Found this part funny: > As I contemplated whether it could help me cope with the cold, it occurred to me that using this sacred technique to avoid discomfort

Found this part funny: > As I contemplated whether it could help me cope with the cold, it occurred to me that using this sacred technique to avoid discomfort might not be in line with its origins in Buddhism, a religion in which suffering is acknowledged and accepted. Buddhism is all about the complete cessation of suffering, so that part’s not technically correct. The Buddha did talk a lot about renouncing physical comforts and not creating unnecessary suffering in harsh environments, though. The core body temperature part of this phenomenon is actually the less interesting part here. It’s not too mind boggling that activating certain nervous pathways will stimulate certain metabolic activity and perhaps alter blood flow via hormonal means. Where it’s really cool (read: even more practically useful in your everyday life) is to explore the effects on the mind. It’s not controversial to claim that picturing a warm fire inside your body will bring some degree mental comfort in cold or very cold conditions. However for most people, this would hard to sustain. One would look around, see the snow, remember how thin one’s clothing is, and be interrupted with the cold sensations making contact with the skin. Further thoughts about how cold it is are likely to arise, and the nice belly fire and the comfort it provided is no more. One might even start to imagine the lack of warm blood going to the extremities, the cold penetrating down to the bones, and frostbite setting in, even if that's not the case yet. It’s easy to imagine how, with a trained mind, one might have a greater ability to sustain this internal mental fabrication (buddhism calls this saṅkhāra) of an internal fire. Not only strengthening it and maintaining attention on it, but de-prioritising the amount of mental activity devoted to thinking about how cold it is (i.e. mental fabrications around the cold - like it reaching the bones). Why it's useful to explore this, is to consider that in ordinary life we are doing this sort of thing constantly - it's simply that it's to a lesser degree, and in subtler ways. The implications of that to our quality of life are enormous. Ever notice how the world looks different when when something good happens, or you are feeling optimistic, versus when things aren't going so well and you're more pessimistic? The extent to which we put together our experience, and, by extension, how we can begin to have some influence over that as a conscious process is sorely, sorely underestimated.