Call me crazy but I like my showers hot. Hotter than you. Call me soft but memories of getting a cold shower when expecting hot can still cause a ghost of misery and resentment within me to rise again. I don't approve of anything that is supposed to cure you of lust and I have to admit I am turned off whenever I am asked to drop a pleasure in the name of health. I had serious misgivings.
On the other hand, I like a physical challenge, I like shit that is free, and I like practices that I can incorporate into stuff I already have to do. I'm a risk-averse endorphin junkie so I like cheap, safe thrills. And I love anything that promises to make me feel or look better.
Now, I've embraced the cold shower before periodically as a wake-upper, hair-shiner, end-of-shower brace-for-the-worlder, but I have never made it a part of my routine and never for more than thirty seconds or so, sticking just my head under so as to avoid full contact. I read about it as a more-than-hair-deep self-help thing most recently on an astrology blog I follow, in which the author also mentioned a homemade coffee-ground and coconut oil scrub, and had seen it pop up on a few beauty sites as well. But her writing especially convinced me.
Being the good little Virgo I am I both embraced and enhanced the routine as well as doing some research on the medical, tactical, and mythological underpinnings of this practice. A quick google search reveals that it's popular with male bloggers writing about boosting testosterone and virility which I'm very much on board with co-opting for my own purposes. I'm fighting a bus cold, heartbreak, creative despair, and grieving at the moment so the additional claims of emotional fortitude, a natural high, and immunity-boosting panacea-copia of effects also seemed promising.
I added a clementine peel to the coco-oil coffee ground scrub from grounds left over from coffee made this morning and ate pieces of the fruit as I stirred it. I thought about my nephew while I peeled the clementine, how I'd arranged one in a star shape for him to distract from a hunger toddler meltdown attack mid-afternoon a few weeks ago. I thought about writing this post. I waited for water to boil for more coffee and while the milk steamed I laid down and did some stretching on the floor, on my back, legs over my head. I rubbed eucalyptus oil on my chest and breathed in deep. My sister was home working and I interrupted her to tell of my heroic mission to endure this so-old-it's-new asceticism and worked some tea tree oil into my scalp (I like to really go for it when I self-care).
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I started the shower off hot because a few articles suggested this was still as beneficial (if vaguely wimpier) as taking a discrete cold shower. So I had time to wash my hair and use the scrub on comfortable, eucalyptus-y HOT open-pored skin and it smelled like fucking christmas and I thought of some good tweets. Exfoliating always feels great to me. Finally it was time. I reached out my hand and switched the knob to cold.
It was cold as fuck. I felt like a chump (a very cold chump) for the first ten seconds or so. But I had a plan, which I recommend to you now: If y'all try this at home distract yourself during the initial cold-as-fuck phase with some other shower activity ( I gave myself a vigorous massage with the grapeseed oil that my sister keeps in the shower) and it will help you adjust. Because soon, very soon, less than a minute in, just as the internet had predicted, I started to feel....pretty good. Strangely good. Really pretty awesome.
My heart was beating fast but it felt like the opposite of a panic attack. MORE LIKE A JOY ATTACK. The cold started to feel warm. My scalp was tingling, the skin was tightening all over my body, a rush of sheer excitement was building in my chest, I had to let out a few whoops, give a few weird hops. I held my face and head underneath the cold water and just held on for as long as I could. It felt like exercise without needing to exercise, sex without having to talk to someone. It felt like truth, justice, and the whatever way.
One immediate bonus was that getting out of the shower felt magically warm instead of horribly painfully cold as when you take a hot shower in the winter. I toweled myself off with manic glee, did ten push-ups just to up the Spartan, macho vibe, and re-applied the eucalyptus oil. I have to say I felt fantastic....all alive and shit. It did not cure my cold but I didn't even care about the sniffles anymore. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror (read: purposefully stood in front of mirror and watched myself caress my own chest and arms) and saw that my skin was both rosy pink and seemingly lit from within with glow. I would not fucking joke about glow. It was real.
I am going to do it every day and then go out into the world and use my powers and strength for good. And have incredibly shiny hair.
