"Your body builds up a tolerance very quickly. But when you go from the cold, you have to go to the hot. And once you've done hot and cold, you need to rest and let your body come into balance and homeostasis. And this is the part that's often neglected. But this is the juice- The reward of doing the hot and the cold therapy is having the bliss of perfect balance of temperature of that thermal regulation". - Dr Marc Cohen
Dr Marc Cohen is a doctor that focuses on prevention and keeping people well. A registered medical doctor with a PhD in TCM, Marc has been practising and paving the way for progressive integrative medicine for over three decades. A professor, researcher and contributor to the fields of nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, detoxification, bathing, water quality, saunas, hot springs, and elite athletic performance- he is a true gift to the wellness industry.
Today Dr Marc joins Mason on the podcast to discuss the Yin and Yang of hot and cold therapy. This conversation moves away from the surface elements of how the hot/cold therapy industry is usually marketed- to the depths of what the Finnish call- 'loyly'- a word that describes the steam that is produced when adding water to the hot sauna rocks but translates to 'Spirit of Life'.
Dr Marc talks about the many health benefits of hot and cold therapy with specific techniques for improving your circulation and overall organ function. He discusses how controlling the breath is essential to any hot/cold exposure experience, his go-to hot and cold therapy hacks that anyone can try at home, and the common sense safety protocols he recommends.
Like many conversations we air on the podcast, the golden thread that runs through this conversation is finding that sweet spot where the Yin and Yang are balancing. Dr Marc explains the importance of balancing hot and cold therapy with equal amounts of deep relaxation and how, when following this method, we find the sweet bliss point of homeostasis. This conversation will ignite (or reignite) inspiration for hot/cold exposure and maintaining the Yin and the Yang in all facets of life.
"If you're forcing people into it, it can actually be traumatic. So you've got to be careful. And really, people are exploring the edge of their tolerance. And I talk about how to be comfortably uncomfortable. Or how to get to the point where you reach what I call forced mindfulness. It's when your body demands the attention of your mind saying, 'Hey, we are really cold. Get out of here'. Or, 'Hey, it's really hot. Get out of here'."
- Dr Marc Cohen
Marc and Mason discuss:
- Saunas.
- Ice baths.
- Hormesis.
- Hot springs.
- Hot therapy.
- Cold therapy.
- Thermodynamics.
- Heated hammocks
- Forced mindfulness.
- The key to cold immersion.
- The Yin and Yang of hot/cold therapy.
- Getting comfortable in the uncomfortable.
- The health benefits of hot and cold therapy
- Finding the blissful midpoint of homeostasis.
- The benefits of sauna for people with heart disease.
- Hacks to put your body into parasympathetic mode.
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Who is Dr Marc Cohen?
Professor Marc Cohen MBBS (Hons), PhD (TCM), PhD (Elec Eng), BMed Sci (Hons), FAMAC, FICAE
Dr Marc is a registered medical doctor, university professor, author, poet, entrepreneur, wellness trailblazer and perpetual student of life, trying to coax the world towards worldwide wellness. He has practiced integrative medicine for more than 3 decades and has spent more than 16 years as a university professor teaching and researching wellness and contributing to the fields of nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, health retreats, fermentation, detoxification, bathing, water quality, saunas, hot springs, elite athletic performance and flow states.
Dr Marc has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and many books and technical texts on wellness and natural medicine including ‘Understanding the Global Spa Industry’ and the landmark text ‘Herbs and Natural Supplements: An Evidence-Based Guide’ along with the illustrated children’s books “Bing & Bang Begin” and “The Beautiful Mare and the Boy Who Gave Thanks”. Dr Marc is a Past Board Member of the Global Wellness Summit, Past President of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association, Founder of the Extreme Wellness Institute, Beautiful Water, and Pronoia Press, Co-Founder of the Bathe the World Foundation, and Co-Owner of Extremely Alive Wellness Tonics and Maruia Hot Springs. You can find him at www.drmarc.co and on linktree.
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Relevant Podcasts:
Healing Heat: Infarerd Saunas (EP#84)
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Check Out The Transcript Here:
Mason:
Marc, welcome. SuperFeast community doesn't know it, but they've been craving to listen to you. I'm sure many people know you, as well.
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. Great to be joining you finally. Yeah.
Mason:
Yeah. There's going to be a bajillion directions we can go. But ever since I remember about your Chinese medicine and common sense and folklore background, and just the amount of experience you have and watching you immerse yourself so much into the cold exposure and heat exposure world especially ... I mean, you can talk more about it in terms of the PhD level and everything. This isn't backyard cold exposure. This is really digging into the guts of why this is so amazing, as well as heat exposure.
Mason:
But because we've got so many people constantly asking us when I mention on a podcast that sometimes you can go a little bit too far or go too fast or not far enough, et cetera, people are like, "What do you mean?" And I've always had you in the back of my mind and be like, "At one point, I'd love to just get Mark on. And then that would be our beginning." For us, that'll be beginning to go into the nuance of, cooling too much, particular times of the month for women. Cooling, whatever it is. But I'm so glad to have this chat with you, because I feel this is going to really open up that universe of us educating our crew.
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. And I'm super happy to unpack all that and learn from you. And I mean, I've been loving your products and then watching you going out there. And yeah, really happy to have this conversation. It might be one of many.
Mason:
Yeah. I mean, I'm curious, because nothing's a duality in the surface level. Once you start going in and you actually start understanding Daoism and Chinese medicine, you see what we're aiming for with cold exposure and heat exposure and that [inaudible 00:01:45]. They actually are completely united and they are intensely united. And yet, when people think of the service level, Chinese medicine is, "Always stay warm. Don't expose the body to cold." So on. Nothing too extreme. Whereas cold exposure, especially backyard cold exposure where it's really exploded, is just like, "Ice bath, ice bath, ice bath." Every single day or extreme sauna, extreme sauna, extreme sauna.
Mason:
And so they're not crossing over in, say, the Western eye. The brands aren't crossing over, but I'd love to just see, for you, having the background you have in Chinese medicine and the understanding of the body in that context and Jung and the cultivation of chi and the organ. So on and so forth. Where, for you, why especially heat and cold attracted you so much and why there was that kind of weird corporate word synergy?
