Ian: From Exhaustion to Exhilaration

My journey into cold therapy started while I was on tour with my band overseas eight years ago. We were traveling through Germany, playing in a different town every night, drinking too much and getting far too little sleep—after a month of daily shows my mind was foggy and body was exhausted. 

At that point we happened to be staying in a hotel that had a “Nordic style spa” in the basement, which consisted of a sauna and what looked to be a hot tub. A quick dip of my toe into the tub and I realized that the “hot” tub water was damn cold, and that “Nordic style” meant alternating from the sauna to the freezing cold water. A couple of other guys on the tour agreed to try it out with me, so we started in the sauna, sweating out all the booze and fast food we had been subsisting on for the past month. I think we stayed in the sauna a little longer than we normally would because we knew what was coming next: the cold. Then we got into the tub, one by one, shrieking and laughing and splashing one another with the freezing cold water. No one gave a thought to box breathing or any kind of breathwork—this wasn’t a practice, it was an experience! The water was so cold it was painful at times, but refreshing too. Once we were deeply chilled, we hopped out of the water and headed back into the sauna to warm up again, repeating the cycle a total of three times.

Afterwards, I found myself bounding down the hotel hallway, exclaiming to a friend that I had never felt better! We both laughed in disbelief. We had all been feeling so haggard, and I had only hoped that a stint in the sauna would leave me feeling…human. The fact that I felt completely amazing was astonishing to me! That was the beginning for me, and now cold water immersion is an essential part of my health regimen.