Truth about Contrast Therapy
Welcome to the contrast therapy blog.
Feeling stressed all the time without coming down from the intensity? This is most people today. No matter everything you might have tried to induce calm, improve happiness and peacefulness within, many are not achieving success. This is posing huge challenges with health and life, and it is only getting worse. On the web at any given moment you can search out a symptom you feel to seek immediate reparation for that specific issue… to no satisfaction.
“Why Not?” you ask yourself.
Because nothing is that simple of a remedy for what is actually happening in the body and mind. Hate to tell you the truth. This is why so many people reach for the “quick fixes” or “bandaid solutions” to avoid the problem for now (so you tell yourself) rather than find and conquer the issue or issues at hand.
OR
What is worse, is that you might have figured out what the problem is… but you do not want to make that lifestyle adjustment.
IS THERE HELP?
Yes. There is help. There is always help. It depends on you. You must do the work. Remember, the body always seeks to reset itself, to heal and make reparations. But if you continually add the insults that destroy the body’s natural duty, eventually it will not be able to bounce back on its own.
There has never been a simple method to healing, or staying healthy or repairing destructive behaviours. BUT, it does become easier when you can prevent issues and when you get over the difficulty of a new process. This is what it is to be human. I understand it all too well, myself. In my previous blogs I have shared parts of my personal story. How I really shouldn’t be alive today.
GOING FROM BAD TO AWESOME
I was tired of feeling like shit. I was tired of being tired. I was tired of disappointing myself.
SCENERIO #1: The more disconnected you are from yourself, the smaller the space around you and what you occupy, which adds more distress that encapsulates your being. Vice loading, and comforts and conveniences topple the comforts seeked, and now your body and mind is paying for it.
SCENERIO #2 : Connection to self being present and mindful. Deal with whatever it is you are avoiding. Your world feels larger now, with better space to breathe so you can “see” and feel the inner power. You make better choices and you crave the awesome feeling within.
For me, I started to use hormetic stressors as my building blocks to recovery.
Resistance training, cold use, contrast therapy work, fasting that was right for me, and breathwork. In addition to these in my repertoire, I moved out destructive foods, vices and made lifestyle adjustments.
But, I hadn’t thought much about my nervous system health during this transitional phase of recovery. I kept healing in leaps and bounds. I was feeling more alive and able. My poor abused body was thriving more and more, and I felt worth, power and physical strength returning.
I did begin my comeback journey with lifting weights/ intense exercise…. But it wasn't until I was back to using cold and contrast therapy that it well rounded my health… including vagal tone activation - calmer nervous system.
WHAT ARE THERMORECEPTORS?
The thermoregulatory system is the first level that feels temperature.
The thermoreceptors are your signalers that are found in abundance from epidermal layers and into the deep core. Many parts of our body can be more sensitive to cold as the receptors for cold are more abundant than the warm receptors. Most likely because we are mammals.
All the receptors send signals based on the exposure to activate different responses in the body and mind.
In future blogs we will discuss the cold receptors and heat receptors separately. I just want to tell you that we have a lot of them.
DID YOU KNOW?
The most sensitive to temperature areas:
Lips
Face
Ears
Fingertips
*this is just an example of a far deeper, more complex array of thermoreceptors throughout the body. We even have brain receptors - hypothalamus for instance.
We need to use these beautiful receptors to keep them functioning. They exist for good reason and purpose, to trigger our body to act when the body needs to cool or to warm up.
The problem today is that humans are OVER covering their bodies, they are overlayering some parts without allowing the cold to feel to trigger the cold receptors to bring warmth. Yes, you read this correctly. We mammals have more cold receptors than heat receptors, and we have advanced, beautiful systems within our body that know how to use the intel the receptors provide us.
PROBLEMS EVERYWHERE
In addition to over layering - cooler outdoor temperatures or even the slightest breeze - people cover. This affects your nervous system just as much as your overall health. You do not realize that if you actually use your body’s thermoregulatory system correctly, you can prevent ANS and CNS destructive behaviours at the same time, gain resilience and control and power of your being.
Vagal tone training is one of the major benefits during CORRECT USE of contrast therapy in women and men both. You caught that. Here lies the biggest concern for why so many people follow the incorrect procedures while at large spas. People have a tendency to watch, therefore follow others in how they “practice” contrast therapy - in all types of heat, and cold - while executing it poorly, inefficiently. This can bring about more harm to your cellular, vascular and nervous system health.
For this reason it is vital to understand what your body is going through when using intentional intense temperatures - contrast therapy - a key hormetic stressor in modern day living.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT CONTRAST THERAPY ENTAILS?
I am going to answer this for you. No. You may be quite experienced (attending a spa regularly), or you may have read a ton of web influencers, but I would like to say that about 90% of information out there is not completely accurate. Even if some common household names have PHD after their name. This has posed a problem with regards to women's health most especially and women have come to me to understand the value that we must use cold as part of our lives - all mammals.
WOMEN AND MEN REQUIRE COLD. PERIOD.
SO, WHAT DOES CONTRAST THERAPY ENTAIL?
It is how we perform this necessary shocking stressor.
It is the frequency of practice.
It is not about time, more about the shock factor - then switching to mammalian dive reflex
It is about finding that thin lie between pushing (yes) and forcing (no)
It is about supportive work for our body - not ever to compete
It is a connection to self by reducing limitations.
It is about the process.
It is necessary to ground.
It is mostly about CONSISTENCY.
All of these above points are crucial. And sadly, most of these valuable key points are lost.
CONTRAST THERAPY MEANING:
Heat
Cold
Pausing
Rest
Energy balancing/ grounding
Breathing
Consistency
Protocol
I’ll leave this blog here. I want you to read, reread and understand that there is much more to contrast therapy than what you have initially believed.
Until next week’s blog, be sure to take a cold shower every day.
We will discuss temperature types, dosing and more next week.
BOOKINGS:
Coaching 1:1 or 2:1 for the first timers, or even those who want to navigate best practices.
Denise Tompkins
Purveyor of thermal alignment
Certified Thermalist® and Owner of Element Outdoor Sauna
