Therapeutic Contrast Shower
After every shower, turn down the hot water, as low as you can tolerate (eventually you may be able to turn it off completely, and comfortably). Cover every inch of your body with the cooler water, including the bottoms of your feet. Focus the cold stream on affected areas – scalp, back, joints, pelvis, etc. If you prefer, you may even alternate hot and cold, as long as you always end with cold. This should take only one to three minutes, in entirety. Then dry yourself off quickly, rubbing briskly. This may sound barbaric, but this causes your body to react in an exquisitely healthy manner, you will warm up quickly and turn pink afterwards. It is important to feel very warm internally before beginning the cold phase.
This therapy helps strengthen and normalize the nervous, circulatory, endocrine (hormonal), musculoskeletal and immune systems, and is excellent for helping the body cope with stress. The more you challenge yourself with cold, the more you will notice these effects, sometimes even a subtle healthy “high”. As you initially rinse under the hot water, the blood in your body travels out from the internal organs and out towards the skin. As you rinse yourself under the cold water, the blood is then shuttled deep into your internal organs in order to keep them warm. As you dry off with a towel, the blood will then travel from deep within your organs back toward the surface of the skin and a reddening of the skin will occur. This therapy works, through the shuttling of blood in and out of organs, to greatly increase the elimination of toxins and metabolic waste from the body.
There may be times when your responsiveness is decreased and you should either temporarily decrease the intensity (i.e. not as cold) or discontinue this treatment:
• When you are acutely ill or injured and do not feel strong enough
• When you are under treatment for chronic illness and are undergoing an aggravation which weakens you.
• You are menstruating and do not feel strong enough.
• You know that you are overstressed and are planning to deal with your stresses but haven’t started doing so yet.
• When you feel chilly
In addition, this therapy may be contraindicated in the following conditions and you may need to consult with your doctor or clinician:
• Vascular insufficiency or stasis (the extreme of “poor circulation”)
• Cardiac insufficiency (from heart disease, etc.)
• Some anemia or blood dyscrasias
• Pregnancy
• Certain kinds of chronic infections
• Malnutrition
• Some joint diseases
• Diabetes