By Jocelyn Kate | JustJocelynThings – Nurturing Minds, Bodies, and Imaginations

This time last year, cold plunging was starting to get talked about more in wellness spaces, but it still felt pretty far removed from my actual life. It wasn’t something people I knew were doing daily or posting about like it was normal. It still felt a little fringe. Something you heard about, not something you really did.

The only person I actually knew who practiced it was my dad. And to be fair, he can be a bit of an extreme athlete at times.

He’d been talking about breathwork and cold exposure for years. How good it made him feel. How rarely he got sick. How strong and clear-headed it made him. I mostly rolled my eyes. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because he’s always been someone who pushes his limits physically, and cold plunging felt like it fit neatly into that category. Something intense people like him do. Not me.

Still, the idea lingered. Enough that when I saw a Wim Hof workshop being offered at my local yoga studio, SEIKRID, I paused. It caught my attention in a way I didn’t expect. The timing felt right. Like maybe this was my chance to actually experience what he’d been talking about instead of dismissing it from the sidelines.

At that point, I wasn’t trying to overhaul my life or commit to some extreme wellness routine. I was just curious. Curious about the cold benefits I kept hearing about. Curious about breathwork. Curious whether my dad might actually be onto something. Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all. Maybe this was actually good for me.

So I signed up. Not because I thought I’d love it or that it would change my life. Mostly just to see if I could do it. To see what would happen if I stepped into something uncomfortable on purpose and stayed long enough to learn from it.

I didn’t know then that this small, curiosity-driven choice would quietly change my relationship with my body over the next year.

Starting With the Breath

This was my first real breathwork experience, but it felt familiar in a way I didn’t expect.

I had been holding my breath for years. People pointed it out to me constantly. Friends, family, even coworkers would tell me to stop holding my breath. I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I honestly didn’t even notice most of the time until someone said something.

I was also always really good at holding my breath as a kid. I could stay underwater longer than most people, and it was something I was known for. At the time, it didn’t mean anything to me. Looking back, it makes sense that my body was comfortable with breath retention.

What I didn’t realize until that moment was how little I was actually breathing.

Most of my breathing was happening high up in my chest. Short, shallow breaths into my lungs. I wasn’t taking deep breaths, and I definitely wasn’t breathing into my stomach. Once it was explained, it was obvious. I could feel how tight everything was and how little air I was actually moving.

When we were guided to breathe into the belly, it felt strange at first. Not bad, just unfamiliar. My body didn’t know how to do it automatically. But once I figured it out, something shifted. My shoulders dropped. My chest relaxed. I felt more grounded almost immediately.

That’s when I realized this wasn’t just interesting, it was useful.

The breath holds felt natural to me. I wasn’t panicking or struggling. I felt steady and clear. It didn’t feel extreme or dramatic, just focused and present.

That was the moment I understood why this might actually help me. Not as a cure-all, but as something practical I could use. Something my body had probably needed for a long time.

Then Came the Cold

After the breathing, the cold felt different than I expected.

It still sucked. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t. The water was cold in that immediate, shocking way where your body reacts before your mind has time to catch up. Everything tensed at once. My breath wanted to shorten. My shoulders wanted to creep up. There was a very clear instinct to get out.

But it also wasn’t unbearable.

There wasn’t panic or fear. It was just intense sensation. Cold, sharp, unmistakable. I remember thinking, okay, this is uncomfortable, but it’s not dangerous. That distinction mattered more than I realized at the time.

I focused on my breathing and stayed in.

At first, every second felt long. I was aware of the clock, aware of my body, aware of how cold everything felt. But somewhere in that first minute, something shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough. My breathing steadied. The initial shock wore off. My body stopped reacting like it was an emergency.

I stayed.

Three full minutes.

That surprised me more than anything else. I didn’t feel tough or accomplished in a dramatic way. I just felt capable. I kept waiting for the moment where I would have to tap out, and it never really came. The cold stayed uncomfortable, but it stopped feeling overwhelming.

I noticed how much of the discomfort had been coming from resistance. From bracing. From tightening up and waiting for it to end. Once I stopped fighting it, my body adjusted on its own. My shoulders dropped. My breath slowed. I wasn’t forcing myself to endure anything. I was just letting the experience happen.

That felt important.

When I got out, I didn’t feel euphoric or emotional. I felt clear and steady. Calm in a very grounded way. There was no adrenaline crash, no big release. Just this quiet sense of presence. And honestly, a little surprise at myself.

The thing I had built up in my head as extreme and unbearable wasn’t nearly as bad as I imagined.

