The Root Cause: Aversion to Cold

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Thank you for tuning in your consciousness to the Naked Human podcast. I want to acknowledge your presence and what it took for you to be here today. Listening My intention for you is that you receive what you came here for and find what you didn't know you needed. This podcast is about what it means to be a human being and what it really means to be naked and how our relationship with Mother Nature has the power to heal us.

My name is Carrie Cott and I'm a nude nature photographer, licensed photography physician of Chinese medicine, plant guide and wild woman embodiment mentor. I help women heal from sexual trauma, awaken their authentic voice, and distinguish between fear and intuition so they can be led by their deep feminine heart. I bring to life in this podcast my own internal wisdom. I will only share what I've learned and experience on a personal level.

As you listen, I encourage you to take from this what you need and just trash the rest. So happy listening.

A super common resistance to being naked and specifically shows up in conversation when women are interested in coming to my retreat. Is this resistance and this concern about the temperature of cold, like having the experience of the coldness creating tension. So like some of the things that pop in for women is that cold creates tension in their body.

The thought of cold, the experience of cold, there's poor circulation where their fingers and their toes and other appendages on their body can get cold and that they can shake when they get too cold. There's just this experience that they don't want to be in the cold or experience the cold or just like engage with it on any level. And so we're gonna drop into this. And my intention here is to help illuminate and connect with the deeper root that's underneath the aversion to cold.

My intention is not to get any listeners to get naked and go plunge into icy cold things. That's not what's here for me in this conversation. It's just bringing inviting in to look and see and to hopefully connect the dots with why. And a version of cold will exist. And I'm going to bring in my Chinese medicine brain, so to say, frequency, aspect teachings and how I see it from the years of experience and even just drop in some of my own personal relationship with the cold. So here's your body.

You have a body, right? Things are flowing inside of it, things are circulating and moving and there takes a certain level of warmth for that to happen. So summertime, there's so much activity in the summer, there's so much warmth, there's so much light. There's so much connection. There's just, like, so much food growing, so. So many animals moving about, people moving about, going to the beach, traveling. Like, there's a lot of things happening in the summertime. A lot of things.

A lot of movement. And then imagine winter. There's 10 inches of snow in the ground. It's frigid. You're in the Arctic, where summer only happens for a month out of the year. It's cold, it's barren. There's life there, right? But not much. Some of the life that exists there is unseen, exists in the stillness. So you have these two seasons. One's just full of activity and movement. The other one's full of stillness and maybe immobility.

And so your body naturally, is this space of movement, of life. And winter definitely has a lot of life to it. It's just. For this example, we're gonna. We're gonna stick with this. So your body needs energy and warmth to circulate blood. In order for blood to get to your fingertips, it has to have a certain amount of blood and warmth to do that. And if it doesn't, it doesn't do it well. In this example, you would have cold fingers because your body's not doing it well. It's. It's. It's not.

It's not fluid and open. And when a trauma happens in the body, whatever the trauma is, physically, emotionally. I believe all trauma is emotional. And the physical manifestation is just what follows it. So there's some form of trauma that happens. I could say it's a trauma of having a sexual violation. That's a trauma. Being teased. That's a trauma. Being shamed about your naked body. There's a trauma trying something out for the first time and somebody telling you fucking suck.

There's a trauma. So something happens, and there becomes a cease of energy. And all trauma is. Is an unresolved moment. And in that moment, some aspect of you gets dampened and repressed. So if you're being made fun of for something you tried for the first time, and it's like. It becomes like this cloak of dampness that just. Like this heaviness that just. Or like, knocks you off your pedestal or your stool or whatever, it's like this impact to a moment. And if it's repressed, which trauma is.

It's unresolved repression, then that still lingers around. And so something happens to your natural flow. It gets impeded, it gets repressed.

So trauma is like this. Imagine your front door, and every time Something happened that was unresolved that you held on to. You put a toy in your front door, and that toy is like permanent. It's not like the toy you kick and you. The toy goes flying and then, no, the toy is like cemented there, the entryway to your front door. And then another moment happens and another toy gets cemented there. And over time, you can't get in your front door. That's trauma.

And how that can manifest, this is how cold plays into it. Is that the circulation you attempting to get through your front door, the blood in your body trying to go through the vessels to get to where it needs to go, can't do that or doesn't do it very well. Like maybe some of it gets to go through the door. Like your arm can fit through the door, but not your whole body. Your head maybe can squeeze through, but not the rest of your body.

So the same thing happens with your blood is that it can't go all the way through because it's being impeded, it's being blocked. And then it can't go to where it needs to go to nourish the aspects that it needs to nourish. You can't get into your home to take care of your baby, to make food for yourself. Like, you don't have access to nourish yourself.

And so this is what happens with trauma. So it creates blockages within you, within your system. So your body being your mirror of you and your life experience is that in your body, that warmth and that blood can't get to where it's going. And then what exists in that space, it becomes barren and cold. And I actually find that women, more than men, have the experience of resistance to cold. And I believe an aspect of that is that women are. The feminine is the energy of yin and Chinese medicine.

So yin is the dark, the cold energy. It's the nighttime. It's like cave like energy. And so an aspect of that can be interwoven with that. But I also see it as an aspect that when we cut ourselves off to something because of some trauma, some experience that we had, that area becomes numb. And I just think about the yoni, you know, the vagina, the uterus, the womb, the whole female reproductive system. And women being numb inside of this part of themselves.

