Survive The Cold

The Arctic Blast that swept through the Willamette Valley last month brought icy temperatures creeping down to below zero Fahrenheit with windchill.

This kind of extreme cold can quickly make even a healthy person sick, or exacerbate existing illness. To protect ourselves from the intense cold, we need to keep our bodies warm - not just by turning up the heat in our house, but also supporting healthy circulation.

Here are 4 easy and effective ways to stay warm and healthy after being out in extreme cold, or even being sedentary inside so long you start to feel chilled:

1 - Warm Your Feet

The bottom of the foot is the farthest place blood travels in the body from the heart, and such is prone to having slow or impaired circulation. The fastest way to warm up your entire body is to start with the feet. Warmth on the feet acts like a circulatory pump to get blood flowing up the legs and throughout the body. You can fill a bathtub or basin with 6 inches of very hot water and submerge your feet to ward off cold. Avoid a full bath, which can lead to excessive sweating and chill you further, stick to just the feet! Also a hot water bottle in bed placed at your feet is an excellent way to keep your body warm and healthy throughout the night.

2 - Exercise To Warm Your Abdomen

The lower abdomen is the reservoir of energy and warmth in the body. In winter, the climate of cold steals away warmth at the surface, so submerging our heat deep in our bodies is necessary to staying healthy and preserving our vitality through the winter season. Doing simple abdominal exercises for 5 minutes 2-3 times a day can do more than tone your belly, it can preserve and build warmth in your body that can slow or prevent the onset of illness from cold. Get your whole body involved - while standing, bring one knee up towards your chest and twist your body to bring the opposite elbow to meet that knee. Do on alternating sides until your abdomen begins to feel warm, can also be done lying down.

3 - Warm Your Digestion

Eat warm (not spicy!) foods - ginger, probiotics such as miso, sauerkraut or kimchi are great ways to keep your body warm inside and out. Drinking warm water instead of tap-temperature is a very easy way to keep your body warmed internally so your energy can be used instead for healthy peripheral circulation.

Mix a tsp. of Miso into a mug of hot water for a kickstart to your digestion in the morning.

4 - Protect Your Neck

Wearing a scarf is just as important and a jacket or hat, and make sure it covers the back of your neck up to your hairline to prevent the deep cold from getting under your skin. Also tuck in your shirt before going outside to make sure wind can't reach your abdomen or lower back - like the above points mention, this area is a main source of heat for the body and conserving heat where you can is the ounce of prevention that will help you warm up more quickly when you're back inside.

Calendrical Significance of the Arctic Blast:

Winter Cold:

This storm stirred up right on top of the last new moon of the Water Rabbit year, during the period of late winter known as Xiao Hán 小寒 "Little Cold". This period is marked by the overwhelming weight of cold bearing down and compressing the warmth and generative potential of Spring. Like an actual spring, this compression creates a store of energy with which plants burst forth from the frozen ground in the coming months.

given how warm and temperate this winter has been, however, the wight of Winter Cold finally tipping the scales has resulted in a dramatic and extreme manifestation of winter weather. The intense cold has taken lives, toppled trees, withered leaves and buds. This is the nature of winter, to take away warmth that is not hidden away or consolidated - and it is dangerous to everyone and everything that wants to keep healthy and vital in to the spring time. Adapting to this kind of cold requires a thoughtful and deliberate approach, writing it off as just a normal snow day might not result in immediate illness, depending on your state of vitality, but it will absolutely weaken any body not properly prepared to deal with its effects. Healthy respect for our climate is key to staying healthy throughout the year.by into something more.