That experience stuck with me because it was simple and undeniable. I went in. It sucked. I stayed. And nothing bad happened.

That was the first time I really felt, in my body, that I was capable of more than I gave myself credit for. And that realization didn’t stay in the cold. It followed me out of the water and into everything else.

What’s Actually Happening in the Body

Once I started understanding the physiology behind the breath and the cold, everything I was experiencing stopped feeling mysterious and started feeling logical. The sensations, the calm, the clarity, even the discomfort all had explanations rooted in how the nervous system and immune system work.

Breath, Carbon Dioxide, and the Nervous System

Most people think breathing is mostly about oxygen, but carbon dioxide plays just as important a role. CO₂ helps regulate blood pH and controls how easily oxygen is released from the blood into tissues. When CO₂ levels are too low, the body becomes more sensitive to stress and sensation.

Shallow, chest-based breathing, which I had been doing for years, lowers CO₂ tolerance over time. That means even small changes in breath or sensation can trigger feelings of air hunger, tightness, dizziness, or anxiety. It keeps the nervous system slightly on edge, even when there’s no real threat.

The Wim Hof breathing pattern changes that relationship.

The rounds of deep breathing temporarily reduce CO₂, and the breath hold that follows allows CO₂ to rise again in a controlled way. Repeating this teaches the body that increased CO₂ is not dangerous. Over time, this improves CO₂ tolerance, which reduces panic signaling and makes the nervous system more resilient.

This helped explain why the breath holds didn’t feel scary to me. My body was already used to retention, but now it was happening intentionally, with awareness, instead of unconsciously from anxiety.

Why the Tingling Happens

The tingling sensation people often feel during the breathing isn’t imagined.

Changes in CO₂ levels temporarily shift blood pH, which affects how nerves fire. This can cause tingling in the hands, arms, face, and sometimes throughout the body. At the same time, the nervous system releases adrenaline and endorphins. Adrenaline increases alertness and energy, while endorphins reduce pain and create a sense of well-being.

That combination explains why the experience can feel energizing, euphoric, or deeply clear. It’s a real neurochemical response, not a placebo effect.

For me, the tingling came with a strong sense of presence. My mind quieted, and my awareness dropped fully into my body. That’s likely because my nervous system shifted out of a chronic low-grade stress response and into a more regulated state.

Cold Exposure and Stress Response

Cold exposure activates the sympathetic nervous system immediately. Heart rate increases. Blood vessels constrict. Stress hormones like norepinephrine are released. This is the same system that activates during stress or danger.

What makes cold exposure powerful isn’t the stress itself, but how the body adapts to it.

When you stay calm and control your breath in the cold, you’re activating the stress response without letting it spiral. Over time, this improves autonomic flexibility — the ability of the nervous system to move in and out of stress states efficiently instead of getting stuck.

Cold exposure also improves circulation through repeated constriction and dilation of blood vessels. It reduces inflammation by modulating immune signaling. It activates brown adipose tissue, which plays a role in metabolism and heat regulation. Increased norepinephrine levels are associated with improved focus, mood, and pain tolerance.

Why Breath and Cold Together Matter

Breath and cold work best together because they reinforce the same lesson from different angles.

The breath builds awareness, control, and tolerance.
The cold provides a real, physical stressor to apply that control.

Together, they train the nervous system to stay regulated under pressure. Not numb. Not dissociated. Just steady.

Understanding this shifted the practice for me from something intense to something practical. I wasn’t just doing hard things for the sake of it. I was intentionally retraining how my body responds to stress, sensation, and breath at a foundational level.

That’s why the effects didn’t stay confined to the practice itself. They showed up in how I handled stress, how quickly I noticed tension, and how easily I could regulate when I felt overwhelmed.

Once I understood what was happening in my body, it stopped feeling extreme and started feeling useful.

Why Wim Hof Got Scientists’ Attention

What really pushed the Wim Hof Method out of the “interesting but extreme” category and into serious scientific conversation was what happened when Wim Hof was studied in a controlled laboratory setting.

Researchers injected him with endotoxins. Endotoxins are components of bacterial cell walls that trigger a strong immune response in the body. In most people, this causes very predictable symptoms: fever, chills, headache, nausea, fatigue, and a spike in inflammatory markers. This response is driven by the immune system and the autonomic nervous system and is considered automatic, not something you can consciously control.

Wim Hof didn’t get sick.

Instead, through specific breathing techniques and focused attention, he was able to voluntarily activate his sympathetic nervous system. This led to a significant increase in adrenaline, which suppressed the inflammatory response that normally follows endotoxin exposure. His body still recognized the endotoxin, but the typical cascade of symptoms didn’t happen.

