Breathing Through Cold Plunge: Techniques That Work: Full Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the connected community podcast. Today my guest is Alex Suk and we talk about cold plunge therapy and breath work. I love this combination and Alex is an absolute expert in this because he is the founder of the breathing cold experience. Everything that he teaches is about breath work. Breath work is the foundation added in with the cold plunge

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this late, but you are in Bali, so we're happy to have you uh tuning in from Bali. Yeah, I I need to prove that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Little you're going to make us all jealous because the scenery is so amazing. Yes. Sorry. Huch better than my backyard. Um, I'm excited to talk to you today.

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these tools really really work and they they work if you practice them. It doesn't require for you to years of mastery. It's not like meditation or yoga. What I love about those modalities that they are straightforward and they work for everybody every time and I love that. I love the simplicity of those tools. Yeah. So, if I were going to hop in an ice

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want to say 48 degrees which I think is somewhere like around 9 ° C but after listening to your training I don't know if I'm doing things right and so I I let's just start with the difference between men and women because I think I had assumed that we all work equally in that way and then after listening to you I'm kind of excited that women don't need to go as cold. Okay. So here is because I read all the

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nervous system and everyone's different when it comes to their relation to their nervous system. So someone who will have experience, they would have absolutely no problem and they would absolutely love it. The cold will reduce PMS. So the the pain before the period and so that's the ultimate answer. Now uh women are less sensitive to pain than men and you know often women make jokes about uh a man's flu and how men are way more

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awareness. And that shuts down the noise in my head. I don't have stories about my future and my past anymore. That's why I call it forced mindfulness. Now imagine for someone like me who's got ADHD, who's running around like a maniac and all of a sudden I go in the ice and I do that for 15 minutes, 20 minutes and I've got 20 minutes of presence. that is more beneficial to me than a

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and from a place of no longer being triggered, I can observe myself and I leave my daughter alone and I reflect. Okay, what part of me is being triggered there? Yes, of course there is a rational thinking. You did something she didn't honor it. It's her fault. Okay, we can go there. But there is something about me that is overreacting. So it's personal. So now let's go into that.

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every time. And when I do it more often, I do that less, but if I haven't been in it a while, I just like huge gas and I do I scream. My family can hear me upstairs. Um, so it's nice to know that you do that too and as a tool and as as a method like a pressure release valve to release those things that don't serve you. So actually here is the secret and I'm going to say that in a very French

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okay is repressing your emotions, is being in control. That's how you should behave. That when someone is getting out of the way and is letting the eyes take him into a beautiful 10 minutes full shivering process and a release of they think there's something wrong with me. Yeah. And I I get that everywhere in the world. I I almost do it as a social experiment to see how suppressed people are around the world. And there's no

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you you mentioned about timing, about temperature. Yeah. Um, but let's start with the shivering. Mhm. The difference between your description and my description is I'm consciously shivering. Okay. And you are the your body is getting the signal. But for me, I'm I'm kind of

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What we're missing as humans is instead of releasing whatever is happening, we just suppress it. So, we go through something traumatic and we want to forget about it. And that's the mistake of humans. Animals, they go through something traumatic, they release it. near-death experience, they release it and then they go on with their day. So, we need to copy them. We need to get inspired by animals and and practice

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all of it I don't even I don't have aaring. I don't measure my heart rate and my steps. And I've stopped all that to fully connect and listen to the intelligence of my body and do the things that my body is calling rather than what is said by a podcast or by some kind of a doctor or influencer. Now, how ours has a thermometer on it that needs to be set in order to keep it.

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your nervous system is regulated, you're calm and connected and relaxed, then you get out. I recommend the same in relationship, right? Yes. But when you're shivering, get out. You want to be able to get out of the sh You don't want to You want to be able to navigate that and get out of it because something very important for safety within two three minutes after

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production of metabolism when you're doing a short circuit by cheating going into the uh into the into into the heat. So do do for me it's about doing it in presence and mindful but here is what happens when you go into the ice you have something called vasoc constriction. Yeah. So the nerves the vein the arteries narrow in order to send the blood to your core. Yeah. you come out, you have vasodil dilitation.