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I've had this sort of long drawn out career. So I studied Western medicine and I took four years off my medical degree to study Chinese medicine and just fell in love with the whole cosmology of Chinese medicine of yin and yang and the Dao and the five phases. And I've really focused on wellness my whole career. So I wasn't about how to fix illness. I was more about, "How can I be extremely well so I don't even get ill in the first place?" Which is sort of the Chinese medicine prevention model. And I've always loved bathing. That's just been a passion of mine. So hot springs and whether it's hot or cold bathing. But realise that you need polarity.
Marc Cohen:
And I've developed these different conceptual models, which are heavily based on Chinese medicine. And I think it's part of my, I've got an OCD condition where I put everything into the five elements just because you can count them on your fingers, but it's a really great way of categorising the universe, which is what the Chinese scholars used to do. Put everything according to the five phases, the five elements, whichever how you want to call it. So I've been doing that as a way of systematising knowledge.
Marc Cohen:
But then when it comes to bathing, I've had these really happy circumstances in my life where I've focused on wellness, but I've got really involved in the SPA industry. And SPA is all about [inaudible 00:04:01] Aqua, health through water. And then the hot spring industry and then the sauna industry. And now the water industry, doing beautiful water and creating water filters and companies that do that. And then now fermented foods and probiotics and tonics. So water's a really common theme with my activities. And doing the hot and cold, I've been doing it personally, but also, I like to dive into the research. And so the mind model is, "So let's examine the ancient practises and ancient sort of techniques and activities that they did. But also, trying to unpick that from a modern perspective and then try and do research on that."
Marc Cohen:
And because I spent 38 years at university, half of that time as a professor, though, specialising in wellness. And I'd get these amazing PhD students who could then dive deep into a topic and spend five or six years doing stuff. And I've supervised more than a dozen PhD students who, then, help me dive deeper so that they've done research on hot Springs and on health retreats and on saunas and on herbal medicine. So yeah, I really love diving deep into that. And as far as hot and cold goes, I've been sort of a bit dismayed about how it's sort of marketed. So there's the whole sauna industry, which is all about the heat.
Marc Cohen:
And I was just talking earlier how sauna is the only Finnish word in English language. And when you look at the sauna research in terms of the academic research, I mean, there's overwhelming research that if you have regular saunas, and this research was done mostly in Finland, that it actually, it reduces all cause mortality. It actually stops you dying if you have regular saunas. It reduces heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, pneumonia, respiratory disease, cold and flu. All of these are reduced if you have regular saunaing. But in the medical literature, they talk about the sauna. They don't talk about the cold experience. Yet in Finland, when you have a sauna, it's taken for granted that you open the door and outside it's freezing and you go into a snow drift or a lake or a river, and you balance the heat with the cold.
Marc Cohen:
And if you unpack that, sort of physiologically what's happening is when you're in the heat, you vaso-dilate. Your body opens up all the external blood vessels. Your heart has to pump a lot harder because there's less resistance in the blood vessels and there's more space in the blood vessels for the heart to pump into. So your heart actually has to work harder. It's a really good cardiovascular workout. Of course, when you sweat, as long as you're hydrated well, you're sweating well that, and that's a great detoxification just in the sweating.
Marc Cohen:
But when you vaso-dilate like that in a relaxed situation where you're actually just lying down and relaxing, it means you're not making new metabolic waste products. So your muscles aren't actually working and creating lactic acid. And if you've got any inflammation in your body anywhere, those blood vessels dilate and those inflammatory fluids get flushed. So that's a really positive action. But then when you go into the cold, you then base vaso-constrict and all that blood that's flushed out all the toxicity in your periphery, all that blood gets forced through your internal organs. It gets put into your core to protect ... You vaso-constrict your periphery. That blood goes for your core. So that blood goes for your liver and kidneys, which makes you want to pee and eliminate.
Marc Cohen:
But it also detoxifies all those inflammatory fluids and all those metabolic waste products. So it's a really great flush. And I call it like a bicep curl for your vascular system. You're opening up your blood vessels and you're shutting down your blood vessels. And that opening and closing keeps your blood vessels elastic. And you've got 100,000 kilometres of blood vessels in your body that are all lined by smooth muscle that's not under your voluntary control. But you can sort of control it by controlling your external environment. And that's using hot and cold.
Marc Cohen:
And the other thing that I'm really big into is the idea of hormesis, which is stress that actually makes you stronger by having to adapt to it. And both hot and cold are potentially life threatening stresses. If you are too hot or too cold for too long, you're going to die. But they're also stresses that you can be very in control of. So I can have an ice bath here and a sauna there. I can get really cold, but I know that any time, I can get out of the ice bath and hop into the sauna or the hot tub or the steam room and I can warm up. So it's fully under my control. And a lot of people are really scared by that. And there are cases of people falling into cold water and dying straight away from cold shock. And they call it dry drowning, because their lungs aren't full of fluid. And what happens, and typically, it often happens when someone's in the North Sea or on a ship and they fall overboard and they're suddenly in freezing cold water and they're panicking.
Marc Cohen:
And if they're a little bit older, their heart's a bit brittle. They don't have good cardiac rhythm. They have this massive sympathetic nervous system drive, massive adrenaline. They basically panic and that throws their heart into an abnormal rhythm and they have a heart attack. And that's what kills them. It's not the cold that kills them. It's the panic.
Marc Cohen:
Now, that's very different, though, if you are in control, voluntarily going into an ice bath, and controlling your breath. Cause when you go into extreme cold, you naturally, huh, you have this gasp reflex. So it makes you, huh. Gasp. And then you hyperventilate. Huh, huh, huh, huh. That's a natural response. And if you are panicking and you're in cold water, that'll force you to drown quicker because you're going to start gobbing in cold water. It forces your heart to go into an abnormal rhythms.
Marc Cohen:
And you get this panic response. And that's actually the response. You are reproducing the body chemistry and the breathing pattern of anxiety and trauma. Cause huh, huh, that panic response that cold water induces happens when you are in a really extreme situation. So for some people that have had past trauma or they've got PTSD or they've had anxiety, you can actually trigger that anxiety. But you can trigger it in a very controlled way that they can then overcome that, which can be really therapeutic. But if you're doing it just forcing people into, it can actually be traumatic. So you've got to be really careful. And really, people are exploring the edge of their own tolerance. And I talk about how to be comfortably uncomfortable. Or how to get to the point where you get what I call forced mindfulness. It's when your body demands the attention of your mind saying, "Hey, we are really cold. Get out of here." Or, "Hey, it's really hot. Get out of here."
