What led me to the method was the perfect storm of frustration, hope, and information. I was heading for retreat in the Midwest, listening to podcasts on a 16 hour drive when Wim Hof on Joe Rogan caught my attention. I had previously held vague awareness of the method and played with hot and cold immersion intuitively over the last two years. During that time I battled autonomic disfunction that set in unexpectedly and was limiting my ability to participate in life (this in addition to 18 years of Crohn’s symptoms that were still nagging despite my technical remission). On the first day of breathing practice, my hands tingle and I become lightheaded, signs that are characteristic of the method as one works to grab more oxygen than is typically possessed. I had an acute release of tension in my diaphragm. It all felt good. I felt energized for the day. I felt ready to take on the cold. And this is unusual for me… because over the years I had only watched my body get more sensitive, more tired, and less adaptable. My aim in recording this process has been to track transformation, because in particular with autoimmune dysfunction, which holds great potential for improvement through the WHM, there are a lot of unknowns.

Aside from the fairly typical description above, one of the primary sensations that has come up for me during breath retention in the first 5 weeks is a nervous or hot feeling at the front wall of my pelvic floor. I have my curiosities as to whether this may be related to the surgical intervention that left a tight c-section style scar on my abdomen. I consider also that my body may have shut off feeling in some parts of this region to accommodate swelling, inflammation, and tissue trauma. Perhaps this is the return. The sensations come at the bottom of my breath retention when I near the end of my natural capacity to hold, and when my mind is training my body to be calm and survive on the oxygen it has in its bloodstream. It’s bizarre, fascinating, and continually changing. I also notice unevenness in the movement of my torso as I inhale. Whether it’s due to old rib injuries or some combination of physical and psychological misalignment that has patterned me, I recognize this as something I can work with through conscious intention and by engaging other aspects of my physical training. There is a general disconnect mid-body between the bottom of my rib cage and my lower belly and abs, which are far more supple. I bring focus to upper back mobility in extension as well as more core/pelvic floor integration. I add sprint sets to my workouts to round out my practice and keep my cardiovascular system challenged.  

Cold showers have felt largely amazing, although I have had to slow the process of the online program because my body needs more time to adapt. On my second 10-minute cold shower, I was hit with exhaustion, phlegm, respiratory restriction, and a generally cranky pants attitude the day after. I had a moment like this somewhere in the 2nd week as well, and I will call these “integration days”... where my body says, “hey girl, you sit with what you’ve got before moving forward”. I recognize a similar, yet different kind of limit I’ve experienced in levels of athletic training. I chill. I repeat the previous step. I continue when my energy is on an upswing. I have now taken my 3rd 10-minute cold shower. Music helps.

Integration days have peaked my interest enough that I downloaded an app to monitor my HRV (heart rate variability). HRV provides information about the body’s ability to toggle between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems by measuring differences in beats when you first wake up. There’s a more in depth post about WHM and HRV here if you want to read it. Suffice to say that I have many reasons to think that tracking my own might help me better understand recovery needs and care for my immune system as I progress through the method. I will write a follow-up once I’ve completed the coursework and share any observations I have then.

As a general overview, I am already optimistic about the results of the program. In the weeks since I started daily practice, I have watched myself gain energy regularly. I’ve had a huge decrease in anxiety and belly symptoms. On occasion I have tears, trembling, or grief processing following cold exposure, but this is how stored trauma leaves the body. The frozen tiger must be woke in order for it to leave. In general, I have a feeling as if my body is creating a natural shield. Stress stays outside it, or perhaps just on the surface, allowing me to deal with it objectively in the material world.

As an autoimmune sufferer, I pay close attention to subtleties in order to be kind and safe with this method and my physicality. This cold is personal, and yet it’s not. While the effects are absolutely individual and must be treated as such, the cold and the method are clearly impersonal teachers that provide no shortcut or ability to be outwitted. They only give steely resolve and frozen reflections: of body as machine and spirit as the driver, headed to our evolutionary potential. Will we meet it, and will it in fact be more than we anticipated?

Down to find out.

