Opening day of school equals exhaustion. Teachers scurry to be first in line for the copier, custodians hustle to make everything look shiny and new. We make lists, decorate, pile piles, stuff folders. To call an educator weary at this point is a huge understatement. And even worse, we have crazy stress dreams and sleepless nights, so by the first day of school, we’re fighting the urge to drag ourselves around when we should be presenting our best faces.

Weariness is, by definition, beyond tired. It’s physical more than a feeling, emotional more than aching bones and sore feet, and it’s a kind of tired that seems to promise no relief.

But sometimes, when I’m feeling especially weary, I chide myself. First world problems, right? At least I don’t have to walk with my family across rough terrain, facing the possibility of encountering robbers or other rogue characters like they did in Bible days. It’s a good reminder that weariness has been around since the beginning of time.

What did people in Bible times do? Well, archaeologists have discovered ancient energy drinks and such, and caffeine is found naturally in many plants, so I’m sure they had their version of a daily drink that served as a pick-me-up.

Scripture is full of medical remedies. Kyle Butt from Apologetics Press has written a fascinating article  detailing some of the old-time cures.

I found this one related to weariness:

Proverbs 25:25 As cold water to a weary soul, so is good news from a far country.

Hydrotherapy? Cold water is refreshing and renewing. Could it bring strength and energy to combat physical weariness.

While digging through my Anatomy curriculum in preparation for school to restart, I found this article from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, proposing that regular exposure to moderate cold water can help chronic fatigue patients. They hypothesize that applying cold stress could reduce seratonin levels, increase the metabolic rate, and a few other things. To test it, they planned to use a treatment of twenty-minute cold showers, twice a day.

I couldn’t find the follow-up to that article, but I did find several others that support hydrotherapy as a viable alternative treatment for many ailments.  And there are a several articles from the National Institute of Health proposing cold showers as possible treatment for depression, mild electroshock for nervous system treatment, etc. I found articles from other sites that claimed cold showers burn calories and assist with weight loss. Wonder if it will cure my teacher fatigue?

So, call me crazy, because I love nothing more than a good, hot shower, but I’m going to try gradually decreasing the temp as I get ready for the first day of school on Monday morning, in the hopes it will combat the sleepless Sunday night that’s sure to come. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Anyone else ever tried cold-water hydrotherapy?