Marc Cohen:
And at that point where your mind and body are on the same page, that's essentially yoga. That's union. That's mind and body and breath are all connected. Everyone's different and your tolerance will change day to day and how you're feeling and what your mood is and what you ate yesterday and whether you're worrying about stuff and how present you can be in the moment. And of course, the breath is the connection between the body and the mind. So controlling your breath is a really key aspect of any hot or cold experience. And when you're in the heat, you naturally hyperventilate because just you pant and your hearts working harder. So it's actually a really good cardiovascular exercise you can do without stressing your joints. So for people who are overweight or they've got osteoarthritis and they can't go for a run or bike ride or something, they can sit in a sauna and have a really good cardiovascular workout. And that's probably the most evidence in terms of medical evidence in terms of the benefits for saunaing is for heart disease.
Marc Cohen:
People think, "Oh, maybe it's going to stress my heart and it's dangerous." So while there's a really great wealth of evidence for the benefits of saunaing for people with heart disease, we did a whole big global sauna survey. One of my PhD students did a six year research on saunas. And we found out, most people with heart disease don't use saunas because they're scared. And in fact, most people use saunas for relaxation, for mental health benefits, and for reducing stress, and for helping sleep which are all great uses. And I still do a couple of days a week of medical practise, just telehealth. And the first thing I say to my patients is, "I want you to sleep well and to digest well. Cause unless you are sleeping well and digesting well, your body can't heal itself and you can't recover. And anything else I'm going to do is not going to work. But if I help you sleep well and digest well, your body's going to heal itself. And then we can tweak other things that need to be tweaked."
Marc Cohen:
So things that help you sleep well, I mean, saunaing helps you sleep well. Exercise will help sleep. And then digesting well. And that's getting the digestive fire up and using living foods and ferments and prebiotics and whole foods rather than packaged foods. And basically common sense. So yeah, there's a whole wealth of information there that hasn't often been put together in the right way. And five years ago now I travelled with Wim Hof and I gave the lecture behind the science behind the Wim Hof method. And Wim Hof's very gung-ho, doing ice baths. But he doesn't actually talk much about the relaxation and using heat. He's all about surviving cold.
Marc Cohen:
And we went to these Wim Hof events, there'd be 500 people there. And a lot of alpha males. And the martial artists and the firefighters are all there. And the sports people. And it's great for them because they've got a lot of chi that they're really strong in their bodies and they want to have that stress. But then, I have a different take on that. Because I talk about doing, fine, going to an ice bath. And doing it gradually. Not forcing yourself, not having it painful ... Because your body builds up tolerance very quickly. But when you go from the cold, you need to go to the hot. And once you've done hot and cold, you need to rest and let your body come back into balance and homeostasis. And I think that's often neglected. And that's the juice. That the reward of doing the hot and the cold is having the bliss of perfect balance of temperature of that thermal regulation.
Marc Cohen:
Because somewhere in between hot and cold is perfect. And when you're in absolute thermal homeostasis, you are at one with the universe. Your body doesn't have to do anything because you are at the perfect temperature. And that's the bliss you get. And I really think focusing on that stillness and that rest and the bliss you get from being in balance once you've done the hot and cold is the reward. And there's a saying, the greatest movement comes from the stillest point. So if you can be really still internally, and that's a great time to meditate, once you've done hot and cold. And both hot and cold force your mind to stop thinking. As a survival mechanism. When you're really cold, your mind basically turns off because your brain takes about 20 to 25% of all your oxygen just in monkey mind. And just functioning of your brain.
Marc Cohen:
And when you're in a cold situation or extreme cold situation, your brain says, "Okay, I'm going to turn myself off. Cause I have to save that oxygen for my heart and lungs and just stay alive." So it actually turns off your thinking, which is really bad if you're in an emergency situation. You have to open a flare packet or you have to actually do something with your hands or think, because you can't think properly. And they've done a lot of research with Navy feels and survival stuff on how your mind actually doesn't work that well when you're really cold.
Marc Cohen:
But if you want to meditate, to have your body turn your mind off, have a switch to be able to turn your mind off and come be peaceful, it's actually really useful. So yeah. And the same with really hot. So there's a saying, a word in Finnish and it's written L-O-Y-L-Y, but it's loyly. And loyly is, it's really hard to translate. It actually means life force. But it also means the steam that comes off the rocks in the sauna, and the feeling you get when that steam hits your body and it forces you to go inside. It forces you to connect with your inner being, because you're sort of hit this waft of steam and the shock of that steam and that connection with the steam actually just forces your brain to stop for a few seconds. Because all you're doing is experiencing the heat.
Marc Cohen:
And when you go to a sauna in Finland, I'll say, "Did you have good loyly? How was the loyly?" And what they're referring to is not how much steam there was, but how was your reaction with that steam? And did you have a great internal experience by surviving the external heat? And that's the point of what I call forced mindfulness. When the environment forces you to go inside and become really mindful of your body.
Mason:
You pointed out, it was the same when I went met Wim Hof. I was like, "There's a reason this guy ..." He had everything that went on, what happened with his wife. He needed a strong teacher. There was a lot of beautiful aggression in him. And I remember being younger and being at that place, especially in my mid twenties, when I had that aggression and I craved a strong teacher like the cold. And therefore, it was really appropriate for me to immerse. And sometimes for him, I think it's, "Yeah. That's appropriate for you just to immerse in the cold." And we'd had a cold plunge and were just playing music. And we just chilled Friday night. And he's like, "We need to teach everyone that their bodies are in their control." We're like, "We know. We know. We know, Wim. We think it's cool."
Mason:
And I was like, "Yeah." But I can see why this guy walked that path. And why so many, especially men, but women who have a strong constitution as well, walk that path. But it's a different path or stage. Or cold is a different teacher, verse in the context that you are talking about, which is where I feel like I've evolved to, with gaining further understanding of yin yang. And especially what I see happen in many people, especially many women, especially if they're a bit blood deficient or if they've just bled and there's the cold invasion aspect. And if the cold gets into the uterus or into anywhere, I get the extreme examples, that it's a small amount, but women, especially women and men getting damaged by that cold exposure.
