2,000 years of cold

Antiquity: the cold bath as ritual

As far back as Hippocrates (ca. 460–370 BC), cold water was prescribed as a remedy, and swimming in the cold sea was considered healthy exercise — an early version of today's cold-water routine. In Sparta, cold was a fixed part of upbringing: in the agoge, the boys received just a single cloak for the entire year and practiced enduring cold and heat with the same composure.

What was conditioning for the Greeks, the Romans turned into a fixed ritual: every bathhouse ended in the frigidarium, a cool plunge pool that followed the hot and warm rooms. The sequence of heat and cold that we call the sauna–cold-plunge routine today already had its established place over 2,000 years ago.

The North: sauna, steam, and the ice hole

In Finland, the alternation of heat and cold isn't a trend but everyday life. The löyly — the steam from water poured on the sauna stones — is traditionally followed by the leap through the avanto, an ice hole sawed into the frozen lake. “Sauna,” by the way, is one of the few Finnish words that have made it into worldwide use. Sweat-inducing heat, then the ice-cold shock — what beginners find brave today has been a familiar routine here for generations.

Russia: cold as upbringing

In the Russian-Soviet tradition of “zakalivanie” (conditioning), infants are systematically accustomed to cold — with air baths and dousings whose temperature drops step by step. The practice became an official conditioning program that is still practiced today — with the stated goal of making children more resistant to colds. What begins as upbringing remains a lifelong tradition for many: once a year, for the Orthodox Epiphany feast, around about two million people dip three times through a cross-shaped ice hole — and those who keep swimming all year round count among the “walruses” (morschi).

Where cold is part of everyday life

Some cultures have adapted to extreme cold over generations — and in a few cases, research later measured that adaptation. As recently as the 19th century, when Charles Darwin described them on his Beagle voyage, the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego lived in the sub-Antarctic storm almost naked, in nothing but fur cloaks, and kept fires going everywhere — even in their canoes. It was exactly these columns of smoke that gave the region its name: “Tierra del Fuego,” Land of Fire. Bone finds and genetic analyses later offered an explanation: despite the cold and barely any clothing, their bone density stayed as stable as that of people from temperate zones — made possible by two gene variants that ramped up their brown fat, the tissue that converts energy directly into heat.

Even better documented are the Haenyeo of Korea and the Japanese Ama — divers who worked year-round in the cold sea for centuries, wearing only thin cotton in winter. Their bodies adapted measurably: a higher basal metabolic rate in winter, a lower shivering threshold. When they adopted wetsuits in the 1970s, the adaptation faded again — unintentional proof that cold tolerance can be trained, but only holds as long as the stimulus remains.

The bodies of these divers actively pushed back against the cold — with more heat production. The Aboriginal Australians of the central desert reacted the exact opposite way: they slept at temperatures near freezing almost naked on the ground, with only small fires as a sparse source of warmth. Researchers measured that their skin temperature dropped sharply — and yet they slept on calmly, without shivering. Their bodies didn't ramp up their own heat production; they simply let the cold in.

The water healers of the 19th century

In the 19th century, cold became a systematic healing method. The Silesian farmer's son Vincenz Priessnitz (1799–1851) treated the sick with cold compresses, dousings, and plunge baths and built from them, in Gräfenberg, the first large water-cure institution — many regard him as the founder of modern hydrotherapy.

Even better known was the Bavarian priest Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897). As a young student ill with tuberculosis, he is said to have stepped into the ice-cold Danube several times in winter — and recovered. From this he shaped the Kneipp cure with cold dousings and water treading. Anyone who wades through a Kneipp pool at a German spa town today repeats a cold routine over 150 years old — now cultivated as intangible cultural heritage.

Famous cold devotees

Cold has had prominent followers in every era. The acting icon Katharine Hepburn was accustomed to ice-cold baths from childhood and was still swimming in the wintry Long Island Sound in her 80s — she lived to 96. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt jumped into the ice-covered Potomac and Rock Creek in winter — described in his own autobiography and attested by companions. So cold as self-discipline is not an invention of social media.

Tibet: monks who dry frozen cloths — Tummo

In the Himalayas, Tibetan yogis have practiced Tummo (“inner fire”) for almost a thousand years — a technique of breathing and visualization with which they generate body heat in icy cold. Eyewitnesses reported monks who dried frozen cloths on bare skin during winter nights — an effect that modern studies have actually measured. It is the historical root of the idea of “breathing before the cold” — and worth its own article.

→ Tummo: the inner fire — the monks, the science, and what you can take from it.

Wim Hof: the modern version without the mysticism

The Dutchman Wim Hof — “The Iceman” — has demystified the principle behind it — breathing before the cold — and made it accessible to a worldwide audience: his method combines powerful breathing with cold exposure. His track record is impressive — standing nearly two hours up to his neck in ice cubes (1 hr 53 min, Guinness record 2013), climbing Kilimanjaro in shorts, a half marathon barefoot on ice. Above all, though, he has brought cold out of the niche: the fact that millions of people today deliberately take cold showers and bathe — and that science is taking the topic more seriously — is owed in good part to him. Some of his far-reaching health claims are not yet conclusively proven, but the research is catching up: his method has even been studied in respected journals — from the voluntarily influenced immune response (PNAS, 2014), where it was the breathing, not the cold, that dampened the inflammatory response, to brain activity under cold (NeuroImage, 2018).

From the frigidarium to your pocket

As far apart as the settings lie — a Spartan river, a Roman marble basin, a Finnish ice hole, a Bavarian spa park, Himalayan heights — the through line across more than 2,000 years is remarkably constant: cold challenges the body, and regularity turns the shock into a habit. What Tummo and Wim Hof added — the deliberate breathing before and during the cold — makes the shock manageable. Cold Mastery picks up exactly there — with a guided breathing exercise and a timer that carries you through the cold. The simplest way in is the cold shower.