Our Adventures Archives - Page 2 of 8 - Turning Simple Difficult

Cold Exposure – Respect The Elements

December 13, 2022April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

December 13, 2022 Wild Dipping with a Group on one of my training Workshops Cold exposure is becoming more and more popular as people are becoming more aware of the benefits of this activity. With popularity, however, comes abandon, ego, competition, challenges and social media pressure. The Wim Hof Method promotes gradual cold exposure and any instructor will tell you that anything sub 15C for around 2 mins will give you all of the available benefits but that you always need to listen to your body. Serious cold exposure that you may see myself or other instructors doing in their spare time, or during their workshops is always controlled. There is a protocol and we follow it for a reason. The cold (as Wim would say) is our teacher, there are some amazing things to be learnt about yourself, your body, your mind and your capabilities by getting it right, but also some hard and valuable lessons to be learnt in getting it wrong. So...

Breathing is Simple, We All Do It!

December 12, 2022April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

December 12, 2022 Breath Deep to your Soul Breathing, we all do it! We all know what would happen if we didn’t, yet how many of us focus consciously on our breathing? How many of us are even aware of our breath? I would bet my bottom dollar that most of us go through life just letting it happen to us… roughly 20,000 times a day. This is the beauty of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This controls all the bodily functions that keep us alive: breathing, cardio-vascular system, heartbeat, digestion, waste removal, to name a few. These things happen to us, within us, every day and when they stop working even for a short period of time, we feel it, we become sick, bloated, unable to sleep, overwhelmed etc… What if I told you that you can control your ANS? There are two arms to the ANS, the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Now before you switch off, let me...

The Wim Hof Method And Me

September 20, 2022April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

Cold Exposure Hello my wonderful friends and followers! I wanted to write this to give a little insight into The Wim Hof Method and Me and show you some of the things we are doing. As I explained in my It’s A Fine Line blog, I started doing The Wim Hof Method to work on getting back to being happy, healthy and strong. It works on three main pillars: Breathwork, Cold Exposure and MindSet. I started with cold showers, nothing too mad, just taking a normal shower then flicking the temp all the way off for the last 10 secs. Progressing over the weeks until I was doing 5-6 minute ones. Starting with a cold shower rather than a warm one and loving the feeling it gave me. It was a mix of feelings really. Physically it took away my pain, reduced inflammation, but mentally was the most surprising. It made me feel elated, accomplished, like I’d taken on a major force and beaten it in...

It’s A Fine Line

September 20, 2022April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

Between Pride & A Fall It has been a long, long time since I last posted here. I wanted to let you know why… Back in 2020 when we all became aware of the pandemic, I thought the toilet paper hoarding, empty shelves and the confusing instructions from the UK government were hilarious. First world problems. Also, and this is important. I felt very lucky to be here in Bulgaria, surrounded by land. Not confined to an apartment or city house and where all the shops were operating as normal. Not one person to be found hugging toilet paper like their life depended on it. When the vaccine started rolling out I was also delighted to find out that I didn’t need to wait for my age bracket to be called in. I could just turn up and get jabbed at the local hospital and on 23rd February 2021 that’s exactly what I did. I was so smug! Dan felt like he’d been hit by...

My Why!

September 20, 2022April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

The Wim Hof Method and Me I discovered the Wim Hof Method a few years back. Jody Hatton suggested him to me, he thought I might find him interesting. So me being me, I had YouTube playing on my tablet while I was working on my laptop… I am the Queen of bad multi-tasking. Needless to say half hearted breathing, while focusing on work, just doesn’t cut it and I didn’t really grasp the importance of Wim’s message. I decided it wasn’t for me! Forward Wind to 2021 February 23rd 2021 to be precise. I stood in the queue to get the first of two COVID vaccinations. I was so happy that living in Bulgaria meant that I didn’t have to wait for my age group to be called to qualify. Just stand in a queue and voila! That smugness was short-lived as a few days later, while mixing concrete for our new breathwork platform (my life is anything but sedentary), I felt that something was wrong. My leg...