Mason: (18:51)
But probably going into it from that first, that purely Wim Hof way of approaching it rather than, it's just about getting that distinction, for me, talking about those two paths or approaches, I guess you could say. And likewise, the heat's got its own unique path for particular people, when they need heat to be their teacher for a time. But then make sure you're ready to step away from that teacher and the extremes of that teacher maybe and come back to more of a harmonious interchange between hot and cold and focus on your own centeredness. And then I guess it's just common sense from there, as you said. It's only going into that. What did you call it? Into that something stress? It's like when we're stretching, kind of we always talk about it. Just go to 70% and sit at that.
Marc Cohen:
Yeah.
Mason:
Be comfortable in the uncomfortable.
Marc Cohen:
That's it. Find the point of being comfortably uncomfortable, but don't go beyond that. Don't become uncomfortably uncomfortable because that's when you're going to do damage. That's when you're going to hurt yourself.
Mason:
It gets confusing, I think, because I can make a case for looking at ... I've got plenty of friends that run these real deep, cathartic ice exposure sessions. And 80% of people are going to have a massive breakthrough and go, "My gosh. Look at my mind. I can withstand this. And I can go be way beyond where I thought I was going to and get these incredible results." But I guess it's the same in anything, whether it's the plant medicine world, the meditation world. If you keep on going and chasing that peak experience, it might be good a few times, but at some point, not chasing that peak experience is probably ... And perhaps you can shift towards that. Like, "Okay. Now I'm in a constant, slow cultivation, more balanced cultivation, practise in the middle."
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:20:40].
Mason:
It isn't about being cathartic all the time.
Marc Cohen:
Cause if you just use the cold, it's just going to deep yin without the yang. And you need balance. So if you're going to go into deep cold, you need to have the heat to balance that. And together, that becomes a really healthy practise you can maintain for a long time. Now, maybe doing cold once or twice as a, "Wow, I can survive this," and go beyond your expectations is a revelation and that's empowering for people. But as a regular practise ... And actually, I was doing that for about five months, because five years, Wim invited me to come up to Kilimanjaro with him. And we were going to do a 24 hour hike to the top of Kilimanjaro. And I was going to take my two teenage sons. And he wanted me to be the researcher and measure people's blood oxygen. And we can have a couple of A listed Hollywood celebrities when they come.
Marc Cohen:
So it was this big thing. So for five months, I was doing 10 minutes of ice bath every morning without the sauna. And I'd start my day with, I'd make 50 kilos of ice in my freezer outside and I'd have to take these ice blocks and put them in the bath and smash them up with a mash hammer, spend 10 minutes in the ice bath, fill up the box for the next morning. Me and my kids were doing it. My two teenage boys. They were 14 and 16 at the time. And they were doing 10 minutes of ice bath every morning. And I wouldn't say they loved it, but they did it because, "Okay, we have to climb, Kilimanjaro and we want to get really strong." And then two weeks before the trip was going to happen, it got cancelled due to sort of politics and issues outside our control.
Marc Cohen:
And I must say, I was very disappointed, but I was also super relieved. Cause on this trip, first of all, can I survive it myself? And I've been to Everest base camp and experienced high altitude. And you can't predict who's going to respond to high altitude well or not. So I was worried about myself. I was worried about my kids. I was going to be the doctor there. So if anyone else got sick on the trip, they'd call on me and then they wanted me to do research. And monitor people's blood oxygen and heart rate variability and all that sort of stuff. So I was actually quite relieved that trip didn't happen. But I was doing this for nearly five months, cold every morning. I don't think it was actually that good for me.
Marc Cohen:
I remember I'd do the cold and then I'd drive into work. At that time, I was still a professor at RMIT and it would take me a couple of hours, small shivering, to really warm my body up. And I don't think that's a healthy thing. Whereas if you do the cold and you balance it with the heat, I think that's a lot more balanced. And even then, if you're going to use cold and balance with the heat, I'd really recommend spending at least as much time as you spend in extreme temperature to spend just totally relaxing, coming back into balance and finding that midpoint, that blissful point of homeostasis. And I think that's where the power is. You can explore the extremes of yin and of yang, but then you want to come back and have them balanced. And that's where you get the best resilience and you get your body, then, adapting.
Mason:
And maybe just a little bit of advice. Again, it's a common sense thing, but sometimes I forget it myself and I know it's just one of those things. It's just because we've gone so far into hot and cold exposure. Doesn't mean that, for me, I know at the moment when I'm at a time where I'm learning how to [inaudible 00:24:10 really. We got a new four month old here and the family, there's a lot. There's a lot on. And it's taken me quite a bit of time to go, "Yeah. You went hard on your practises and built a resilience so that you have a foundation at this time." But then also, get into reality, mate. I don't have the edges I normally do.
Mason:
And it's always a beautiful experience. It's a different time of life. It's nice to go into that real, "Oh yeah. I'm going to be forgiving." And I've watched that go too far. And it also comes to time when people, it's like, "No, come on. You've got this. Go a little bit deeper." I don't know if you've got anything else to add on that, but that's the only other little nuance piece there in terms of that sensitivity of going, "What's useful for my body?" Or you bringing up the blood vessels. Yeah.
Marc Cohen:
Well, I mean, I think it's really good to take it easy. Well, I did the Wim Hof events with all the alpha males and the very strong females. I also did another series of events with Therese Kerr, who's Miranda Kerr's mom. And she's got an organic skincare range. And we did a tour up the west coast in WA.
Mason:
She used to live two houses up for me when I lived at Bilgola plateau.
Marc Cohen:
Oh, okay.
Mason:
When she was just getting that skincare started and I was just getting SuperFeast started. She's great.
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. She is. So she's great. And we did this sort of tour, like a wellness tour, of Western Australia. And the people that came to that were mostly women in their late forties to seventies. So very different from the Wim Hof population. But we took them through the breathing practise and ice baths. And they actually loved it. But we focused rather on the extreme of the ice bath and er and being able to survive it, of getting in touch with your body and then the rest afterwards. And feeling invigorated afterwards. And that was a really great revelation, that anybody can actually do this. And then I was running a retreat at Gwinganna, the health retreat up in Queensland. And when I was talking about ice baths there.
