Hey there and welcome to the weMove Podcast. Today we are following on from Simon Jeffrey's podcast on resilience taking excuse the pun, a dive into cold water immersion and wild swimming with Gilly MacArthur, who has a long background in the outdoors being a climber and a face within the industry but she's also the co-founder of @bluemindmen and @wonderfulwildwomen both initiatives to get people inspired and maybe excited to discover the benefits of getting in the water, even better when it's cold.
GIlly has been and still is a massive advocate of getting in cold water, particularly up in the Lake District, and using it as a way to, as always raise awareness for mental health or mind health as i am preferring to call it. And I just wanted to get another take rather than the obvious ones in the Wim Hof world, etc. Of what getting into cold water really does and how it really benefits. And Gilly has had an interesting history in that she had a big fall whilst climbing over in the states and with that a long journey of rehab to where Gilly is today.
What I hadn’t expected from the conversation was to talk about the transferable skills/benefits that come with a practice of cold water immersion, namely keeping you calm under stress and just being able to manage the body's responses to stressful situations which I think everyone would benefit from that skill. So again, it's quite a self-explanatory conversation. It doesn't already doesn't need much more of an intro than that. Gilly’s a lovely person, tough, steely but super gentle in encouraging and chivvying people on and providing some inspiration to get in the cold water. Because we need it, the water, it’s always cold, and you need those people you can trust and lean into to get you to do things that you never quite thought you could. And Gilly is one of those people.
Really enjoyed this podcast. I think there's a lot more to come from everyone in this sphere of mindset, mental health, central nervous system awareness, so it's definitely worth a listen.
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