A Modern Day Iceman

I’m not a fan of the cold. Winter is my least favorite season. When my feet are cold, I feel terrible. All of that goes against the philosophy of a man named Wim Hof.

Wim Hof, (AKA “The Iceman”) holds some world records for endurance and exposure to cold from doing things like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro wearing only shorts and shoes and running a barefoot half-marathon in the Arctic Circle. He stood in an ice-filled container for more than 112 minutes. This guy really believes in the natural power of the cold.

Cover photo from Becoming the Iceman

He teaches breathwork and the health benefits of cold plunges. He has millions of followers who say his method results in a wake-up call to the brain and body. Some say it has cured a variety of things from depression to diabetes.

Hof is Dutch. He is 61 years old. He summitted Kilimanjaro in 31 hours nearly naked. Climbers often take a week to do that with all kinds of cold-weather gear and oxygen tanks.

In the book, Becoming the Iceman, he says that it is unfortunate that we are taught to fear the cold and protect ourselves from it. Hof believes that the ability to control the body’s temperature is not unique to him, but is an ability that can be adopted – and should be adopted – by everyone.

What is called the Wim Hof Method includes a lot of breathwork.  It’s breathing that is like controlled hyperventilation.  Here’s an example: Do three to six sets of 30 to 40 deep breaths. That means a strong inhale through the nose and a relaxed exhale from the mouth. On that last breath of each set, you exhale and hold for one to three minutes. I tried that. It made me a little dizzy and there was no way I could hold my breath for even a minute. I guess I need a lot of breathwork training. After that held breath, you take a recovery breath and hold it for 15 seconds.

This may sound familiar to you if you have done meditation or pranayama (kundalini yoga’s breath of fire) or the tummo of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. All of these are rhythmic-breathing disciplines. I have tried these techniques in the past. Some people enjoy the resulting buzz in the brain as a natural high. Some people feel dizzy and start seeing flashes of light. Not everyone feels it’s a good thing.

As I said at the start, I don’t like the cold. Hof would tell me that after all that intense breathing, what I need next is cold exposure. He is of the school that believes you should immerse in freezing water, but he would be okay if I started with even a minute or two under a cold shower to get an effect.

The initial effect is panic in the brain. Like a meditator dismissing the intruding thoughts, he says you need to dismiss the panic and relax and focus. That focus can be visualizing heat inside you and generating warmth in your body.  (I agree. Warm is good!)

That cold shower also floods your brain and cells with oxygen. Your vascular system gets a boost. Endorphins, which are structurally similar to the drug morphine, are released. They are natural painkillers. Your opioid receptors are activated. They can bring about feelings of euphoria and general well-being. Hof believes it brings you fully into the present moment.

I read a long article in Outside magazine about Wim Hof. He has turned his philosophy into a business. That always makes me apprehensive.

He might answer my apprehension like this: “This method is very simple, very accessible, and endorsed by science. Anybody can do it, and there is no dogma, only acceptance. Only freedom.” That comes from his book, The Wim Hof Method, which I plan to read this winter while sitting in a warm house, possibly under a blanket.

Then again, maybe I will venture out into the cold after reading it. I do find that stepping out a cold morning for my daily walk is very “bracing.” Of course, I’m not naked or wet, so it’s nothing like what he is preaching.

He has a company called Innerfire and, despite his entrepreneurial side, he is a “counterculture” hero. He has more than a million Instagram followers. He has written or contributed to a shelf full of books. He hosts seminars around the world and there are certified Wim Hof instructors offering their own workshops. This is a business.

I tried out the free minicourse on his website and it was an interesting teaser and I could certainly try some of the basic techniques on my own. But I am not ready to do any polar bear plunges into the Atlantic Ocean.

I would say this Iceman has arrived.

from Hof’s Instagram page where he writes “If you trust the messages of nature, then nature entrusts you to be a messenger. Breathe and use the cold.”

Considering Spring on February Second

A badger emerging from its den

It is February again and some people, in some places in the Northern Hemisphere, mark this as a time when some animals emerge from their winter dens. These events were viewed as omens that would predict the season ahead. In some European countries, watching the behavior of animals (badgers in particular) on February 2 to see if they emerged or returned to their dens predicted the coming of spring. It was believed that animals had a far more acute sense of the weather. Many people still believe that. If that badger emerged but decided to return to its den, it meant that there was still a long winter ahead.

Americans are probably more familiar with the holiday created by German immigrants in Pennsylvania. They didn’t find many badgers in Pennsylvania but there were a lot of groundhogs. Groundhog Day goes back to the mid-1800s. Though today it has become highly commercialized, the original idea was to continue the Candlemas Day tradition of watching a denning animal emerge from its winter quarters. In what I always thought to be reverse logic, if it is sunny and it sees its shadow and goes back in, it is another six weeks of winter rest. If the animal emerges on a cloudy day with no shadow, it will remain out and the rest of winter weather will be moderate.

