Everyone heard about hardening, some even tried to harden. However, most of us are still skeptical about this procedure, considering it ineffective, routine or too extreme. For many, hardening is associated exclusively with diving into an ice hole and walking barefoot in the snow.
But we all, one way or another, are constantly hardened, it’s just that many do it consciously, more intensively – and therefore get sick less often.
A little about the method
The undoubted advantage of hardening over other methods to strengthen immunity is its harmlessness, the absence of contraindications and complications, the applicability of the method from the first minutes of a person’s life to old age. You can start hardening at any age, with any state of health and at any time of the year.
As a result of hardening, a person’s resistance to temperature changes, to the action of wind, humidity, sun, pressure drops and other external environmental factors increases. Hardening is a harmonious system of events that adapts a person to living conditions in any environment and any climate.
In hardening, methods of natural exposure are used – air, water and sun light. These are not allergenic, not dangerous, not harmful, and most importantly, free health promotion methods, unlike expensive and completely unsafe medicines and procedures.
Why do we often get sick?
We are victims of civilization, we can fall down with pneumonia from a small draft for a long time. This is because our body is pampered and pampered with hot water, warm clothes, split systems, heaters, mattresses, remote controls for all devices and cars.
Of course, this is convenient and pleasant, but it completely discourages the body from moving and doing something to protect health – since the owner provided everything himself, why work, warm the body, cool it, protect it from adversity?
Our children and ourselves have nowhere to train their immunity – they do not have the opportunity to walk a lot, in an almost sterile house there is no contact with microbes, we are afraid to let them out until July without a hat and socks, and at the slightest sneeze we feed them with medicines.
However, if we begin to temper ourselves and our children, this will save us from many diseases or facilitate their course. The most difficult thing is to start and not stop hardening.
What counts
Each person is unique, so the approach to hardening will be different. If you have never hardened before, you should not start abruptly and not intensively.
The easiest method now, while it is warm, will be walking barefoot, swimming in open water and contrast showers. Start with temperatures that are comfortable for your body and lower them a little each week until your body adjusts. By winter, you will be able to douse yourself with ice-cold water and not be covered with goosebumps from the cold.
Initially, start with zones that are insensitive to cold – arms and legs, hands and shins, gradually expand the zone of exposure. The last to harden include the most sensitive zones – back and belly.
Gradually, the intensity and time of exposure should be increased – initially bathing and showers can be 2-3 minutes each, then add a minute every day, then by September you can do swims up to an hour. When hardening, the pulse quickens, breathing deepens, the body is saturated with oxygen, and you are energized. If the pulse does not change, then the impact is already weak, add intensity.
Remember, hardening will not be effective if it is like torture for you, you are doing it because you need to. Procedures should bring you pleasure! Choose one or two treatments, such as swimming in the pool and saunabut visit them regularly, with pleasure and without absenteeism – and the effect will not keep you waiting.
When to start
Start now: go to the pool or to the beach, to the forest or to the meadow. In a word, hardening can be started at any time when you are mentally and physically ready.
You can temporarily reduce the pace with colds or exacerbation of chronic diseases, during menstruationbut you shouldn’t stop completely – the body is wiser than us, and will distribute the load without harming the body.
However, if you have begun to harden, you need to do it every day, and preferably twice a day – take a contrast shower in the morning, pour cool water from a bucket on the street or at home in the bath in the evening. This is the essence of hardening: in the skin and muscles, conditioned reflex connections are established for narrowing and expanding blood vessels in response to the action of heat and cold, their training and the formation of adequate reactions to low or high temperatures.
What are the most common methods
We use many of the hardening methods without knowing it. For example, baths and saunas perfectly adapt the body to changes in temperature and learn to tolerate heat well. The main thing is to visit the sauna at least twice a week.
Swimming in pools with different temperatures is also a hardening method. When swimming, skin receptors are activated, and the effect is complex – temperature changes, water pressure and air-water changes.
Beach visit (not solarium) is also a hardening method: there is the sun, air currents, even without bathing. This trains the vessels of the skin, helps the production of vitamin D and adapts the body to the heat.
Walking barefoot on pebbles, warm sand, grass, earth or along the water’s edge is a temperature effect, as well as irritation of receptors and the formation of conditioned reflexes between the nasopharynx and legs. It has been proven: who walks barefoot a lot – including on the cool floor of the house – is less likely to get colds.
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Water procedures: morning cool shower, taking a bath with salt – these are also methods of hardening, the main thing is the systematic and pleasure of the procedure. Try to start hardening today, and by the fall you will be stronger and healthier.
