It is getting close to the one month mark of my training with and practice of the Wim Hof yoga/energy/breathing techniques and I am still doing a quite imperfect job of mastering them. So far every day I have done 30 minutes of the yoga breathing, and have immersed my body in cold water.
Today, the cold bath was one of the somewhat slower days. I was feeling tired and a bit under the weather. It seems harder to do the bath those days. The important part is not just powering through, but controlling the breath and body reactions as you move into the cold water. Even at the one month mark my body still has an impulse to want to gasp for air as I hit the water. This tendency increases on days I feel tired. However, the goal is to overcome this, making an automatic, unconscious body function conscious and controllable.
As always, once I get out of the water I feel AMAZING!!! My body is energized. My skin feels like ice, just like a vampire out of the Twilight series. Inside, I feel warm.
The breathing is a struggle still. I do many other yoga breathing (pranayama) practices that are quite comfortable for me. This one might take some time. It is related to the secret Tibetan yoga Tummo breath, but is not the complete process. We were told that with practice the rest will be revealed to us. I know this principle is true and have had it happen in other areas. This one though, is one of my very imperfect areas. The one good thing is, like the slow, ploddy turtle, I doggedly (or down doggedly) stick with the practice every day – imperfect or not.