Embracing Cold
December 1, 2021
MANY people approach winter with fear and loathing. Do this dread and hostility make them more susceptible to illness and depression?
“I make of every winter a summer,” says the Dutch fitness guru Wim Hof. “Behave as if you are in summer. Think about that. That is the power of your mind being able to switch your body into a powerful being.”
Hof is a fervent promoter of cold weather and low temperatures. He claims that cold showers or daily ice baths generally stimulate health, cure auto-immune diseases and prevent winter flus and depression.
“It’s amazing to go into icy water every day. If you die once a day then you know what life is all about.” He teaches deep breathing techniques to help acclimate to extreme cold.
The cold is a teacher, not an enemy. Hof is a New Age pantheist. But we can find in his theories the cleansing power of self-mortification and trust in a loving God who gives us winter for our benefit. Observe a woodpecker on a dead tree in January. He survives. Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
We were made for winter.
The more you plunge into cold, the better winter is.
