Best feeling of my life! (cold water immersion with dry fasting description).

It’s my seventh day now and I have just had the best few hours since so long ago I can’t remember; and you can do it too!

First. A gentle stroll along the river-bank in the spring evening, the river full and bubbling and rushing from all the recent rain and the gorgeous heaped rapids throwing themselves over the rocks in colours of white and sky blue and green and deep navi. And gentle swirls in the backwaters over their hidden depths, and happy plopping and soft whooping calls as the water tumbles over itself as it makes its steady course from there, skirting the bank, back to the fast stream. The path leads me through old beeches, happy to live beside their friend the river, and carefully over their exposed roots and along the soft path.

Then. Up stream where the trees have opened to a empty sheep pasture I’m at the river’s edge where the current is slower. I undress, put my swimmer under-pants on, and get in. AHHHHHHHHH! The depth! The total embrace of the water around me! OHHHHHHH! It’s gentle but firm draw downstream as I paddle backwards quickly in the first minute to adjust to the temperature and then grab hold of two velvety stones beneath me to anchor. AHHHH! AHHH! OHHHH! YEEEEEES! YEEEEEES! THIS IS IIIIIIIIT! THIS IS HEAVEEEEEEN! I just stay there with my chin above the water taking huge droughts of air in and quickly out and in and out and I feel like a pair of hot tongs plunged to cool and temper and to steam and hiss with vim. So cold! So GOOOOOD! I turn around and feel it wash under my arms and it washes washes washes over by back and comes up gently pushing against my throat and streams between my legs, and around I turn again. And it goes on and on and on and ON! Entirely wrapped up in this seizure of cleansing as it rapidly in all and every quarter rushes deeper and deeper into my flesh from my skin. I feel so utterly naked and bare in it! On and on this CLEEEEANSING feeling keeps me in total rapture and I feel like one of those videos when a piece of chemical material is immersed in the liquid of some other chemical and the solid piece just steams and glows and fizzes for a good while until it finally dissolves into a wisp of pretty blue. And it keeps going! MOOORE! MOOOORE! MOOOOOOORE! Or like when the river-spirit is unplugged of garbage in Spirited Away, only here all that would be left would be my swimming pants and my silly frog-grin suspended above the stream, until even the remnants of my happy face too would sink beneath the silky surface and wash away to nothing in that deepest layer of the current that skims above the river-bed. I can feel it seeping and searing deeper and deeper into my flesh. I’m being washed like I’ve never been washed before. I want to stay there forever and for that deep deep rinsing and cleansing to reach even my bones! I can do nothing but stay there and call out in joy to the dusky river bank and its bear trees and the dimming sky ahead of me (no-one around, very rural, covid, evening). This-is-heaven! This is true bliss! It’s like an entirely full-body itch-scratching that just keeeeeeps going and doesn’t let up and every second is just pure bliss! And how red my skin is and how TIGHT and CLEAN and SMOOTH my skin is. Euphoria! It feels like my body is actually drinking the cold cool water through the skin and like it’s rehydrating itself! almost like having that first cool life-giving glass of water at the end of a dry fast. And still the water brushes and loops around me and continues its full-body draw down-stream and so still I keep hold of those mossy rounded stones and my heels and toes are happily nudged against this pebble and against that stone. And how the water swims between every toe on each foot. And though all my attention at the time was captured by this awesome feeling, now I can remember the easy deep untroubled sounds of the river too all around me as it continued to hasten, so strong, so sure. This all was only a few minutes in the end because I knew I shouldn’t stay too long and—even though I didn’t want to go anywhere— because of the weak state of my body. So, reluctantly I push down on those mossy weights I’ve been holding and up onto my happy happy feet. I stumble a bit, pray none gets in my mouth and so cancels my fast, and wade back up to where I’d undressed—because the current had pulled me some feet along the bank. But I plunge in again just once more! AHHHHHH! OHHHHhHH! The same feeling renews and I don’t want to go. I feel so ALIVE! I stand up and forget that I haven’t done my face. So cool so refRESHING all over in every cranny and around my eyes, once, twice, three times, and around my neck too, I splash I splash and it’s almost as good as full head-to-toe immersion. Electric! I dress, I catch and inhale deeply the sweet full scent of the pasture and soil mixed with the very cool fresh air of the last hour of the day as I tie my shoes. I head back to the car and really begin to shiver, teeth totally chattering, heel uncontrollably oscillating as I use the clutch. But I’m fine, and it was more than worth it and I can’t WAIT to go back! This is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had and probably will EVER have. Dry fast and get in the coooooold water, you too will feel this huge huge ecstasy! I think it was such a deep cleansing feeling compared to doing this while feeding because there is much less flesh on my body now—definitely very skinny— and so the cold can reach layers of my body it couldn’t reach before as they were too covered over before.

Next. After making sure I’ve reached a body temperature back from very cold to just mildly so I begin to run a warm bath. Just tepid at to let my body adjust to it. I gradually empty and refill the tub with ever warmer water and feel heat seep back into my flesh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. I get some Myrtle essential oil and it smells like paradise and I’m weak with comfort and happjness. I sit there in the embrace of the quiet with just the barn owl I can hear through the open window—I like to have that breeze when in hot water—calling it’s first rounds of the night in the garden, which sounds like another variety of quietude. Ahhhhhhhhhh hahaha. I’m so happy!

Then. Empty the tub and lifting the nice full bucket and jug of cold cold water I’d prepared before undressing to place on the floor of the tub I pour it all right over myself—not all at once, that would waste so much of the feeling, but first one jug, sploosh as I plunge it into the bucket and the water rushes and streams over its lip to eagerly fill its cavity, straight away a second pouring, again, straight away, sploosh and it fills right up, three jugs, and lastly the remaining third of the bucket whoooosh I’m sitting in a waterfall, closing the pores, and I succumb meanwhile as that blissful feeling of cleansing has returned with the cold water for just a minute. Then I hose off with the shower head carefully tracing down my whole body—arms, shoulders, front, back, legs—closing all those pores, feeling like the hose is just coating more ‘warm’ cold over my body which has already been covered by the jugs in a whole suit of ‘warm’ cold, like brushing just a bit more icing onto your cake that is already very well iced but will be all the more tasty because of the extra brushes, and then just let my feet take it all to themselves for a little bit longer.

I feel incredible! A new man!

Now. To the kitchen! for a tall cool glass of freshly squeezed and blended orange mango and ginger juice with some diced fresh mint whizzed in. AHHHHH! Now. A thick pint mug to the brim of kiwi pear granny-smith apple and cucumber smoothie—nothing better. We’re not done, whip on the stove and simmer some slices of peach until deliciously soft and then chuck in a couple handfuls of oatmeal with some cinnamon and generous grating of nutmeg and a handful of raisins I’d been rehydrating with their juice, add plenty of water and in a few minutes I have a sweet goopy bowl of totally drinkable oatmeal warm in my hands and it feels like home. After that deliciousness that’s not the last of it, I put another pan on the stove and finish off with heating up a hot cup and a half of squeezed blackcurrant juice with some more ginger and some lemon and throw in a dash of rooibos herb to infuse at the end, and take my steaming sweetness closed in its pan with my mug on a tray up to bed.

Good night!

—just kidding about the food and drink haha! I can’t wait for it though, it will be—AHH!—so good!