Recently, I became aware of the practice of a Misogi challenge while reading the book The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (highly recommend it). Misogi is originally a Japanese Shinto practice of cleansing the mind and body, by standing under an ice-cold ice-melt waterfall. The idea as described by Easter is that once a year you do something that is extremely hard, you have about a 50% chance of succeeding at, but it’s important that it doesn’t kill or harm you. The idea is that it builds resilience and wellbeing amongst other things. While that may be a big thing to go and do, introducing something small on a daily basis that does the same things can be much more within our grasp.

A great way to do this, especially at the moment with winter upon us, is with a morning cold shower.  My first experience with extremely cold water was on a trip to Iceland back in 2014 with my uncle, who used to be a tour guide over there. He invited me to try a dip in the Jökulsárlón, a glacier lake (see picture). And while a cold shower isn’t nearly as intense or uncomfortable as that was, it’s still good enough for a daily challenge.

There are all kinds of reasons to try a cold shower, including boosting alertness and energy levels, aiding circulation and boosting immunity (though it’s not recommended when you are sick), enhanced skin and hair health, relieving muscle soreness and supporting recovery, increasing resilience to stress, promoting mental well-being, and cultivating discipline and mental toughness. There is now a lot of research on the benefits of cold exposure, and if you’re interested in a deeper dive on this topic check out this article from Huberman Lab – The science and use of cold exposure for health.

Of course, it’s important that if you have any medical conditions that may not respond well to the shock of a cold shower, please check with your doctor first.

That being said, if you are keen to give it a go, you can start by gradually dropping the temperature down, and working your way up from 30 seconds of cold. Ideally you should be aiming for up to 3-5 minutes. Some recommendations are to go for a cold bath for 3-5 minutes to get the full benefit, but a cold shower can be a great way to start.

My normal thought as I switch on the cold water in the morning, is that this is quite obviously a terrible idea. But pushing through that and getting on with it, I’ve found it surprising that as the time increases to around 2-3 minutes it gets easier and actually a bit pleasant to be in the cold. The other surprising thing is that once I’ve been doing it a while, I’ve started to look forward to it, and feel disappointed when I don’t get to do.  So be warned, while it’s hard to start, the benefits from doing it can be quite addictive, but in a good way!

Good luck!