Hey… I was bathing at dawn in a forest stream, and was watching my breath… it is August but I could see my breath this early, as it is quite foggy, can load pics…
Water tend to put me into a breathing shock. I’ve lived in Arctic, Desert and Tropical Entiroments, dry and very humid… I’ve never gotten over the plunge into icy water, unless I was already frozen or hot… army made me do it a lot in Alaska.
The last part of my I put in the water was my back, and I was convulsing, controlling my breath… and then I adjusted, no more. Was completely adjusted.
My body has never adapted well to temperature extremes at all that quickly. I remember up in Alaska whenever I had to go to morning formation at 6:30AM (but was required to wake at 5:00 AM for bullshit reasons) I would shiver harder than anyone, sometimes the only one… but after about twenty minutes, I wouldn’t be cold anymore while everyone else was freezing their asses off, and often didn’t need to return back inside even though I wasn’t wearing much.
So, I’m perplexed why my body has such a radically different reaction than others. I can’t accept a sudden extreme cold or hot, but once adjusted, do better than most.
I’ve heard breathing is used a lot in the Himalayas for cold adjustments , but nothing has ever came of my past attempts. I’ve found trying to control my breathing intake over outtake, and holding visual focus doesn’t diddly fucking squat in the cold, just makes me cross eyed and light headed.
Further, I’ve seen silly ideas like this:
I don’t breath out on either nostril, I breathe out of my lungs and throat control. If air is going through one nostril, it us going through the other unless I block the back of my throat, then it is my mouth. That keeps me a bit warm, in raising my body temperature, but doesn’t lower it. The nostrils… the air after the nostril enters the same damn cavity and my lungs are doing all the work.
I broke me nose when I was younger, so really doubt that has shit to do with me even if it was factual.
I’ve seen the videos of the Swedish Iceman, and went to www.innerfire.nl years ago and asked the Norwegian that ran the site, and he said he learned from breath control in cold showers (done did it) and it activates the Thalamus…
I don’t think I’ve done that at all, most information I can find on my personality type, the conjectures suggest the thalamus is where we are weakest in terms of volitional consciousness. I’ve read it can control temperature regulation, sleep patterns, appetite… the very shit I can’t control.
I can’t find any scientific work on neurological theories of how tibetian monks resist the cold, to a level I can trace in the mind and see where I am, and what I’m doing wrong. Just silliness on sitting in the woods naked… usually a warm jungle, and doing stuff that doesn’t involve temperature regulation. I figured if I saw a map of the mind explaining the theory, it would be easier for me to figure out what I’m doing wrong and fix it. It may not even be possible in my case, I’m not impressed with the range of personality types based in the Thalamus. I don’t want to give up my advantages to embrace a lesser mindsetc all for the sake of better temperature regulation. I would like to know why I react so differently to the cold than others. I am German, heavy (now), hairy (not kidding on the hairy part) and if I just slapped a bearskin on could easily blend into a Roman era German village as a axe weilding maniac. I’m supposing I got a lot of ice age traits in me.
I also note I always heavily sweated. Like… I was the fastest runner long distance in basic training, but afterwards when I hung up my exercise uniform to dry, it dripped massive puddles… even if I barely ran, at a slow jug, behind everyone barely doing anything.
Only a couple guys sweated like me, out of a platoon of 50+ guys. Some didn’t sweat at all. I know my body regulates heat very differently from most.