This conversation sits in a different category from most cold therapy content. Joshua isn't presenting a protocol. He isn't citing studies or optimizing for performance markers. He's telling you that the cold saved his life — not because of norepinephrine or brown fat activation, but because it taught him how to feel again. That distinction matters enormously.
The core claim here is emotional, not physiological: cold immersion, particularly when paired with breathwork, can unlock emotional release that rational thought cannot access. Joshua wept in Iceland in ways he never had before. Not because he was cold. Because for the first time, his nervous system was activated enough — and then surrendered enough — to process what had been stored for years.
Here's where it gets interesting. The physiological research is almost entirely focused on cold as a body tool — inflammation, cardiovascular adaptation, norepinephrine, heat shock proteins. But Joshua is pointing at something the studies rarely measure: cold as an emotional processing tool. And yet the mechanism is right there in the data. Cold exposure triggers a massive sympathetic surge, flooding the system with adrenaline and endorphins. When that wave passes, there's a parasympathetic rebound — a window of profound calm. For people carrying chronic emotional tension, that window can be a door.
Andrew Huberman's work on the dynorphin-endorphin system is relevant here. Discomfort sensitizes the feel-good receptors. You push through the cold, and afterward, the system opens. What Joshua experienced in Iceland — that uncontrollable release of tears — may be exactly this mechanism operating at the emotional level rather than just the hedonic one.
Most cold therapy researchers would nod at the breathwork component. The 2014 Kox et al. study on Wim Hof's method showed that cyclic hyperventilation combined with cold exposure produces measurable changes in immune response and stress hormones. What's less studied is the emotional sequencing Joshua describes — breathwork first, cold second, emotional release third. That specific ordering as a therapeutic arc is underexplored. The somatic therapy world has been working with breath and body for decades, but the cold piece as emotional catalyst is relatively new territory.
If you're approaching cold immersion purely as a performance tool, you're leaving something on the table. Try what Joshua does: breathe first. Even three deep diaphragmatic breaths before you step into the cold changes what happens next. Your nervous system arrives differently. And when you're in the cold, let yourself feel whatever is there — not just the temperature, but anything else that surfaces. The cold creates conditions. You decide what to do in them.
Joshua was born with a collapsed lung and spent two weeks in intensive care as a newborn. His first experience of life was fighting for breath. His healing practice, decades later, is built around breath. That's not coincidence — it's the body finding its way back to the wound and making it the medicine. The coldest teachers are often the ones we were handed at the very beginning.