I Love Cold Water

After my first ever intentional cold plunge

I never thought I would ever be someone who would love cold water and cold plunging. Honestly, if you had asked me even a year ago if I thought getting into freezing cold water was a fun idea, I would have told you in no uncertain terms exactly what I thought (I am an enneagram 8- remember).

But, I am someone who has spent years cultivating the practice of listening to, trusting, and deeply honoring the call of my soul. I am able to clearly hear my intuition and I pay attention to all the ways that life points me in the direction of my soul's journey. I do not believe in coincidences, so I take notice of the things that seem like synchronicities, as a road map to what is next.

That is how I first started cold plunging. I felt an unconscious call to begin this practice from within, which was then followed by life's sign posts, allowing the unconscious to become conscious. It started with beginning to notice Wim Hof everywhere in my life. For those of you who don't know Wim Hof, he is a Dutch man who created the Wim Hof Method, which is a combination of breathing techniques, cold water therapy, and commitment to will power and self control. I began to see Wim Hof everywhere. Someone would post about him on Instagram, or someone would recommend a podcast episode and he would be in it. Then I started following new Instagram accounts and later discovered that a lot of the women practiced cold plunging or wild swimming (swimming in the Irish sea or Pacific Ocean - WITHOUT a wetsuit). I knew that this practice was calling to me, and it wasn't long before I decided to heed the call.

As soon as I started cold plunging, I knew that this was going to be a profound practice for me. I love my breathwork practice and have been meditating for 20 years, and I could tell right away that cold plunging felt like the culmination of these two practices. Cold plunging focuses you to breathe in a really intentional way and brings you into the present moment faster than any other practice that I've experienced. The cold water demands your full presence. Each time I enter the water, it is an opportunity to remember that this moment is the only moment in which we are alive and that we can in fact, as Glennon Doyle says, Do Hard Things. I love that this practice pushes me to remember that we can experience discomfort, or even pain, and come out on the other side. So many of life's lessons can be found in cold plunging.

And perhaps best of all, when I come out of the water, I always feel renewed, refreshed, and washed clean, ready to step into the rest of my day with a deep presence and gratitude for the ability to be a part of something so powerful. As we all know, Water is life.

If you are ever curious about cold plunging, or if you'd like to give it a try but feel like you need some support, please feel free to reach out to me through email at heartandheadhomestead@gmail.com or you can find me on Instagram as @Heartandheadhomestead. I would be honored to be a part of your introduction to cold plunging.

Have a Beautiful Day,

Lindsay