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your training about how say you do the cold plunge, your body naturally warms up, then you go in the sauna for 20 minutes. You were saying don't jump from the sauna straight into the cold plunge to stay out of the sauna for a while before jumping in. So, I'd love for you to talk about that. Okay. I one of my teachers is Dr. Mark Cohen. He's an incredible doctor in

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and relax for 20 minutes. Have a beautiful rest. You do that you literally produce serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, you will feel happier. So you know what's happening when we are taking drugs they are just suppressing of some hormones and production of other hormone. We have this inner pharmacy if we know how to tap into it. It's amazing. So sauna is one of the best uh health practices but

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dangerous and there are way more accidents in Sona than in ice bus. People are focused on ice bus safety. All the accident that I hear they're always around sona and overheating. It's a little bit like, you know, you put a frog in hot water, they jump out, but you put a frog in cold water and you heat it up and it's going to die. And most people, they don't have the ability, their sensors are not on

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Um, but I have found that I can stay in the cold plunge way longer when my hands are out. And so I kind of do this get in I I keep them out and then I'll put them in for a minute and then I'll pull them out for a minute. I'm wondering if it's I know we're kind of like whatever is best for your body at that moment, but I'm going to ask a what's best question. Is it best to stay in longer for my body and all the benefits with my hands out

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important. So yeah and as you mentioned earlier when you get in you develop something called a thermal layer like we have the same in a hot bath. So it's yeah it's like a bubble. It's easy. You call it the bubble. It's easier because all of a sudden you are it protects you from the cold. So maybe the practice can be to have awareness of that but then you can start bringing some movement and break that thermal

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I have to jump in. If I get my legs in and I just stand there for a second I can't get my body in. I just have to do it. But there is some value about challenging that now it's mental work. So you can also go various like for instance if I have someone who has um anything related to the nervous system you know epilepsy which is usually a big no no any kind of

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with stress, to educate yourself on that. I think that's that's the main benefit. So, yeah, that's that's what I do. That's what I recommend. And every day is different. My timer. Remove the timer. My timer for everything in life. Anything that is around control, see how it feels when you remove it and

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blanket. You sleep very well. Okay. So, the cooler the body, the more melatonin you produce. Now, how does the melatonin production works? We have two level of uh temperature control. we have the uh superficial and outer sensors and then the inner sensor. So basically we always want to be in homeostasis. We need to be let's say 37 ° C. Uh that's that's where everything work fine. We're too cold that's not

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we know it intuitively. We we do it. You're not going to the sauna in the morning. You do it in the evening. So you know go back to the fundamentals of listening to the body and we do things in the natural. When you do the ice bus in the morning you also set your circadian rhythm because the body temperature is following this circadian rhythm and by lowering in the morning you are preparing it and setting

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practice it. So it's yes it's good for the body. Yes, it's super healthy. It brings clarity for me. I use it as you know when I'm in mental fogess when I don't feel clear or again when I travel to reset myself. But I also prepare myself in the eventuality that I need it. And every time I feel I'm getting sick, boom, goodbye everybody. I'm I'm doing my thing and within a day or two I'm I'm

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practice. I mean it does keep your mind off of holy hell. It's so cold I need to get out. Or you can just focus on counting. Yeah. I think you said um in your training that it that we should try when we're exercising to breathe through our nose and I was at the gym on the stair climber trying that for you know 10 seconds

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muscle aches the next day, that could be because you didn't have CO2. So the muscles are not oxygenated and hydrated enough. Those are the two elements. So by optimizing oxygenation and hydration, by the way, there are 42% difference in hydration between nose and mouth. So when you breathe through the mouth, you dehydrate 42% more. So you also should tape your sleep and that's all this is out there. You can really chip

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powder and you're going to have a tape. Look it up. It's out there. All the athletes now, all the champions, they work on the CO2 tolerance. Where do football players go before the World Cup? They ought to go to the mountains. They go in altitude. Yeah. And everybody knows that. Why? Because the air the their different partial pressure. It's harder to breathe. So, it's a workout for your lungs. And then

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Yeah. I mean, there are other studies about um taping the mouth shut. I've done that before. taping the mouth shut and then I' I've woken up and the tape was still there. Um, and just making sure that I'm not mouth breathing at night because I think that that really disrupts our sleep. It's crazy what it does. Look it up. James Neesto great wrote a great book breath and there are tons of

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feelings, you do that through the mouth. When you dance, breathe through your mouth. When you make love, breathe through your mouth. Anytime you want to connect to your emotional body, that's mouth breathing. No, you know, if you're at the funeral and you're not supposed to laugh, you're gonna suppress and breathe through the nose and suppress your mouth. So whenever you're in your

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guide you through understanding some concepts and we practice together and it's beautiful production so you can enjoy that I have a very cheap one short one five weeks on stress also self-paced online I have a nine months container for people who want to change their life but also become fascin facilitator and we do this online uh for 9 months we uh part is pre-recorded again very proud of the production and it's long time

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thank you so much for that. Thank you for listening to the connected community podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, share, and subscribe. I can be found at www. niki yoga. com. nickelog. com. Until I see you again next week, I hope you have a beautiful day.