That alone was surprising. But the bigger finding came next.

Researchers trained a group of regular people — not extreme athletes — in the Wim Hof Method. After training, those participants were also exposed to endotoxins. They showed reduced inflammatory responses and fewer flu-like symptoms compared to untrained controls.

This was a big deal.

For a long time, it was believed that the autonomic nervous system and immune response operated entirely outside of conscious control. This research showed that, through breath and training, people could influence physiological systems that were previously thought to be automatic.

For me, learning about this study changed how I understood the practice.

The breathwork wasn’t just calming or energizing. It was actively communicating with the nervous system and immune system. The same mechanisms that helped me stay calm in the cold or tolerate discomfort were also involved in inflammation, stress response, and immune regulation.

It made everything feel more connected.

This wasn’t about hacking the body or overriding it. It was about learning how to work with systems that are already there. The breath became a way in. The cold became a way to apply it. And the science made it clear that this connection between breath, stress, and immunity is real.

That’s when the practice stopped feeling fringe to me and started feeling grounded in something much deeper.

One Year Later

A year later, this practice is still part of my life, just not in a clean or linear way.

There was a stretch where I stopped doing it completely. I didn’t make a decision to stop. Life got busy, my routine changed, and it slowly slipped away. At first, I didn’t think much of it. But over time, I noticed small things. I was holding my breath again without realizing it. My shoulders were constantly tight. My chest felt compressed. My thoughts felt louder and more crowded, not necessarily anxious, just nonstop.

What stood out most was how disconnected I felt from my body. I was functioning and doing what I needed to do, but I wasn’t really with myself. I was living mostly in my head again, pushing through instead of checking in. That awareness is what eventually brought me back to the breath. Not guilt. Not discipline. Just noticing what was missing.

Over the past several months, the breathing has become something I return to most days. Not because I force myself to, but because I feel the difference when I don’t. When I practice the Wim Hof breathing using the app, I usually do five rounds of about forty fast breaths. During the breath holds, I can often hold for up to four minutes.

That still surprises me, but not in a way that feels impressive. It feels informative. Like my body reminding me what it’s capable of when I slow down and actually work with it instead of staying tense and rushed.

During the breath holds, I can feel the cells in my body vibrating. There’s a steady buzzing through my arms, my chest, my stomach. It’s physical and undeniable. My awareness drops more fully into my body, even though my thoughts are still there. They don’t disappear, but they change.

They become clearer. More defined. Less tangled together. Instead of everything competing for attention at once, each thought feels separate enough that I can actually sit with it. There’s more space around them. Less urgency. Less pressure to immediately react or figure everything out.

For me, this practice has become much more about the breath than the cold. I still cold plunge occasionally, and I sometimes end my showers cold. I want to do it more because I know how it supports me when I do. But the breath is what I rely on day to day. It’s what helps me regulate when I feel overwhelmed, anxious, or disconnected from myself.

What really stayed with me are the benefits I can feel in my body.

Not in an abstract way. In a very real, physical way.

I’m more aware of my internal signals now. I can feel when my body is fighting something off, when I’m getting run down, when something feels slightly off before it turns into something bigger. It’s not that I can literally feel germs, but I can feel the early shifts in my body that tell me my immune system is activated. Things I used to ignore or miss entirely.

And instead of feeling helpless in those moments, I feel like I have some influence.

Through the breath, I’ve learned how directly it affects my nervous system and my heart rate. I can slow my breathing and feel my heartbeat respond. I can intentionally bring my system down when it’s elevated. I can feel my heart rate change under my hands when I focus on my breath, especially after the breathing practice.

That connection between breath, heart rate, and nervous system is something I didn’t have before.

The same is true with stress. When my chest tightens or my breath shortens, I notice it sooner. I can feel when I’m slipping into shallow breathing, and instead of staying there, I know how to shift it. I know how to breathe deeper, slow things down, and let my body regulate itself instead of staying stuck in that tight, rushed state.

This practice didn’t fix everything. It didn’t erase stress or difficult emotions. But it changed my relationship to them. I can notice what’s coming up without feeling consumed by it. I can stay present instead of checking out or pushing harder.

This never became a lifestyle or an identity for me. It became a tool. Something simple and accessible that I can use to slow down, regulate, and come back into my body when I need to.

A year later, that’s what matters most to me. Not the intensity of the cold or the numbers or the challenge. But the felt difference in my body. The awareness. The control. The ability to slow down, breathe, and trust that my body knows how to take care of itself.

That’s what stayed with me.