Hot, Cold, Repeat: What Contrast Therapy Actually Feels Like (And Why I'm Converted)
I'll be honest with you — the first time someone suggested I jump in a freezing cold plunge pool, I laughed (politely of course!). Then I changed the subject. The idea of voluntarily submerging myself in icy water felt like the opposite of a good time, let alone a wellness practice. I was already stressed enough and I hated the cold!
Then I tried it. And now I’m hooked.
Moving between the intense heat of the sauna and the cool waters created a sensation I can only describe as being completely alive. I wasn't thinking about health benefits or wellness trends. I was just — present. Entirely, unavoidably present.
How I got here
My path to contrast therapy wasn't really about cold plunging at all. I'd been researching ways to calm my nervous system — looking at exercise, wellness practices, anything that might work with my body's natural rhythms rather than against them. As a woman in my mid-to-late 40s, I wanted to understand what would genuinely support my hormones and my health, not just follow advice designed for someone else's physiology.
That's how I found Dr Stacy Sims. I was listening to her on a podcast and something she said stopped me in my tracks. Her research makes the case that women don't need to go as cold as possible to get the benefits — in fact, extreme temperatures can actually work against us, spiking cortisol and disrupting the very hormonal balance we're trying to support. For women, she explains, a moderate temperature of around 15°C tends to hit the sweet spot: cold enough to trigger the good stuff — focus, mood lift, metabolic benefits — without tipping the body into chronic stress. Women are not small men, as she puts it, and our approach to cold exposure shouldn't pretend otherwise.
That reframing changed everything for me. And it's exactly what drew me to Lon's approach — a contrast therapy space on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula built around that same philosophy. Rather than fixing the plunge pool at an artificially icy temperature, Lon made an intentional decision to let their outdoor magnesium plunge pool change naturally with the seasons. In practice, that means the water sits somewhere between 11 and 19 degrees depending on the time of year — cool enough to deliver the contrast your body is looking for, while staying within the range that research actually supports, particularly for women. It felt like a design decision both supported by research whilst also consistent with Lon’s approach of connecting everything back to nature and the seasons.
So, what actually is contrast therapy?
At its simplest, contrast therapy is the deliberate cycling between heat and cold. You warm your body up — deeply, properly warm — and then you cool it down. Then you do it again. Usually two or three rounds.
What's happening underneath is genuinely interesting. The heat dilates your blood vessels and relaxes your muscles; the cold causes them to constrict. Done repeatedly, it's essentially a full-body workout for your vascular system. Inflammation reduces, the nervous system settles, and research shows that thermal bathing can shift the body into parasympathetic drive — that elusive rest-and-digest state most of us rarely reach. Studies have found it helps regulate cortisol and improves sleep quality too. So that heavy, settled feeling you carry out afterwards? There's real science behind it. And it feel sooooo great!
But contrast therapy goes beyond just the physical. In an era of constant connectivity, the rhythmic transition between hot and cold offers something increasingly rare — a quiet mind. It's impossible to think about your to-do list when you're in a cold plunge. It's mindfulness made physical. And that, for a lot of people, is the part that keeps them coming back.
What makes Lon's space different
The sauna wasn't always my thing either! For most of my life, it was somewhere I'd gone occasionally with my father-in-law at the gym or to try out in a luxury hotel on holidays. Functional, fine, not something I sought out. But that's changed. Entering the second half of my 40s, I've found the sauna does something I didn't expect: it helps with muscle recovery, yes, but more than that it offers something increasingly hard to find — a dark, warm, enclosed space with no competing demands on my attention. No screen, no noise, no one needing anything from me. Just heat and quiet.
I'm not alone in this. Sauna culture in Australia has shifted noticeably in recent years — what was once the domain of Scandinavian tradition or gym recovery rooms has quietly become something much more personal and intentional for a lot of people. We're collectively rediscovering what cultures in Finland and Japan have known for centuries: that deliberate heat has a particular power to restore.
Lon's award-winning spa understands this instinctively. Sitting quietly at the heart of the property in Point Lonsdale on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula, it's built around the retreat's own natural mineral waters — drawn from deep within the land. Bathing, contrast therapy, private treatment rooms. Views that stretch over dunes and out to sea. Nothing is loud here. Everything is considered.
The indoor heated pool and soak is mineral-fed, which matters more than it sounds. Mineral bathing has been used therapeutically since ancient times — Hippocrates was prescribing it around 400BC — and modern research supports what the ancients seemed to understand intuitively: minerals absorbed through the skin, combined with the effects of heat and cold cycling, create measurable changes in the body's inflammatory and nervous system responses. At Lon, that water comes straight from beneath the farm. It feels different — softer, somehow, with none of the chlorine smells of the past.
The sauna at Lon looks out over the coastal landscape. Ocean, lighthouse, the farm below doing its quiet thing. There's also a Swedish soak bucket — a large bucket of cold water tipped over your head. It sounds like a lot. It is, for about three seconds. And then it's one of the better things you've done all week.
Who tends to love it
All kinds of people, honestly. Athletes and fitness lovers use contrast therapy for recovery — it's well-documented for reducing muscle soreness. But the ones who surprise themselves most are often those who came simply to rest and leave feeling like something has been reset. People who haven't properly switched off in a long time. Those who carry tension in places they've stopped noticing.
There's also something about the shared experience that's worth mentioning. Whether you're here with friends, partners or solo, navigating temperature extremes together tends to break down barriers quickly. The cold and hot has a way of making everyone equal. It's one of the few wellness experiences that naturally creates connection rather than solitude.
About that cold plunge
Here's what I'd say to nervous-you, from former-nervous-me: you don't have to go extreme. Thirty seconds in moderately cold water is enough to feel the shift — and if you're a woman, Dr Sims' research actually backs you up on not going colder than you need to. The anticipation is almost always worse than the thing itself.
Breathe before you get in. Breathe slowly once you're in. Look at the view — at Lon, that's easy to do. And know that on the other side of those thirty seconds is a warmth that feels genuinely earned.
You don't have to be brave. You just have to be a little bit curious.
If you want to give it a try
Start gently. The contrast doesn't need to be dramatic to be effective — begin with a modest temperature difference and let your tolerance build naturally over time. Drink water before you go in. And when you're in the cold, your breath is everything: slow it down, don't fight it, let it anchor you.
If it's your first time, there's real value in having someone guide you through it. And if you're visiting Lon with a spa treatment booked — or staying as part of a wellness retreat on the Bellarine Peninsula — consider arriving early to move through the contrast therapy space first. Heat and cold cycling before a massage or body treatment isn't just a nice warm-up — it's genuinely transformative. The hydrotherapy primes your body, loosens muscle tension, quiets the nervous system, and opens you up in a way that allows whatever treatment follows to work at a much deeper level. It's the difference between a good massage and one you feel for days afterwards.
Beyond that, the most important thing is simply to pay attention to how your body responds. This isn't a practice that rewards pushing through at any cost. It rewards presence and patience.
Contrast therapy isn't really about the cold, or even the heat. It's about what happens in the space between — the moment your body recalibrates, your mind goes quiet, and something that felt hard becomes, surprisingly, something you look forward to. Much like a lot of things worth doing in life, the strength is in the contrast itself.