Friday 13th 2020 – What Could Go Wrong?

November 13, 2020April 1, 2025 by Jane12 Comments

Shit Just Got Real Oh my goodness – I am excited beyond belief. Did I say excited – I meant TERRIFIED. Not because it is Friday 13th in 2020 (of all the years). No, not this as I actually believe this day is lucky. Or more to the point the number 13 represents feminine power and if we're honest we could all use a bit of that! However, all this talk about finding out who I am, or managing the expectations of others and here I am shaking in my boots because I am soon to expose myself (not physically you understand, that would be easy in comparison, if not a little disturbing for you guys, but mentally). I have spent my life worrying about what others will think about me. It has held me back from being the person I think I am. As an example, many years ago I wrote a book whilst in an abusive relationship. I kept it hidden because I...

Managing The Expectations of Others

November 8, 2020April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

Society Expects Image by silviarita from Pixabay In my last blog “When I Grow Up I Want To Be…” I talked about how we are expected to choose our paths at an early age and how we let this choice define the rest of our adult lives. It got me thinking (or actually one of the comments I received in response to that blog did), about how we are all expected to do and be certain things in this life and how difficult it is to manage these expectations. Those of us of a certain age grew up in a vastly different era. We accepted things we wouldn’t dream of putting up with today.We felt and took responsibility for things that happened to us. This sounds noble, but it is anything but. Hell, half of my childhood TV heroes are now in prison…way too late because victims blamed themselves and/or were too embarrassed, or frightened, to come forward. We were tricked by societal lies that...

When I grow up I want to be…

October 25, 2020April 1, 2025 by Jane4 Comments

The Most Terrifying Question Ever. The question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ was for me both the most boring, yet terrifying question ever. Boring because where I grew up, it seemed the only options were to go and work at the nuclear plant, the shipyard or learn shorthand and become a secretary, none of which excited me. Terrifying because the first time this question raised its head, I was around 13 years old. What subjects do you want to continue studying to enable you to become what you want to be in life? I was 13, how on earth was I supposed to know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was a long way from being a grown up and all I knew was, I liked being outside and I liked being around animals. Neither of which really earned you good money, unless you were a vet or something…hell yeah, I’ll be a vet then!...

Stop the World…

October 4, 2020April 1, 2025 by Jane2 Comments

I Need More Time! We are so busy renovating, gardening, cooking, kayaking, painting and generally enjoying this crazy life we chose... that I haven't sat down to write since January, when I laid out the plans for this year. Whilst the Western World appears to have gone a little bit mad, here in Eastern Europe (at least in my little part) things seem to be pretty much business as usual. Yes, we carry masks with us wherever we go, we avoid crowded spaces and only eat outdoors in restaurants, but there is no doubt whatsoever, that we are truly, truly lucky to have made early choices in life that now are paying us back in spades. Life has changed very little for us. We have achieved the best part of the three things that were on our list, with the exception of perhaps the continuous improvement in the garden area...which the cooling temperatures will help with immensely as the year progresses. But we have...

Wrapping Up & Planning Ahead

January 18, 2020April 1, 2025 by JaneNo Comments

Time Off for Good Behaviour Normally once it gets to November we down tools and get some time off for good behaviour. Maybe the odd day will be a work day if the sun shines or there isn't too much snow. 2019 had other thoughts! The weather was amazing, so here we are in January and we haven't stopped yet. This means we are getting a good jump on our tasks for 2020. Before I go into our three tasks for this year though let me sum up the third item on last years list. I have already covered the kitchen in this article here. And the garage floor in this one - just click to read them if you've missed them. Item Number Three You might be getting the theme now that only having three things on our list doesn't mean we have very little to do. Similar to the UK saying we will only 'save the NHS', 'build a high...