Sarah Muehlbauer
a.k.a. Lion or Fox

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Hope, fear, relic, and dreams. Loving people with their swords up, imagining futures based on past, present, and unformed future. Multiplicity of not just narrative, but of self.

“Prediction is the most characteristic and pervasive element in animal behavior and in human speech and thought: it is the dynamo of the feedback cycle. We make predictions literally all the time, and survive only by their accuracy. Our slightest automatic movement - reaching for a piece of food, glancing up to see what made the unexpected noise - is possible only because we can make that continual alternation of tiny predictions and corrections to converge on the target. Speech, conscious thought, our experience of making choices, all reflect the process by which the brain uses the past to predict what may be coming.” (The Search for Solutions, Horace Freeland Judson)

In stating this, Judson speaks on behalf of science while honoring predictive theory and soft edges around dreams, past ways of knowing that were right for their age, and esoteric practices that may not pass the scientific lens, but nonetheless hold great consequence for believers. 

Judson goes on to observe, “Strong predictions force the growth of theories. They turn hypothesis into research programs.” In that space, we can hold great faith for the endeavors of scientists and artists. Scientists seek the concrete, the knowable, the feedback that assures our logical mind, cures diseases, frees our energy. They test their theories with microscopes and formulas and the eyes of the scientific community. Artists seek the edges of the unknown, aspects of the human psyche, the cusp of organic social movements, the aesthetics that will come to define the next era before anyone knows it has begun. We test theories on our audiences, shaping a mirror and a coded message that will emerge in relation to its resonance and resources.

TTSTW: This is our research program. What started as an architecture and a possibility of becoming, over the last several years formed a book, a structure, a soundtrack, a series of works-in-progress performances, and a test of elasticity to navigate change. 

“Things That Survived The Winter: A Brief History”
In 2015, over Skype from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, I met with artist Dan Cole who introduced the work of his band Rexedog, and we began to shape “Things That Survived The Winter’s” methods and structures. At that point, my working title was the esoteric “Bi-Con-Port” [an idea about divergence and carriage that became an underlayer and a still-intended duo work]. Dan is an incredibly versatile artist, flowing between painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, and music. I admire his ability to jump in, throw ideas around, and continually be a positive presence. The music developed for the soundtrack forms TTSTW’s backbone, Rexedog’s take on a 21-part structure of core concepts from “Spring Freeze”, my artist-memoir (2013). ​

In 2016, I introduced the project to two aerialist friends from Madison, Wisconsin, and together we presented the first performance of concepts: Allegiant, Zombie Bodies, The Apocalypse Rewind, Oceans Ignited, and Reflections - opening for a friend’s solo tour. Ours was a primarily aerial-driven starting point, an establishment of new collaborative relationships, and a hybrid of personal and transpersonal narrative dramaturgy. I am thankful for the talented and hard-working artists Jess Brusch and Luv Joy Seamon, who were willing to dive in for the sake of artistic research. We put on a stripped-back, no fancy lights or costume, ecstatic dance into being that was a beacon and a beckon for future development. ​

Time and space continued. Following a move back to Philadelphia and still lacking substantial time and resources, I continued with solo aspects of the score knowing that my hypothesis, a hybrid of visual arts and performance work, needed to be “proven” both to myself and my audiences. I spent about 50 hours sewing a wearable sculpture piece that was also a performance instigator, which then got developed in the context of “Circus Sessions” creation lab as the “Infinity Labyrinth” (“yay, people", says my lonely soloist heart). I went on to build a floor piece around it called "Continuous Deforming Landscape"  (an og underlayer that grew to become a primary theme) in residence at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, and the videos are (here) if you’d like to find them. ​

I spent the last year trying for grants, and the Leeway Foundation came through with an Art and Change Grant to build the next scene, “The Wave”. Built around a tensile fabric wave form designed by Simon de Aguero, video by Dan, and to-be-defined choreo that will integrate chronic illness communities into the hybrid muggle/ professional model, you are now as up-to-date as I am on the project ;-P (sort of). In actuality, this is just the start, and I will use the Patreon platform to go deeper into each concept and to update you on the project’s future trajectory.

I leave you with the first chapter of the book (poem) about truth and solidarity in the etheric.