Naturhythm

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On winter, one hibernates. When the thermometer goes down below 0°C, when nature freezes and snow covers the whole world around, one would rather look at nature… from the window. However, give us just four more degrees, a clear sky, a bright sunbeam, and the call of nature is there, even more pressing and inviting than ever. Although one can jog under almost any weather, just by covering what needs to be covered, where is indeed the limit not to exceed when you want this contact with nature to be really complete? I have read too much stories of thermal shock, of a woman found frozen on a glacier where she had wanted to practice yoga in Eve’s clothes, or of surprisingly rapid cold assaults… not to be extremely careful. By the way, why not give it a (cautious) try? Our body is quite good at showing us, in a way or another, what it wants and what it doesn’t want. We just have to listen to it.

Therefore, I strolled to the nearby woods, warmly and entirely clad, and I ran for three quarters of an hour, at a fair pace, keeping my muscles working without exhausting them. Quite a warming session, indeed, with polar fur and wool gloves. Running in under woods on snow is a rare pleasure: shadows are glowing there, the least snow plaque is like a mirror for the least sunbeam, silence is opaque, odors are different, and steps rebound noiselessly.

Then I found a hidden clearing (for I did not want to look as a lunatic), and I quickly stripped myself of all clothes, as to dive in deep water. Actually, the feeling was pretty similar: I literally plunged in the sharp cold, discovering with pleasure that it did not produce any abnormal or worrying result. Fifteen minutes offered to the sun, not more, for the sheer pleasure of sitting down on the snow and feeling its pleasant burn. Walking bare footed on the snow gives a feeling of total freedom, a completely natural although unusual felling…

Then, it was time to put my clothes on as quickly as I removed them, before the numbness set up. The effects of my preventive warming vanishing, it was more difficult move and run, at first, but that was what I had to do before feeling really cold. Going back along other paths, everything was different then, strange and otherworldly, with statues taking ghostly looks from the lights reverberated by snow. But what a beautiful experiment: it is a must! You can dare snow without any real risk if you take care to prepare for it!

OK, that is only some time later that you start feeling the pervading cold, but it is also the time when you can put on some additional cover and eat some sugar - loaded food, exactly like after a sport contest.