Marc Cohen:
And generally, when I talk about it, you ask people, "Who does cold showers in the morning?" You get maybe about eight to 10% of people say, "Yeah, I do a cold shower in the morning. I love it. I never get sick. And it's fantastic." And then 90% of people say, "No. Oh, I'm just not a cold water person. I can't handle it." And I was trying to get this Gwinganna group to do cold bathing and they just weren't into it. And so I came up with this, I call it the cold water hokey pokey. And it's a way of doing cold water in a shower, hot and cold, that makes it really easy. And now it's a little song and dance routine, but basically you start off with a really hot shower. And then you warm your body up. And then you actually turn the heat up. So you're really flushed and vaso-dilated.
Marc Cohen:
And then you get to the point, and the hardest thing with any cold immersion is actually making the decision to do it. You're at the edge of the pool and it's cold. The hardest thing is that decision to actually jump in. That's the moment where you actually exercise the willpower. Cause once you've jumped in, you're committed. And you know it's going to happen and you just tolerate it. But if you do that in the shower, so you have a really hot shower, become really vaso-dilated, a little bit flushed. And then you make the decision to do it and you turn the hot water off and the cold water on. But you just wet your left foot. And that's okay. You're really hot. And you put your left foot in the cold water. And that's sort of refreshing. It feels good. And then you put your leg in and then you put your right foot and your leg. Then you do your left hand and arm and your other hand and arm.
Marc Cohen:
And what that does, it vaso-constricts, your periphery, your feet and your hands. And it pushes that hot blood that was in your arms and legs into your core. You're actually feeling okay, even though you've put your arms and legs in the cold water. And then you keep breathing calmly and smile to yourself, because that's what it's all about. Having that calm breathing, being in control of your breath. Not freaking out. And then if you take a big breath in, and as you go into the cold, you sigh. So you're going, huh. And then as you are sighing out, you put your left side in. And normally when the cold water would hit your neck where your blood vessels are close to the surface, that would cause you to gasp. That's huh. That would normally cause you to do that. But if you are already sighing out, huh, as the water hits here, you actually feel the cold, but you don't get the emotional reaction from it. So by that sighing, it's a parasympathetic response.
Mason:
Can I speak to that really quickly? Because it's really funny. When I was probably about 20 and I remember going to a bar in the cross with a manager of mine and we were all taking shots of not the best tequila, but we were all, "Oh." Doing our, "Oh." And having our reaction. And he goes, "Hey guys, let me teach you how to really do it. Take a big breath in and then have your shot and then breathe out so that you're not breathing." And I was just like, "Oh my God, I can't believe there's a correlation between tequila shots and getting into cold exposure right now." Cause that totally works and changes the game in your response.
Marc Cohen:
It's all about the breath. And so actually, I'll talk you through the cold water hokey pokey, but then there's what I call the 10 hacks to relax. And we'll enter that in. So these are 10 things you can do with your body that put you into parasympathetic mode. And one of them is sighing. And I was actually trying to get people into ice baths and getting to do things that would calm them down. So I came up with these 10 physical activities. I called them the 10 hacks to relax. It's actually now a little song, but it's actually a poem. And it's, "Touch all your fingers, wiggle your toes. Soften your stomach, breathe through your nose. Sigh, smile, swallow, sing. Flutter your eyelids and focus within." So they're all parasympathetic activities that you do when you're safe in your cave, not when you're running away from a tiger.
Marc Cohen:
So that sighing, when you're doing the second round of the cold water hokey pokey when the water's coming in, if you're sighing out, it means you're controlling your breath, you're not gasping in and panicking. Reproducing the anxiety response. You're actually reproducing the relaxation response while you are being stressed. And that's actually really powerful. And that's, I guess, same with the tequila shot, isn't it? It's a bit stressful taking a tequila shot, but if you sigh out as you're doing it, you're actually getting this sympathetic, parasympathetic activation. So with the cold water hokey pokey, when you take a big breath in and then sigh as the water is hitting your neck, it actually feels okay. It feels cold, but you're not getting the panic response. And you put your left side in, your right side in, your front side in, and turn yourself around. And you keep breathing calmly and smile to yourself. Cause that's what it's all about.
Marc Cohen:
And then you put your whole head in, move your head around. And often, putting the water under your head would get that, huh, that shock response. But again, you're breathing calmly throughout it. And then you put the water on your kidneys and on your groin and on your armpits. And if you're doing that while you're breathing calmly, you'll find that the whole thing takes about a minute. You'll be standing under the cold water and feeling okay about it. And at that point, you can turn the cold water off and you get out of the shower and you're feeling really invigorated and alive. And then you get the reactive hyperemia, which is your blood vessels, which are contracted by the cold water, open up. And your body starts to feel really warm when you get out of the shower. And all those constricted blood vessels actually, you start to turn really pink and you feel really invigorated, alive. And you start your day. And you start your day singing and dancing and feeling invigorated. It's a really great thing to do.
Marc Cohen:
And you can actually do it gradually. So there's no pain involved. It's not trying to force anything. And you can actually start this with a first verse. Do your arms and legs for a few days. And it's amazing how quickly your body reacts. And how quickly we adapt. And then you can even start not with full cold. Or if you start in summer, when the tap water's not super cold coming out of the tap. And it's really amazing how your body reacts. So when I was doing the cold water immersion training for Kilimanjaro, I started off in winter. And I was just going to my swimming pool and spending 10 minutes in there. It was 10 degrees. And that's pretty cold.
Marc Cohen:
But by the end of sort of September, the swimming pool warmed to 15 or 16 degrees. And it wasn't cold enough. And that's when I had to start making ice and making the ice bath. Because my body had adapted and I could spend 10 minutes there. And I mean, you could spend 20 minutes and do it longer. But they say 12 to 14 degrees is the point where you get that snap phase of constriction. Above that, you'll still cool your body down, but you won't get the same strong vaso-constriction response. And they actually did a research project in the Netherlands inspired by Wim Hof where they got people to do a hot shower, either alone or followed by either 30, 60, or 90 second cold shower. And they did that for a month. And they found the people who had the hot and then cold shower had 29% less sick days then the people who just did the hot shower alone.