There are other early February special days. Today is a “cross-quarter” day in the solar calendar. That means it falls exactly between a solstice and an equinox, and so we are halfway there in turning the wheel of the year. This is the ancient Celtic holiday of Imbolc. It honored Brigid, goddess of fire, poetry, healing, and childbirth. This was the day that she brought the healing power of the sun back to the world. Imbolc comes from the Old Irish imbolg, meaning “in the belly.”  It was the time when ewes became pregnant to deliver spring lambs.

As with many pagan holidays, February 2 became a Christian holiday called Candlemas Day which marked the presentation of Jesus at the Temple 40 days after Christmas and is marked by the blessing of candles. The day before, February 1, is Saint Brigid’s feast day.

Saint Brigid’s cross

According to an old Candlemas verse that seems to agree with the groundhog tradition:
If Candlemas day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
But if Candlemas day bring clouds and rain,
Winter is gone and won’t come again.

How was the weather in your neighborhood today? More winter or an early spring?

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is also known as winter depression or winter blues, and it is a mood disorder in which people who have “normal” mental health throughout most of the year, seem to experience depressive symptoms in the winter. (There are actually a smaller number of people who seem to experience it in the summer, spring or autumn.)

The winter solstice is nearing and the weather in my locale is already feeling less like autumn and more like winter.

Do you experience any severe mood changes when the seasons change? Maybe you start to sleep too much. Your energy level drops. You crave “comfort foods” and sweet and starchy foods. You feel depressed.

Sure, everyone gets these symptoms, but they usually go away quickly on their own. SAD is when it lasts for weeks, months, or throughout the season.

I am not a therapist, but I’ve been through therapy. So, these are some suggestions I have if you feel some winter blues that I hope might help.

Light therapy with sunlight or bright lights is a standard one. Certainly, if you live in a cold climate now, getting to a sunny beach would be nice – but that’s not always practical. The special lights can be expensive, to own (there are places where you can go use them too), so my first recommendation is getting out into real sunlight. Add to that getting into the natural world – a park, a wooded area, a forest – and you increase the power of the sunlight. Even on the coldest days, I try to get outside, even if that means just having coffee on the deck with my face nd hands exposed for 20 minutes. There are low-cost light therapy bulbs and devices that might work for you too.

Let me put in a good word for Vitamin D.  It’s a good vitamin for preventing osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. It even affects diabetes and obesity. It is such an underrated nutrient – probably because it’s free.

Don’t rush to buy a vitamin D supplement. Your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin. Since no one can make money selling you sunlight, it doesn’t get much promotion. Vitamin D is produced by your skin when exposed to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight. Those rays cannot penetrate glass, so sitting on the couch looking out the window or in a car is not going to help. I read that it is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body. Of course, we don’t all get out into the sunlight as much in winter, so supplements can make up for that during winter.

Another “official” treatment is ionized-air using an air ionizer (or negative ion generator) which is a device that uses a high-voltage charge to ionize air molecules. Negative ions, or anions, are particles with one or more extra electrons, conferring a net negative charge to the particle. Ions are de-ionized by seeking earthed conductors, such as walls and ceilings. These negative ions are positive for your mental health.

Do you know where you can surround yourself with these negative ions? Around water. Water generates negative ions. Breaking the surface tension of water, by waves, waterfalls, water over rocks in a stream or evaporation releases negative hydrogen ions into the atmosphere. These negative ions can stick to different free radicals and so are very beneficial for our health. Get thee to some water!

Some studies have shown that carefully timed supplements of the hormone melatonin can help people with SAD.

What’s the takeaway from this post? Get out of the house – especially in winter when the season and cold tells you to stay in.  Get sunlight. Get into nature. Find a place with moving falling water. Bring a friend or loved one. Walk and look at what is around you. Breathe deeply. Take a hike. Feel the cold that tells you are alive. If these things are not possible for you, try the alternatives.

The worst way to treat those depressive bouts is to do what depression tells you to do – stay home, avoid people, eat junk, drink alcohol, take drugs, smoke, and sleep excessively.  You have to force yourself to do the opposite, and if you do, it will get easier to stay on that path. If you know someone going through SAD, try to get them on the right path.

• Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Seasonal Affective Disorder For Dummies
• The Light of Day: A Mindbody Approach to Overcoming Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Seasonal Affective Disorder: Practice and Research

Winter in Paradelle

I am still looking out my window at autumn and the winter solstice is a month away, but the predictions of the winter ahead are showing up. Mother Nature doesn’t really pay much attention to the calendar, astronomical events, or the predictions of humans.

I always do some winter weather prediction posts because I found that even he oldest ones still show up as getting attention as autumn turns to winter. people really want to know what is ahead – even if predictions are often wrong. November is also a month for election predictions which also have some science but a lot of inaccuracies.

Winter in Paradelle is really winter in New Jersey, a state that is located about halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. According to Rutgers University Climate Lab, annual snowfall in the state averages 40 to 50 inches in the northern zone as compared with an average of 10-15 inches in the extreme south. But for the winter of 2022, the average was a mere 3 inches. Climate change or weather patterns? That was the second least snowy season on record across the state.

