If ever you’ve taken a cold shower, you should know there is a correct way to do it. I first learned of the magical properties of the cold shower from a ballet teacher of mine: Roman Zinovyev, a six-foot-three Russian man of undetermined age who wore nothing but black Adidas track suits and smelled so heavily of some acrid cologne that he effectively created his own atmosphere. And there lay, located at the gravitational center of that atmosphere a type of contagious enthusiasm entirely his own. In fact, to me he had invented his own separate category in the taxonomy of joyful feelings: delight of discipline. A perfect mixture of harsh reality and infinite care. Sweating delight.

  He is a figure I linger on only because it is difficult to depict the true essence of Mr. Roman through words. He was a Russian immigrant who moved to the U.S. with his pregnant wife, speaking almost no English, some twenty years prior. Despite his height, girth, and considerable layer of fur over his arms and chest, he shaved his armpits and incessantly encouraged us to do so as well. He was known to throw plastic water bottles from behind at unsuspecting dancers at barre. In his classroom he kept two bamboo canes of different lengths, one with which he could tap, prod, and sting you from a very short distance. And one with which he could lash at your feet, ankles and calves with devious precision without even standing up from his chair. He loved us (his students), his family, and dancing more than anything in the world.

In addition to these many charms the man produced a constant stream of what we came to call Romanisms, the word assimilated into the family vernacular to describe the wonderfully off-color statements he would sometimes produce. Verbal oddities delivered in a variety of sardonic Slavic tones, some of which I have plagiarized and use as my own to this day. These include, but are not limited to:

 “We have saying in Russia for dancer. if you wake up in morning and nothing hurts, you are dead.”

“You are not eye candy, you are eye poops. You are like I have poop in my eye.”

“I feel like I am in room for disabled.”

*Covers eyes* *disapproving groan* “That was ugly, really, like so ugly.”

“Oof I was so nervous, I lay whole dozen eggs. Was like Easter for Mr. Roman.”

Any time, any place, in any circumstance, when the question “How are you?” was posed to him, he would respond laconically, as if it should have been obvious,  “Awesome. I am always awesome.”

Needless to say I learned much from him, and this brings us at last back to the formerly stated subject of my fascination, and this essay. Mr. Roman was a devout subscriber to the benefits of the cold shower. Proclaiming often in his mysteriously compelling and thickly accented voice that they could rid us of any ailment from sore muscles, to the common cold, to STDs, to lung cancer, and it was through him, oh enigmatic guru, that I first came to learn the precise technique of the cold shower. 

This, as he painstakingly explained to me, consists of a multi-step process. First, going about your shower as you normally would: soaping off, shampoo, conditioner, reflecting bashfully on past mistakes which return now in quieter moments to prod at the soft, fleshy underbelly of your self-confidence. Then, once the necessary hygienic duties have been fulfilled, you will breathe deeply, ready yourself, and slowly begin turning the water colder. Move the handle perhaps half an inch at a time and wait at least 20 seconds under each new temperature in order to acclimate. It is easy at first, but you must progress in this way until you stand under water that could only be described as glacial. A good sign that you’ve arrived is when your chest contracts and your face begins to go numb. Once you have found yourself here, chest tight, skin burning, fixed beneath the floodgates of heaven, you will begin to feel a sensation like no other I have come across. Your vision will brighten slowly beneath your closed eyelids. You might turn under the water to feel it on your back and you will sense, slowly, all your inhibition, laziness, spite, ungratefulness, the misplaced drudgery of existence, begin to secrete from your pores and be washed down the drain. Each exhale will be composed of your sins, drifting away on frigid ethereal wings, and each inhale as shocking as your first. In fact, I would imagine this is as close as we might come to revisiting the feeling of birth: emerging heaving and soaked into the freezing sensation of reality, or like the mikvahs of old, faithfully submerged in holes cut in the ice of frozen lakes. 

If you have music playing (preferably The Beatles “I Want You/ She’s So Heavy ” or Tartini's “The Devil's Trill”) it will just be reaching the climax of its highest and most luxurious notes, and as you stand, electrified, the music pitching and wailing like some deep space orchestra, you must take one final purging breath before reaching out to, in a single motion, turn the handle all the way back. When the hot water meets the cold flesh, such a feeling I cannot explain to you. Euphoria. Soma. Your muscle fibers dissolving beneath your skin into sugary nothingness. It is the sublime reimagining of poor Hamlet’s dream, “that this all too solid flesh will melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” Not a plea for death this time but an utter surrender to the exhilaration of this body you inhabit every second of every day, and you will have no choice but to be grateful for it. Your mind will be on nothing but the water, a rare instant in which you reside in the actual moment you are experiencing. The music will still be playing. You can dance under the napalm. 

I cannot explain to you why these physical sensations result in such mental and emotional clarity. Why the shock of changing temperature would resolve one to such sheer contentment, if only for a moment. I can tell you only that after each cold shower I have taken, I have stepped out impenetrable. Some deeper cleansing has occurred, and the delight it brings originates, I think, in peace. There is a kind of solemn, grateful tranquility left where the water was, reinforcing my theory that this is actually a meditation of sorts. A centering practice, which, though it may not cure the common cold, STDs, or lung cancer, heals, at least momentarily, something in our overactive and habitually ungrateful consciousness. This is why each time I exercise this practice, I hope, maybe, I will reach at last that long sought after enlightenment. The monk-like air, the nirvana in which at any time, any place, in any circumstance, when the question “How are you?” is posed to me, I will smile gently, laconically, and respond “Awesome. I am always awesome”. As if it should have been obvious.