Noticing the Anticipation

I love long, warm, hot showers. The kind when the whole room is filled with the warm steam rising above the shower curtain and/or door. I have a routine when it comes to taking a shower; I have a familiar known pattern that starts as I turn the water on to warm the water up.

A few days ago I took a cold shower. This idea of taking a cold shower arose as a part of a larger a conversation with Jeanette No Hesitation. Let’s do it, we said. The next shower we take, let it be a cold shower.

Everything about my familiar known pattern of taking a shower shifted. 

It shifted with the anticipation, anticipation of what it would, my perception of what is would feel like as I stepped in to the cold shower.  I did not warm the water. I simply turned in on and stepped in. When I say stepped in I mean, I stepped into the corner of the shower and backed myself as far away from the shower spray as I could. I put my hand in to check the temperature, as to confirm that it was really cold. As I stood there, I noticed the anticipation rising. I was going to do it. I was going to step into the cold shower, I had made that commitment, what I needed to do was act. I needed to take the action and step in.

In I went. The cold took my breath away. Maybe you have experienced this before, the gasping for air as your body becomes aware of the cold water. I was in. I titled my head back to allow the water to fall on the crown of my head and noticed how I arched my spine to not have the cold water run down my back. Then I softened.  The water rushing over my head and on my skin became that, water rushing over my head and skin. It became neutral. Not cold water. Not hot water. I was water. I became water rushing over me.

I know myself well enough to know that sometimes I find a way out of commitments that I make to myself. So on this particular night I sat around the fire and intentionally got the fire smell and smoke in my hair. I enjoy this smell and am fine with going to sleep after being around a fire, I smile recalling the many fires I have sat around before crawling into a tent. This time, I was not crawling into a tent to sleep, I would be getting into my bed with fresh clean sheets. When I get into bed with fresh sheets, I like to be clean. Are you following me here, I intentionally set this up so I would have to take a shower and wash my hair.

The anticipation of the shower was the hardest part. I knew what I was going to be stepping into. It became normal. It become what it was, taking a shower in cold water.

This a message my niece wrote for me. I placed it on top of the light switch and noticed it as I stepped out of the shower. I find these words resonate now and in moments when I notice anticipation and resistance rising.

Again, I took a cold shower. This time I noticed my anticipation going in, as I knew what I was getting into from my previous experience of stepping into cold water. Since I was aware of my resistance, I also moved to a place of gratitude. Gratitude and gratefulness for the water that flows, the ability to be able to feel the water on my body, to be able to be cleansed and washed and to wrap myself in a towel and put clothes on after.

I was and am, most interested in the resistance that was there as I knew what I was stepping into and then within that moving to a place of gratitude.

All of this within however many minutes I was in the shower.

Beautiful.

In the flowing state of water,

Sara