Marc Cohen:
And that was a controlled trial. It's been published. And actually didn't matter if it was 30, 60, or 90 seconds. They all got the same sort of response in terms of reduced sick days. And when they asked these people, they'd say, "Oh, we didn't really enjoy it, but we're going to keep on doing it because we feel so good afterwards." So there is research on this. And once you've been 30 seconds in, and my take on this is, once you've overcome that, "Huh," response and you've controlled your breathing, you've done the work. You don't have to do prolonged cold exposure. What you're doing is putting yourself in an anxiety producing situation and then using your breath to overcome that and relax in a stressful situation. And that's where the gold is. If you can relax in a stressful situation, then if you can practise doing that in a controlled situation, when life throws stress at you, you've already practised that response. And you can deal better with the uncontrolled stresses of life.
Mason:
And it makes it relative. I mean, just hearing about you and Theresa going in WA and doing that, working with elderly women, it's a funny one because I can see, maybe because it seems like a bit of a young person's club or [raji vaji 00:34:44] kind of yang club. But I've spoken to a few women and a few women who have had negative experiences with it and got in touch with me. Being like, "Oh no. I'm not for that. I did it. And then I lost my cycle straight away." And I kind I'm like, "Oh." And I talk to them a little bit about it. And they're like, "Oh, but it was so good. I kind of miss it." And I'm like, "Oh, perhaps you can have some cinnamon and ginger tea ready or you can have a hot water bottle with you and pop that on your uterus."And it's only happened a couple of times that someone's reported back and gone, "Oh, you you're right."
Mason:
And I've been thinking, you've been talking about the blood vessels and I've just been thinking about the uterus now. I've been looking at the six extraordinary Fu organs recently, those weird ones that are hollow, like the yin organs, but hold essence. Sorry, hollow like the yang organs and hold essence like the yin organs. And the my, the blood vessels. For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about them lately because, whether it's my blood vessels or the uterus or the bone marrow or the bones or the bones, I should say, or the brain, the sea of marrow, I think, "Oh, I don't talk about these organs. I focus on the five transitions or associated organs and the yang associated six organs."
Marc Cohen:
I guess they're tissue types. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mason:
Yeah. And I was just thinking about my, the blood vessels in terms of what you are talking, just the focus there on the ... The my verse, especially with women, but men have their own energetic uterus in there if we go a bit deeper. That dynamic has just kept on coming up for me to make sure, if you're toning the function of that extraordinary organ well [inaudible 00:36:33]-
Marc Cohen:
Well, [inaudible 00:36:33]. I mean, they nourish all your other organs. And before 2014, the biggest killer in Australia and in the world was vascular disease. Heart attack and stroke. Now in 2014, I think cancer took over as the biggest killer. So now, cancer's actually the biggest killer on earth. But vascular disease is number two. And medical practise is number three. Drugs and surgery and what doctors do. But that's another topic. But yeah. But to have healthy blood vessels is a requirement to having healthy organs and nourishing your body. Because if you've got vaso-constriction that's out of control, and I love going back to first principles, and this is why I love Chinese medicine. Because you can go back to physics and thermodynamics. And in thermodynamics, you say, in a closed system, entropy increases. Disorder and entropy and disease will increase in a closed system. And in Chinese medicine, they'll say to reduce entropy or reduce disease, you need flow. And you restore the flow. You create an open system. And the body heals itself.
Marc Cohen:
So this is basically first principles in thermodynamics, that flow is a cause of health and evolution and learning. And that works, whether it's, a closed mind will become disordered or a closed artery will stop your blood or going into your brain or your heart and you'll get a stroke. Or a closed intestine, just not flowing properly, will cause gut problems. So often, it's about regenerating proper flow and exercising your vascular system and making sure that flows really well. So in the heat, you're really opening it all up and then you're closing it down in the cold. This is just a really great weight and nourish all your organs, and as well as flushing everything out.
Marc Cohen:
And then there's all these biochemical and cellular machinery that gets turned on where you have heat shock proteins get released and their chaperone proteins that prevent your other proteins getting misfolded. And you get mitogenesis, where you get the production of new mitochondria, which means your muscles and your cells become more efficient at using energy. So yeah. These are really great techniques of improving your circulation to then improve all your organ function.
Mason:
And just with a little bit of grounded-ness and a few of those principles, you've talked about it regulates it to turn it into a practise that's functional long term. The two points coming up. I think what's coming into the bio-hacking kind of space at the moment, to hearing about the extreme sauna use and then extreme heat for the testes and the lowering of testosterone. So you can see that that's already starting there where they have guys that are taking ice packs in to saunas now with them, which you can see. I can probably see as something that would harmonise already. If you've got that, that's an ice. That's a lot of yang with a little bit of yin in it. That's something that's ...
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. I've started doing that. I was doing that with the hot spring staff. I was training them on doing fire and ice experience. And I did that, it was many years ago now where we had an ice water bottle in the sauna. And the ice water bottle had a little hole in it, like a pinprick hole. So you got this really fine stream of ice water you could then direct on your head or in the back of your neck or along your meridians. And you actually do ice meridian massage while you're in really hot. So there's really [inaudible 00:40:02] when you're in full yang. And that actually sensory journey, it's really sensual to do that.
Marc Cohen:
And it also prolongs the time you can spend in the sauna. Cause if you're in the sauna and you're getting really hot and your body, that forced mindfulness when body is saying, "Hey, it's time to get out. It's too hot." And you just put a really trickle of cold water on your head or on the back of your neck or down your meridians. Often, you'll get these shutters down your back, but it actually feels delightful. But it actually then cools you down. So you can actually spend longer in the sauna. So yeah. I love doing that little bit of yin with the yang. It's really effective.
Mason:
Well, the other thing we were chatting about beforehand was the hammocks. And you were talking about the yin points in the body, if you're out in the hot Springs somewhere. I don't know whether you're going and formalising it, but the kind of the bush mechanic version of creating a heat hammock. You were talking about and the benefit of that.
Marc Cohen:
So we created that. I'm a shareholder in a hot spring in New Zealand, Maruia Hot Springs, which is this idyllic location in the South Island. It's four acres of freehold and 400,000 acres of Alpine National Park. It's surrounded by Alpine. There's smoke heading out on all sides. And there's hot water, 53 degree hot water, coming out of earth. And there's a mountain stream that comes down the mountain, which is freezing. Four degrees or something. And that drives a hydroelectric station that runs the whole property. And then that just flows into the river. And before the pandemic, I was running retreats there where we would do what I call adventure bathing. And we'd send the staff out in the morning and they'd either hike to the top of the high plains where there's these little [tans 00:41:38], these little frozen cold lakes. Or depending on the weather, if it was too windy up there, we could go to these valleys where there these glacial melt rivers.
