I’ve been cold dipping for about 18 months now, I go swimming at Stoney Cove most Fridays with my friends, Colin and Emma.
Over the winter I noticed that my hands and joints didn’t ache as much on a Friday and Saturday. It took me nearly a year to go down the ice bath in the garden route.
I bought one in the Black Friday deals and have used most days since, my hands generally feel good as a result. There are many physiological and psychological benefits to cold dipping and I’m sure I’m feeling those too.
A random one was that Fran noticed the Amazon man had not been knocking on the door every day. My theory is it’s something to do with dopamine and ADHD.
A few weeks ago, we watched a wild swimming programme on the iPlayer which followed a couple around Scotland trying different places to swim with local clubs.
Most of the groups were predominantly women who noticed the benefits of the cold water on their menopause symptoms from anxiety to hot flashes. I thought K would really benefit to help with her anxiety but she wouldn’t get in when I suggested it.
Fran started dipping in our ice bath in the middle of March and as monkey see, monkey do, the kids have started having a little dip.
To the extent that A negotiated Fran in to it when they got back from Kung Fu last night. She’s now allowed to pick our family film for Saturday 😂
They’re only doing a few seconds, getting out and getting back in. K built up to about 20 seconds chest deep at the weekend.
It’s too early to see how it affects her anxiety but I’m hopeful.
The point of this message wasn’t to big up cold dipping, it was to highlight that if you want your kids to do something, doing that thing is the best way, not telling them to do it.
We try to be an example of being healthy to them; eating vegetables, regular exercise without moaning about it, drinking water etc.
I set a rule that we don’t have screens upstairs, when I caught K with hers yesterday and kicked off, she said Mummy had hers and my battle was lost 😀
Darren “be the change” Checkley
