Thermogenesis / Hot & Cold Therapy

That dude in the truck cuts you off at the zipper merge, we have a giant deadline coming up, and your kid is throwing a tantrum in the back seat. Stress is a bugger. But we can learn to handle it a LOT better.

How? Just like any exercise or habit. From repeated and conscious attention to it. Simply by forcing ourselves into micro-stressors helps us mitigate our responses to more expansive ones. This is not akin to being afraid of heights and deciding to 'get over it' and walk a tightrope between two skyscrapers. Go back and read the first sentence of this paragraph again. Repeated and conscious attention. We have to be mindful and deliberate with how we proceed through the stressors.

The cool part is that the brain doesn't care whether the stress is physical, chemical, or emotional. The nervous system reacts the same way to any of them. Therefore, for example, we can micro-dose with purposeful emotional stress to help us fight back against daily physical stressors and visa versa.

Every time I mention the idea of a cold shower people immediately freak out. [Enter "that's a no for me dawg" meme from Randy Jackson.] Remember, this is micro-stressors. So yes, go take a normal hot shower and scrub your parts but then for the last 15 seconds crank the temperature to cold(er).

While the cold rushes over you we have to be mindful and attentive. Your instincts are immediately going to kick in with a gasp reflex. Fight it. Breathe. As you get better and better at increasing the time of this cold shower or turning the handle to an even colder temperature focus on breathing even more. In through the nose for 3-5 seconds with twice as long of an exhale. Relax the shoulders and face muscles.

How we navigate the physical stress of cold while mentally overcoming it helps us when we encounter other stressors throughout the remainder of the day.

Now on the flip side most of the time if I bring up the opportunity for someone to jump in a hot tub or sauna people are down to party. (Cocktails not included in the hot tub - this is therapy afterall.) But how do we become more mindful and deliberate with our heat exposure? Similar but opposite to the innate reaction when we get cold. Instead of hitting this gasp reflex and becoming more Sympathetic (fight or flight) in a cold shower, we become more relaxed with heat exposure (Parasympathetic.) Classically we jump into heat to feel LESS stress, right? Well that's what we're going to pay attention to with our exposure! Instead of allowing your body to become more relaxed, we focus on revving it up.

While we sit in a sauna, hot tub, or use Red Light Therapy we can focus on increasing our breathrate driving us into more of a sympathetic state. Start by breathing in through the nose quickly to a full 'explosive' inhale. Then push the air out using your diaphragm and rib cage to a full exhale. Think about how you'd breathe while running wind sprints. Deep and heavy. Take it easy to start with and use recovery breathing as necessary.

Again, just like any exercise or habit we're trying to change this takes time and repetition. Doing squats once a month is better than zero times a month, but we would all agree we need more than that to create a lasting change of strength/power/etc. Also similar, start slow and easy. We don't want to dramatically over-load the system.

At the end of the day, if we're not challenging you we're not changing you.