Marc Cohen:
And they'd trot off. And then they'd set up a hot tub with a gas bottle and a little Rinnai gas heater. And it would take about six hours cause they'd take this four degree water that's in the river or in the lake, that'd spend six hours heating it up so it's 42 degrees in the hot tub. And they would set up a steam room, which was just a little tent with a kettle pumping steam into it. So you'd take the guests out and they'd walk through Narnia land, because New Zealand is just so mossy and gentle and you do some breathing on the way. And some forest bathing. And then you get to this really remote location. And you give them a bath robe and a towel and say, "Okay, have a soak in the hot tub." But you'd made make it so hot, in 10 minutes, they're overheated. They'd have to sit out. And then they don't mind going to the freezing water and having a dip in the cold water. And they'd go to the steam room.
Marc Cohen:
And then we invented this way to create heated hammocks. And there is a thing called a hydro hammock and we bought one of those, which, it's like billboard material, really thick material that you can actually fill with hot water and just have a floating hammock hot bath if you want. But they've also got a version where it's got double skin and you put hot water between the two skins and you let the water soak through. So you are dry in the hammock and the water heats you up. And we were using that for a while. And then I realised, it's quite bulky. The hydro hammocks, they're expensive and they're also really heavy. And then I realised, you can just get a cheap parachute hammock. And they're common, used for camping. And they're super lightweight.
Marc Cohen:
And if you get two of those parachute hammocks and you hang them from the same hook and you put a garbage bag, a 25 litre garbage bag, and you the fill the ... Or you don't fill it. You just put about a kettle full of hot water in the garbage bag. So maybe four or five litres. And not even super hot, 48 degrees. And you pour that in the garbage bag, tie a knot in it, put it between the two hammocks, and lie on top. Then what happens is that five litres of hot water spreads out underneath you. But it happens just to spread out and go into your concavities, which are the yin surfaces of your body. So behind your knees, where your kidneys, are behind your neck. And you get the wind break from the cocoon of the hammock. And you get the heat coming into where the blood vessels are close to the surface. And it's better than I can describe. And it's better than you imagine it's going to be.
Marc Cohen:
Climbing into it, you think, "Oh, this is going to be nice." And you get in there and it's like, "Oh my God, this is so nice." Because it's like this heat treatment, but it's all the places where you want the heat cause it's contour to your body. And sort of you relax into it. And that's a really easy way that anyone can then just set up a heated hammock out in a remote location and turn any remote location into a wellness destination. So I really encourage people to do that. Yeah.
Mason:
Well, especially Alpine. And you were saying that touches all those hidden points of the body and gets into the kidneys, as well. Makes sense.
Marc Cohen:
Mind you, after about 45 minutes, the water cools down. So then you need to get out. And when we were doing that in New Zealand, we wanted people to get out after 45 minutes cause they had to trek back home. We didn't want them to sleep all afternoon and then you'd be in the Alpine region in this remote location at nighttime. So we'd actually hike back and they'd spend the night back in the hot springs where there's nice accommodation. But there are ways. I've been experimenting now, having just a little [inaudible 00:45:09], just a little camping stove that would circulate the hot water through your hammock. So you could actually keep it warm all night. And the heated hammock experience, I think, hasn't been explored nearly enough. And even now, I've been toying with, you can get these carbon panels that they use in clothing for tradies, that just plug into a USB charger. And you can get actually blankets, little microfiber blankets with these heating panels in them.
Marc Cohen:
So you can just put one of those in your hammock and then plug it into your USB charger. And you get a heated hammock. You don't get the same effect of the water, just go into the places where want it or the yin surfaces. But yeah. Having a heated hammock really sort of focuses on the importance of the rest, because you really want to balance that extreme of hot and cold with just being really restful and anchoring the benefits of going to the extremes with staying in the middle and that bliss point of homeostasis.
Mason:
I've really, really appreciated you going into this. I mean, I'm feeling really inspired about the hot and cold, especially maintaining that yin and yang dynamic. The little reminders, I mean, it's so funny how, when I'm getting to the point where I was going, "All right. No, I don't feel like cold showers at the moment." And even forgetting that, "Oh, that's right. I can do a hot, cold, hot sandwich shower." Even the hokey pokey showers or something or other. "Oh, of course. That's right. I'm not in the military. Don't have to have it."
Marc Cohen:
And the idea, you wan to be gentle with yourself. Because, I mean, I was doing it every day for a long time. And some days, you just don't feel like it. And that's okay. Mind you, by doing it, you are sort of exercising your anti procrastination muscle with that fascia thing. Because it's not something you really want to do, but if you say, "Okay, I'm going to do it anyway, even though I don't want to do it." And then you realise it was actually okay, then when stuff comes in your life that, "I really don't want to do that job or make that phone call or have this conversation," you're practised just getting over that hump of doing stuff that you didn't want to do and just getting on with it. So it's actually a really useful mental tool to, then, practise just getting on with life. And there's always be stuff in life that isn't desirable, that you don't really want to do. But there's a real advantage in just being able to just do it without actually putting it off forever and then paying the consequences of putting it off.
Marc Cohen:
So practising that. But also just to be gentle with yourself. You don't have to do it every day. You don't have to do it at all. But when you do it, to make it gentle. And to go to that point of being comfortably uncomfortable. So you're still comfortable in the discomfort and not going beyond that. And I sort of liken, another really strong analogy is with yoga. When you're doing yoga, you're putting yourself in these uncomfortable positions, you go into the edge of your stretch. And there's a point where you stretch your muscles so far that your body tells you, "Don't go any further or you're going to hurt yourself." And that's the point of forced mindfulness.
Marc Cohen:
And what do in yoga is, you go to that point of stretch and then you just stay there and breathe. And just do a two or three breaths and relax in that uncomfortable position. And then you stretch the other way. And just like in yoga, where you stretch your flexors and then you want to do the extensors. Where you want to go stretch over the left side, you want to do it back over to the right side. You're always balancing yin and yang. The same with hot and cold. You don't want to just stretch your ability to tolerate cold without tolerating heat. So it's like that. You want to balance that stretch, but you want to go to the point where your body says, "That's enough." And that makes you tune into your body. And, "How do I feel at the moment? How far do I want to go?" And then just relaxing in that point of discomfort. And there is a caveat.
