It is this time of year that I start thinking about setting up my small collapsible tub on my back porch. This is not the time of year to be thinking about jumping into water outside, yet here I am. In the middle of winter I sometimes have to chip away at a layer of ice to get in. The initial shock of stepping into the water hits immediately. Once I am submerged up to my neck, the full impact of the cold hits the senses. At first it can bring on pain, especially in my feet. Then the countdown begins. The goal is to sit there for three minutes. It normally doesn’t seem like a long time, but it feels like eternity as the seconds count down. I start slow, rhythmic breathing and stare at one object in the distance to try to distract myself. When the timer goes off, I leap out of the water and an inner chill takes over that lasts longer than the three minutes themselves.
Most people reach for a warm shower or a hot bath for a moment of relief. So why step into water cold enough to require chipping ice? I do it because it is hard. I have found that doing something hard by my own choosing allows me to tackle the obstacles that come my way unexpectedly. Choosing to do something I really don’t want to do, and doing it anyway, creates a practice that can be repeated when unplanned difficulties arise. It helps train the nervous system and remain calm during stress. Wim Hof puts the same idea plainly: “Cold is a stressor, so if you are able to get into the cold and control your body’s response to it, you will be able to control stress.” The point is not to become someone who enjoys pain. The point is to remain steady when the next unchosen difficulty appears.
There are also documented health effects that make the practice easier to justify. A Dutch study found that people who took cold showers reported fewer sick days. Many athletes use ice baths after competition in the belief that the cold aids muscle recovery, though the evidence on that point is mixed. Cold exposure is also thought to activate brown fat, which can increase calorie burn, and some research links it to the release of neurotransmitters that support focus, alertness, and mood. These findings are secondary for me. The main reason remains the deliberate choice to meet a controlled difficulty.
We don’t have to look only at modern advocates of cold exposure to understand the benefits of discomfort. The ancient Stoics examined this topic in detail, especially the Roman Stoic philosopher and teacher Musonius Rufus. In his lecture on training he distinguishes between one kind of training that is good for the soul and another that is good for both the soul and the body. Training for the soul alone is work performed internally. He taught the mental exercise of not embracing things that are thought of as good, such as money, pleasure, and praise, and of not running away from what seems bad, such as pain, poverty, and death. Epictetus teaches something similar with impressions. An impression is an immediate, involuntary thought or mental image that arises before you make a judgment about it. In the ice bath the first impression is often “get out.” The practice is to pause and examine the impression rather than accept it automatically—to notice the urge without obeying it at once. That small gap between the impression and the response is the same gap the three minutes are meant to train.
The physical side of Musonius’ training allows the body to get used to discomfort by giving up life’s pleasures and learning patience under suffering. As the body acclimates to hardship, the soul is trained as well. The modern practice of an ice bath echoes this teaching. As recorded in Lecture VI, On Training: “We use the training common to both when we discipline ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, meager rations, hard beds, avoidance of pleasures, and patience under suffering. For by these things and others like them the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardship, sturdy and ready for any task; the soul too is strengthened since it is trained for courage by patience under hardship and for self-control by abstinence from pleasures.”
One must be careful in how to approach this chosen discomfort. The goal is not to achieve pleasure or satisfaction from pain and humiliation. It is a practice of one's own choosing to take the difficult path even when one doesn’t want to. It is also not meant to be a display for the world to see, but an internal process that trains the body and soul for challenges that may lie ahead.
The Gospel of Mark describes a similar pattern of voluntary withdrawal. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Instead of the mental exercises of the Stoics, Jesus chose withdrawing through prayer. He also practiced fasting, as Matthew records: “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (Matthew 4:2).
The Stoics, Jesus, and modern researchers deliver a similar message: we are to train while there is light. We are to purposefully take on hardship and to steady ourselves when life is still easy. Character is forged in these small moments before the sky becomes dark and unexpected hardship falls upon us. We will be prepared with our dignity and values in place when this moment arrives. We will continue to forge on.
Musonius
References:
Musonius Rufus, Lecture VI, On Training, in Cora E. Lutz, "Musonius Rufus: 'The Roman Socrates,'" Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947).
Epictetus, Discourses and Enchiridion, on impressions.
Wim Hof, The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential (Sounds True, 2020).
Buijze, G. A., et al., "The Effect of Cold Showering on Health and Work: A Randomized Controlled Trial," PLOS ONE 11, no. 9 (2016). This is the Dutch study on sick days.
Bible, English Standard Version: Mark 1:35 and Matthew 4:2.