Dancing Between Extremes
Tuning Into Your Nervous System
We live in a world where cold plunges, yoga, breathwork, and saunas are everywhere and yet when we jump straight to doing them without asking why, we miss their magic. It’s not about how icy the water is, how long you hold your posture, or just how hot the sauna burns, but how you meet yourself in these moments. Every body is different - how we show up in each practice is part of the healing. These rituals hold the power to reshape us not by forcing us, but by awakening something inside. It might be a quiet pause we resist, or just a breath too deep, a tender invitation to explore the opposite of our familiar. And if we say yes to that invitation, the alchemy happens.
Cold Exposure – The Activation Middle Ground
When you step into icy water, your system explodes awake - heart rate climbs, breath catches, adrenaline pulses. The initial shock triggers a classic fight-or-flight response. Some people leap out immediately, refusing even a moment of that edge. Others thrust themselves deeper, adrenaline racing, ignoring the subtle signals telling them, this is enough. But it’s in noticing that burn, being present in that activation, and meeting it with your breath, that something shifts. That tendency to polarise, either running from or overwhelming the system, is simply a habit of protection. This practice is not about endurance. It’s about learning to listen deeply and stay with the tremor of life moving through you.
Yoga – Beyond Stretching Toward Stillness
The yoga mat mirrors this same dance. One body type races through vinyasa or hot flows, seeking heat and movement as if these were the only real signs of practice. Another finds refuge in the lengthened embrace of yin, gratitude for stillness, yet sometimes avoiding activation altogether. The two states are not enemies. The invitation is to rest in posture while also finding the gentleness to peel back breath or micro-movement when the nervous system edges toward either shutdown or overwhelm. That’s where yoga becomes an act of presence, not just a form.
Breathwork – Meeting the Edge of the Mind
In breathwork, some insist on ramping themselves to the edge - think fast inhales, immediate expansion, chasing spiritual highs. Others, fatigued or wary, barely breathe at all, drifting into sleep rather than meeting the rising energy. Both are understandable: one is fear disguised as performance, the other avoidance. But the real alchemy is in noticing when your mind says, Go! Go!, and gently leaning into breath, or when it whispers, Stop. Stop. and dialing the breath back momentarily. It’s not about control, it’s about listening.
Sauna – Finding the Gentle Warmth of Presence
And then there’s the sauna. Some people treat it as a punishing rite, comparing sauna types, pushing higher temperatures, longer sweats, as if comfort is failure. Traditional saunas can reach over 90 degrees, and we’ve been trained to sweat until it hurts, as if that proves something about our worth or strength. But with infrared, the dance is more subtle.
Infrared saunas operate at the far gentler temperatures of between 45 and 60 degrees. Yet the heat penetrates deeper into tissues, prompting a vigorous sweat and cardiovascular response, but without overwhelming the body. In fact, using higher temperatures or longer sessions is not necessary to receive benefit, sometimes it’s even counterproductive.
Sweating too much, too long can dehydrate you, losing up to a litre of fluid or more, affecting cognition, performance, and healing. Infrared invites us into ease, where warmth becomes integrated, not punished. It aligns with a quieter, kinder resilience. When the body rests without numbing, that’s revolution.
Why the Dance Matters and Why Guidance Deepens the Practice
All of these practices - cold, heat, breath, movement - are invitations to meet ourselves. Just going solo often means chasing patterns we already know - resistance or overdrive. But when someone guides us, holds the environment, names what’s there, and offers space - we go deeper. Not harder, not faster, but more real.
Deeper isn’t a timing or temperature. It’s the moment your system knows it is safe enough to feel. The tremor of honesty. The invitation to lean into discomfort and rest into presence, over and over.
Reflection Questions
In what practice do you instinctively push harder? Where do you instantly soften?
What would happen if today you invited yourself into the opposite pattern- for just a breath, a movement or session, or two?
How might this curious enquiry transform discomfort into discovery?