Marc Cohen:
So I've got what I call the common sense safety protocol, which is based on five things. So when you're doing hot and cold, you need to drink. You need to stay hydrated. Because when you're doing saunaing and stuff, you actually get quite dehydrated. And when you're moving the blood around your body, from the outside to the inside, you want to have enough that flushes your kidneys and you can flush it out and then pee out all those metabolic waste products. So you need to drink. You need to take care of hot surfaces. Don't put your hand on the rocks. You want to take care when you're standing up. You don't want to stand up too suddenly. Cause all the blood's going to go to your legs and you get faint and you're going to pass out. So you need to be able to take care with changes of posture and hot surfaces.
Marc Cohen:
You want to tune into your body and say, "What do I need at the moment?" And just go, "What is that point of comfortable or being comfortably uncomfortable?" So tune into what you need at the moment. You want to be aware of what your limits are and know your limits. Don't over extend your limits. And you also want to be aware that you don't want to do this when you're under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Cause in that, you lose that awareness. And there's quite well documented people who die in saunas, but most of them are related to alcohol. Where they fall asleep drunk, or you're just not able to regulate your body as well when you are under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And then finally, you want to rest. You want to anchor that extreme activity with the balance and that's like the shiv asana at the end of the yoga class. And I mean, you wouldn't do a yoga class. And then, that shiv asana at the end of the yoga class, that relaxation, is deeper because you've exercised your body.
Marc Cohen:
And most people wouldn't just do a yoga class and say, "No, I don't worry about this shiv asana." Jump in their car and drive home. Whereas a lot of people go to the gym, have a sauna. Straight after the sauna, they'll just put their clothes on and drive home without relaxing. That's the equivalent of doing a yoga class without the relaxation at the end. And for me, that relaxation at the end of the yoga class, that's a reward. That's where you anchor the benefits into it. So yeah. Resting, I think, is a really important part of the activity. And again, that's again, another yin and yang balance. You've done all this activity and then you want to do inactivity.
Marc Cohen:
And I really love the idea of actively doing nothing. And you might think you're doing nothing, but there's always less you can do. So that's a spiritual practise, doing nothing. So how much nothing can you do? How little can you breathe? How slow can you get your heart rate? How little can you think? And that relaxation at the end of the hot and cold or the end of a yoga cast is an exploration of actually doing nothing and finding that still point that then all the other activity in your life comes out of.
Mason:
This has been so good. I mean, I'm really looking forward to hearing the feedback because I know there's a lot of people in the community who are looking for this, just even understand the terrain a little bit further. I'm feeling really inspired. Just something to build a relationship with. It's nice looking at hot and cold as individual teachers. And then sometimes, it's also nice to just step into your own personal practise that's about your own personal cultivation, which doesn't focus on the extremeness or severeness of the teachings that come from hot and cold. And really, I can feel the feedback and the opening up of dialogue. So everyone can engage with this in a way that's really responsible and personalised and [inaudible 00:52:44]-
Marc Cohen:
And hot and cold's just one exploration of extremes. I've got a whole framework, which is a five element framework, where I talk about your channels of elimination, which is your bladder, your bowels, your breath, your body, and your brain. And that relates to your bladder, relates to the water balance. Your bowels relates to glucose. Your breath, to oxygen. Your body, to temperature. And your brain, to carbon oxide and activity. And I've got this programme where I talk about how you filter and flush your bladder. You feast and fast your bowel, you pant and hold your breath, you do hot and cold with your body, and you do everything in flow. Do a flow activity and then do nothing at all with your brain. So in each of those, you are sort of exploring the extreme of water and glucose and oxygen, temperature, and carbon dioxide.
Marc Cohen:
But then you're also finding the middle point and that balance point in between them. And that's the yin and yang of life. But those five elements, the building blocks of life, they're the five building blocks of photosynthesis and respiration. So you're actually really talking the language of your cells and your mitochondria. And that's a really deep interaction, whereas yoga stretch, you work your muscles. But here, you're actually working your cellular machinery because they all respond to those five elements. And yeah. It's an exploration that you can do every day because your body changes and your mind changes. So it helps bring you back into balance in that exploration of life.
Mason:
Could be fun. I mean, we're coming into spring cleanses, as well. Talking about the channels of elimination. I mean, see if you're up for it. Maybe that could be a fun beginning for another chat, especially relating to the five transitions elements. Everyone over here salivates when it gets into that context. And there's so many other things that I know that you're up to that I'd want to chat to you about. But thank you for this. This has been amazing.
Marc Cohen:
Yeah. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Mason. Yeah. Happy to chat some more. And yeah. Spring is coming up. And sprouting and getting all the greenery into your life. Yeah, I'm doing a whole lot of stuff now with the hot springs. So I've just been appointed a medical director there at Peninsula hot Springs. They're about to open hot spring in Metung in Gippsland and then one in Philip Island and talking to other ones in France and in the desert and in the Alpine region. So there's a whole lot of activity there.
Marc Cohen:
And I mean, I've tried to bring this idea of hot springs, of balancing hot and cold with deep relaxation and rest. And again, it's that yoga principle. You do the extremes of your stretch and then you do the shiv asana, the relaxation at the end of it. And then working with probiotics. And we've got extremely alive tonics that we are creating and we're developing tomato sauce and salad dressings and living probiotic, herb infused products that are actually functional foods, which I'm really excited about. And then poetry. And then just getting message out, education out in sort of word form, like those hacks to relax. So yeah. Lots of great things to talk about.
Mason:
And I mean, I know a lot of people would know you already. But people want to get into your teachings and your current products or your water filters. Best place for them to find everything?
Marc Cohen:
Dr. Mark, just D-R M-A-R-C dot C-O. That's my website. I'm also on Facebook. I've got an Instagram and Twitter and all that, but I'm not that active on it. So my website, just Dr. Mark. D-R-M-A-R-C dot C-O and that's got all ... I think there's a link there to book medical consultations, but there's all my different brands there. I've got about seven brands I'm managing at the moment. And Facebook is generally where I post activities or upcoming events and things like that.
Mason:
We'll link it all below. Thank you so much. Encourage everyone to jump onto all of that. And you'll definitely hear Dr. Mark on the podcast again. Thanks so much, mate.
Marc Cohen:
It's a pleasure. Thanks, Mason.