And when there's numbness, there's coldness. I mean, people put ice when there's a trauma. Which side note, I do not recommend that because cold impedes circulation. And what you actually want to do is you want to keep things Moving and flowing so that healing can occur. So when there's numbness, there's cold. Numb means I've turned this off. There's no feeling and sensation. And the example, the reflection of looking at summer and winter next to each other, which one has more numbness to it?

It's not a trick question. It's winter. And so imagine the numbness wherever it is. Maybe you have numbness in your body and you're aware of it. Maybe you have it and you're not aware of it. It's, it's like this isolated, barren place. It's cold, it's rejected, it's turned off. So if you've ever experienced an aversion to cold, and specifically as it relates to like, it shows up as a real big aversion of like, I don't want to be cold whatsoever, like in any regard.

Or maybe if it's like, oh, I'm really concerned about this, this is experience I have over and over. If I get cold, this happen, happens, I want to invite you to look that what's at the root of that aversion is, is pain, trauma, numbed off parts of yourself. Now, is going out into the cold naked your medicine? I have no idea. Really, truly, and speaking from my own personal experience, sometimes diving into the thing that is most uncomfortable for us is the medicine we need.

And sometimes being really kind to ourselves is the medicine that we need. So is diving into the cold what you need in order to move through, move through this numb part of yourself? Maybe. Maybe. And is your medicine inviting in the warmth, working with, for example, maybe like the fire, working with plants that are warming, foods that are warming, environments with other people that are connecting and inviting climates that have a tremendous amount of warmth and sun. Is that your medicine?

Maybe only you know what your medicine will be. And it can be a hosh posh of all the things at different moments in time. The greatest medicine, regardless of how it shows up, is the one that you're connected to. Knowing that at the root of this aversion to cold is some numbed out part of yourself, some part of yourself that you have rejected and kept isolated and repressed, that's the greatest medicine, is to connect and just inquire.

So regardless of what you're being called to, to connect with, knowing and trusting that at the root, you're tending to coming home and integrating this part of yourself that you've shunned, repressed. And I say things like shunned because like that's what happened, right? There's A moment that you abandoned yourself, tucked yourself away, kept this thing hidden, stuffed it in the way back of the dark, lonely closet. I mean, it's, it's that quite dramatic.

And we're just like, I can't deal with this. And it's not a judgment that it's right or it's wrong or that's wrong of you or bad of you. It's just using a word to highlight like that's what has happened.

And so I want to speak to the medicine of cold because cold invites us, Cold invites us into something deeper within ourselves. I've been an avid cold climate lover all my life, and it holds such a special, special place in my heart. In my experience, it brings an invitation to really be with your. When it's cold, it invites a type of listening that doesn't exist and the activity and the, the chaos of summer, of warmth.

And I think that maybe that's really good information to connect with if you have an aversion to cold. Like there's this saying that the only way out of it is through it. So bringing in the energy of cold can be the medicine to help connect with the part of you that is cold and numbed. Then cold invites a stillness, a silence.

So bringing stillness and silence to the part of your body that feels most cold, the part of you that feels most cold, can create the healing, the opening that you're looking for. So your aversion to cold is completely valid and real. And I would invite you to bring in the medicine of the cold as it relates to. As it relates to the energy that it holds and invite in the energy of warmth, because that's what's missing. But when there's a. I don't even want to deal with the cold.

I don't even want to experience the cold. There's a resistance to being with what's underneath the surface. So every individual is going to be different where they are in their journey, of what this means and what it's reflecting for them. So take that deep breath, close your eyes and check in with your body. Where, where does the place of cold live? Within me. You can bring your hands to that part of your body and just rest your hands there, feel that connection. I would say just listen.

You're going to ask more questions. You can inquire, you can always just say, I'm here to listen. What do you have to share with me, to show me, to help me understand dots to connect? And just be silent, still quiet, and listen to this part of you from my perspective? Everything on the surface just isn't it. There's more that meets the eye and if you look underneath what you can see, you'll discover something new. And from there, just continue to do the same.

If you're listening as it relates to my retreats and my events, going to drop this in the space for you that you're welcome to put clothes on when you need to. That's a We're in the medicine of nudity. We're also in the medicine of using your voice and tending to what you need, taking care of yourself, allowing yourself to be nourished.

And if it feels chilly that morning, and what feels most nourishing to you is to wrap your shawl around your body and go sit by the fire, then that's the medicine you need. If it feels nourishing for you to sleep with some warm, comfy socks on, then that's your medicine.

This is about leaning into your edge. It's not about pushing you off a cliff beyond your edge and making you. Making yourself be somewhere that you're not, or making yourself be somewhere you're not. Ready to be yet. It's okay. And your medicine is unique to you. And what you need in this exact moment is what's there for you. And until next time, we are complete. Thank you for tuning your consciousness to. This episode of the Naked Human.

However you find yourself, whether it's relieved, enlightened, triggered, or as if the past minutes were a complete waste of your time, it's perfect. Be present to it and allow it to be the medicine you need. I welcome your feedback and heartfelt reflections of how this episode impacted you.

You can share with me online@the nakedhumanpodcast.com and if you're feeling called for a more personalized experience into your nakedness, I invite you to join our community of wild women in person or online. You can find more specifics@thenakedhumanpodcast.com and until next time, bye.