I enter the ice bath, waves of discomfort, pain and panic try to get control of me. With time and practice though, these waves become tiny ripples! I continue breathing slowly and deeply.
The beauty of an ice bath is that you cannot bullshit your way out of it. For example, if you do a plank exercise, you can cheat by moving around and relaxing different muscles and tensing up other muscles etc. But once you are in an ice bath, there is nothing you can do other than either overcoming your mind or stepping out.
The first tool at my disposal is: “Fake it till you make it”. I imagine I am sitting in a beautiful park watching the sunset. How is my body language different?
- My body is relaxed. No clenched fists, no stiff jaw, no frown on my forehead.
- My breath is slow and deep. When watching a sunset, we don’t breathe like a Golden retriever on a hot day, right?
- And finally, I have a smile on my face.
So, back to the harsh reality of me being in an ice bath, I imagine a pleasant scenary and relax my body, slow down my breathe and smile even thru the unimaginable discomfort. My body is tricked temporarily!
When the urge is to tense up, we practice to relax instead
The switch
Reaching a relaxed state from a state of initial panic in an ice bath is called making the “switch”. It is when the nervous system exits the fearful sympathetic state to the relaxed parasympathetic state. Typically, for newbies, this switch happens after around a minute or more (maybe 2 mins) from the point they enter the ice bath. The skill to practice here is to reduce the time it takes to make the switch as your become experienced.
As you can imagine, the ability to make the switch under such intense discomfort can be an immensely valuable skill to have when overcome by challenges in our lives outside the ice bath.
Once the switch happens, things get way easier. But the risk of switching back into a state of panic is still not zero. So, once I make the switch, I start observing every sensation in my body very deeply. Is my left toe paining? Is the pain pulsing? Is the pain moving? Is my mind interpreting the pain as danger? Am I having a dialog with myself? Am I overthinking? Is this bad? Am I going crazy? A very common train of thought I have in the ice bath. The trick here is to welcome all of these sensations and thoughts without resistance.
I get to practice being the observer of the pain and not the pain itself.
Pain
Let us take a quick detour and talk about pain.
When an intense sensation which is unpleasant is interpreted by the mind as undesirable, we experience pain. Resisting pain causes only more pain. Instead, if my arm hurts, I focus my attention more into my arm. Observe it with my fullest attention. When I stick with it with enough attention, my mind’s interpretation just vanishes. All that remains is intense sensation in the raw form. Ice baths changed my relationship with pain completely.
Ice baths taught me to lean into pain to simply disintegrate it rather than to resist it.
Coming back to the ice bath. Despite making the switch to a relaxed state, I do occasionally get carried away by a thought. It can take me away from the present moment and eventually, my attention slips. When I drifted away, pain sneaks back in. That is totally OK and I respond to it by recognizing that I drifted away and let go of the train of thought that distracted me.
This sounds awfully similar to any mindfulness practice. Except that in a mindfulness practice, you can simply cheat by not being mindful. Here though, the cost of not being mindful is immense discomfort.
There is no other option but to stay mindful for however long you committed to be in the ice bath.
Overcoming a challenge by embracing more challenge
Some days, especially on those days where the ice bath seems unusually challenging, I try something different. Instead of trying to negotiate with myself, I overcome the challenge by signing up for a bigger challenge and commit to rocking it “LIKE A BOSS”. An example of that would be to decide to stay in the ice bath for 2 random songs from my playlist. The songs can be anywhere from 30 seconds long to literally 10 mins! So, the uncertainty of the duration of my ice bath makes the challenge far more exciting and my fear just vanishes and I get filled with a surge of happy hormones even before I step into the ice bath!
I call this trick “Stubborn commitment”. More about stubborn commitment in a future article.
Post ice-bath
Once I am satisfied with my stay in the water, it is time to step out! Yay! Not so fast though! An ice bath is a powerful experience and coming out if it is like a rebirth! The mindset I step out with seems to last with me for a while in both my mind and my body.
It is crucial to step out of an ice bath in a calm and composed way rather then just scrambling my way out of it.
At this point, my skin would be cold and red. And my body is perhaps shivering. Shivering is the body’s way to warm up. Be sure to never resist it. The more relaxed I can be post ice bath, the easier my recovery. Deep breathing can be a powerful way to keep my lungs warm and thus warming up the blood that circulates around the lungs too. Humming is a very underrated tool to trigger parasympathetic nervous system and to relax the body. In addition to all of these, horse stance (link) can be powerful way to active my thing muscles to generate more heat! Horse stance for long durations can also activate the Cori cycle and anaerobic metabolism! You can read all about Cori cycle here.
A note of safety, while it can be very tempting, never go from an ice bath directly into intense warmth (like standing next to the heater) without warming up your body using the techniques above. Doing so can cause what’s called an “after-drop” where the core body temperature drops suddenly due to mixing cold blood in the extremities with the warm blood near the core. This can be a scary experience and a very unpleasant one too.
The rule of thumb is to keep horse-stancing until the skin is no longer red and until the wrist is no longer cold to touch.
Once I warmed my body up enough, I step into the warm room I set up in the pre ice bath step. I calmly sip my warm cup of tea waiting for me and contemplate on the intense experience I just came out of!
Post an ice-bath, the dopamine levels in the body can shoot up to 3 times normal. So, I experience an intense energy and focus for hours! It is important to manage this energy well. Especially, I noticed that if I do not disappate all this new energy, I might have a hard time falling asleep in the night due to the leftover energy.
Also, an ice bath can pump up metabolism to intense levels! So, be prepared to gorge on some well deserved carbs after.
Summary
Ice baths taught me multiple mindset tricks that I use everyday in my life to tackle a variety of situations. In addition to mindset, there are immense body benefits ranging from BMR increases (for weight loss), inflammation reduction, immune system strengthening, etc. With this article, I aim to acknowledge the fears around an ice bath. All the fears are common and overcoming them is the way towards a rewarding experience!
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