Suddenly, everywhere you look, everyone’s taking cold showers. Not literally – that would be weird – but there’s no mistaking a lifestyle trend when you see one. They’re recommended in a new book, What Doesn’t Kill Us, which charts the exploits of the Dutch extreme-cold enthusiast Wim Hof, who once spent nearly two hours in an ice bath. There’s a corner of Reddit devoted to the practice (“I finally did it!”; “How safe is it to shock your brain area with cold water?”) and numerous online posts about completing the 30-Day Cold Shower Challenge. In the New York Times, the novelist Ben Dolnick reports that cold showers changed his “entire disposition toward the outside world”. The purported benefits include everything from boosting immunity to slowing ageing and fighting depression. It’s environmentally better, too, so you’ll feel the warm glow of being ethical. Which is fortunate, given that you’re going to be extremely bloody cold.
As someone who has always preferred the cold, and resents the way hot days are considered “good weather”, I’m a natural candidate for the craze. In fact, I’d started before I knew it was a craze. Finding myself sleepy at 5pm – having woken with the baby at 5am – I tried taking naps, abandoned that plan, then started jumping under icy water instead. (No gradualism: make the shower as cold as you can, then step in for at least a minute.) It worked brilliantly, helping me squeeze out a few more hours of energy. When I took another cold shower before bed, I slept better, too.
But I’ll admit there’s something a little self-punishing about this, as there is with many strategies for “breaking out of your comfort zone”. What are we all trying to prove, exactly? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that behind the desire to triumph over extreme cold – or to CrossFit until you vomit, or anything similar – there’s a desire to somehow conquer yourself. Which isn’t going to work, since both participants in this wrestling match, as you may have noticed, are you. The far more likely result is just more inner conflict.
This is why I prefer Dolnick’s take on cold showers, one that puts him squarely in the tradition of the Shinto priests who used to douse themselves with iced water as a religious ritual. From this perspective, the point isn’t anything as egotistical as conquering yourself. Rather, it’s to loosen the absurdly tight grip our preferences have on our behaviour. “At almost every moment of the day I am accompanied by a pair of petulant, melodramatic children in my mind’s back seat,” Dolnick writes. “These children, Liking and Disliking, exert a distressing degree of control over just about everything I do.” Approaching the cold shower, “Disliking will invariably begin to shriek.” But you step in, the crisis fails to materialise, and Disliking falls sheepishly quiet. Once you’ve seen “that Liking and Disliking are voluble fakers, the whole world begins to bloom with possibility”.
If you’re still thinking you don’t like the sound of daily cold showers, well, that’s the point. If you can note that kind of negative preference, and then take action anyway, there’s almost nothing you can’t do.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
