3 Lessons from a 4-Minute Ice Bath
A few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge (literally!) and submerge myself in an ice bath for 4 minutes. You can watch the video here.
I was scared AF – I had all these stories about why I couldn’t do it.
I get cold very easily – there’s no way that my body can handle that.
What if I cause damage to my body?
My roommate had done it before and she told me that she lasted 40 seconds and we have similar cold tolerance. Maybe I’ll only last 40 seconds.
I watched as eight other people went before me. As I watched each of them hit the 4-minute mark, I wanted to believe that if they could do it, so could I.
But there was a part of me that thought, “What if I don’t last that long? I’d be the only one who couldn’t do it.”
These thoughts were NOT serving me and I knew that I needed to shift my mindset.
I wanted to come from a place of empowerment.
I started to think about the times that I’ve sat completely still during meditation. Pins and needles ran up and down my legs and I didn’t move, not even an inch, for an hour.
Rather than labeling it as pain, I just observed the sensations in my legs. I dissociated my mind from the pain.
I kept reminding myself of this before I submerged myself in the ice bath.
Whatever you feel in there, they’re just sensations. Just observe the sensation, as you’ve done in your meditation practice.
The initial shock of how cold the ice bath was hit me like a ton of bricks – my immediate response was guttural.
But after the initial shock subsided, I reminded myself – everything I feel, they’re just sensations. Don’t let the mind fool you into thinking that it’s pain.
I reached a place of incredible calm so much so that I stayed in the ice bath beyond the 4-minute mark.
My biggest takeaways from this experience:
It’s so important to notice the thoughts that you have – it sounds cliché, but if you change your thoughts, you can change your life. If I continued thinking that I wasn’t going to make it, I probably wasn’t going to make it.
The brain likes evidence! – If I told myself, “I can do this!” without using evidence from my past meditation experiences to back me up, I wouldn’t have been able to fully believe it.
The actual language that you use to speak to yourself is SO important – If I told myself that being submerged in the ice bath would be painful, that’s what I would’ve experienced. Instead, I told myself that whatever I felt were just sensations. As such, when I was in the ice bath, I was open and curious to experience whatever came up for me because I had convinced myself that everything is just a sensation.