Please feel free to share your stories of how certain little self-care rituals changed your life for the better and have made you proud you started doing them.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Not exactly just for men: Wim Hof breathing and cold showers.
Cold showers have well-documented health benefits, and it’s only related to Wim Hof breathing because he does both ;) I started with warm showers and 10 seconds of cold in January 2022, for about a year now I have only been showering cold, and also did go into an outdoor pool for 10 minutes in 3C (37F) water (which was too long. It felt nice while I was in there, not so much afterward :D)
Wim Hof breathing is controlled hyperventilation and controlled hypoxia to reduce stress (this is an article that goes over the science, the TL;DR is that temporarily, for about a day, lowering cortisol (stress hormone) seems to be the clearest advantage, other stuff is less well shown or researched), I tend to feel better after doing it, and I managed to stick exercise to my daily breath work which helps me actually doing it.
So my usual morning is coffee, and working for a while, then I take a break for the routine: For 4 times 35 deep breaths followed by a breath hold of 2.5-3 minutes each, then body weight exercises and stretching, then a cold shower (ice-cold in winter, cold-ish in summer, which is always sad :D).
But I don’t care about increasing my breath holds. Nothing about it is about increasing those limits, what studies there are show effects after about 90 seconds, I simply start breathing as soon as I feel the need.