AccuWeather unveiled their early winter forecast in early October, predicting a snowier winter than last year for the New Jersey region (including the New York and Philadelphia metro areas) but still slightly less snow than average because of the El Niño weather pattern. They predict that this winter’s heavier snow activity may come in waves, starting with one batch in November, followed by a quiet December, then an active period in 2024.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the Atlantic corridor, which includes New Jersey, can expect more snow than usual during the winter season of 2023-2024. They say that the snowiest periods will occur at the end of December, late January, and mid-February.

If you want to see where it is snowing around the Earth right now, check out the Global Snow Lab website.

Does October Weather Signal the Winter Ahead?

Does frost on the pumpkins mean something about the coming winter?

My post about signs in nature of how intense the winter ahead will be always seem to move back up the stats list around the time of the autumnal equinox, so I’m updating an older post about how October weather supposedly gives us clues about the winter ahead,

My friend, Maria, told me that her Italian mother believed that if there is a bumper crop of acorns in the fall, it means that we will have a bad winter. That’s one of many weather proverbs or nuggets of weather lore.

My mother told me as a child that if leaves hang on in the autumn and are slow to fall, we should prepare for a cold winter. The little scientist in me as a child wondered if it wasn’t just because the fall was gentle and we didn’t have the wind or rain to shake the leaves loose from branches. But then I suppose you could say that a gentle autumn means a tougher winter.

Several bits of weather lore look to October weather to predict the winter to come: 

• Much rain in October, means much wind in December.
• Thunder in the fall is supposed to foretell a cold winter ahead.
• A warm October means a cold February.
• A Full Moon in October without any frost means a warmer month ahead.
• In late autumn and up until the Winter Solstice, flowers still blooming is a pleasant surprise but is supposed to be a sure sign of a rough winter to follow.

The general rule seems to be that a gentle preceding season means a colder one to follow. For example, I have read weather lore that says that a mild winter means a cold spring to come.

Do keep in mind that with all this weather lore, your local observations might be an indication of the local weather ahead and not about the country or the world. I am not a believer in the “official” winter forecasts you often see in the media about the winter ahead. Though they may be “scientific” they are so broad that the microclimates we all live in often are quite different.

We’re Halfway There. Turn the Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Si sol splendescat Maria purificante,
major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante.” *

Today is the exact halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Yes, it is Groundhog Day and I have written about that here before. But how many different ways can you explain the origin of our tradition of expecting an animal to predict the coming weather? I can always explain to people my love of the film Groundhog Day, but I’ve done that here too.

Today I’ll just write about the winter midpoint, also known as a cross-quarter day. No matter what that groundhog (or a badger, as the original German tradition had it) or any animal does when he pokes his head out from hibernation today, be optimistic. We are halfway through winter.

The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by many modern Pagans. It can be considered to have either four or eight festivals. Some people celebrate the four solstices and equinoxes, which are known as the “quarter days.” Some also celebrate the four midpoints between, such as today, which are known as the “cross-quarter days.”

Festivals celebrating the cycle of the seasons were far more important to people in the past. You might also hear Wiccans refer to these festivals as sabbats, a term from the Middle Ages. It was probably taken partially from the Jewish Shabbat.

Today is Imbolc on the wheel, the first cross-quarter day. It is supposed to be a time for purification and spring cleaning in anticipation of the year’s new life.

In Ancient Rome, this was a shepherd’s holiday. Among Celts, this day was associated with the onset of ewes’ lactation, prior to birthing the spring lambs. Celtic pagans dedicated this day to the goddess Brigid.

The Winter Solstice was the shortest day of the year with the fewest sunlit hours. But after that, the Sun started its return journey back toward us in the Northern Hemisphere. You didn’t notice that move back in December, but after today you can actually see and feel this gradual reappearance of the light.

Maybe you will pick up a hint of the coming of spring. Look for the first tiny buds. Some snowdrops will push their fragile blooms above the frosty soil or even through the snow.

Yes, hibernating animals are stirring in their dens and underground nests. They may even go out at night and grab a meal and then return to their winter tunnel.

If Groundhog Day seems silly, think of this as the Celtic Imbolc, or as the Chinese Li Chu’un, or the Christian Candlemas.

The Latin quote at the top of this essay is translated as a rhyme:
“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
winter will have another flight.
If on Candlemas Day it be shower and rain,
winter is gone and will not come again.” 
In other words, good weather today is a bad omen. Bad weather is a good sign. Reminds me of that groundhog. He sees his shadow if it is a sunny day, but that means more winter, though it would seem to indicate spring.

So, don’t be concerned with midwinter divinatory practices. Spring is six weeks away. Some of those days to come will be wintery; some will be springlike.  It’s okay to hibernate for another six weeks and feel like the universe has decided that’s the way it should be.

* That quote at the top of this post is open to greater interpretation as far as the weather ahead. It literally translates as: “If the sun shines with Mary the mother of purifying, after the feast of ice will be greater than it was before.”