SHORT ANSWER: To experience a most intense present-moment, clean slate, re-set feeling.
LONG ANSWER: We all know life has, does and will throw us stressors again and again and again. Many stressors put our bodies in “fight or flight mode” – a genius design protecting us or preparing us to fight or run away from danger. The body is further designed to then “level off” or maintain homeostasis after the danger has subsided. But what if our stressors keep coming? Or what if they last all day? Or for two years? Or 50? And what if that’s what we get used to?…what we expect?…our new normal?!
How then would our bodies level off if threats don’t cease? One way is by force – from total exhaustion and depletion – no more choice – causing dysfunction, disease.
But what if we took this conditioning and flipped it on its ass?
What if (like going to the gym to work out our physical muscles to get stronger and protect our bodies from injury) we deliberately put appropriate and safe stress on our brains so that we could walk toward and make friends with sensation and experience. So that we could “work out” our mental bodies. So that we could feel what it’s like and what it requires to move through it and shift our reaction.
And what if our neurochemistry supported this? So much so that we felt elated, supported, strong, joyful…relaxed even!
What if we felt it, breathed it, did it with a friend? What if we went inward instead of retreating?
What is we saved fight or flight (clenching and avoiding) for the times we really needed it?
Deliberate cold-water dipping can be that gym for the brain.
So when we’re riding the waves and climbing the mountains of life, the crashes and the descents become a bit more doable, level…and we, more resilient.
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