Meeting 'The Iceman' Wim Hof - Login to Yourself!

For my birthday last year, my wife Laura surprised me with a ticket to an extraordinary event. She shares my passion for exploring new ways of logging in and connecting to ourselves on a more profound and less conceptual level. She said:

Sh*t is getting real we're going to meet 'The Iceman' Wim Hof in Los Angeles!"

I had no idea who 'The Iceman' was, nor what the event would be about.

If you never heard about Wim Hof, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete known as 'The Iceman' for his ability to withstand extreme cold, which he attributes to his Wim Hof Method breathing techniques based on Tibetan Tummo meditation but without its religious components. Hof claims that his Tibetan-based breathing method can help with or help alleviate symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, clinical depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, cancer, etc.

Since I've been practicing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation for over 20 years, I was very excited to meet Wim and learning his so-called 'Wim Hof Method'. The event was held at the Wanderlust Headquarters in Hollywood, a very intimate and perfect location for an event like this.

Upon entering the premises, we were already confronted with the truth of what would happen later, there were 4 plunge pools filled with ice - who would have thought ;-).

Wim Hof was standing in the corner, chatting with people and taking photos. That made me feel very comfortable because I was worried that since he and his method became so popular over the last year, he would be like a spiritual guru and not very personable, but the opposite was true. He and his entire staff were super-friendly, happy, and connected with people right from the get-go.

After some introductory talk, Wim finally came on stage and captured the crowd instantly with some offbeat humor, telling us his story on how he discovered the benefits of cold exposure and created his signature method, which I will describe below:

What is the Wim Hof Method?

The Wim Hof Method is a simple, yet profound personal development technique that combines breathing exercises, cold exposure, and meditation. The primary key to the method is to control and work with your breath. It's important to understand that breathing helps us to manage our body and our emotions. Even if you have never done any meditation, yoga, or breathing exercise you may notice that when you get upset or excited your breathing pattern changes. Wim says, that when we're able to control our breath, we will be able to control our nervous system and handle challenging situations such as taking an ice cold shower much better. Conscious breathing helps us to unlock a tremendous potential and power, and by becoming more aware and in control of our breath we will be able to create more energy, reduce stress, manage emotions, and strengthen our immune system.

The second part of the method is cold exposure. According to Wim's research, which I will get into shortly, exposing your body to cold in the right way has an overabundance of health benefits. Most importantly it reduces inflammation, burns the bad brown fat, helps you to sleep better, and stimulates the feel-good neurotransmitters in your brain.

The third part is where meditation, mindset, and focus come in. If you want to be able to control your breath and expose yourself to extreme situations such as a bath in zero-degree water, you need patience and determination. Both can be achieved by simple meditation techniques that help you to connect with your body and mind, or as I would say to 'Login to yourself'.

My first ice bath.

After Wim's intro, he taught us the breathing technique and the entire room of about 200 people started to breathe in sync, which was a fantastic experience. The breathing and mind training went on for about an hour before we got the highlight of the event - The Ice Bath (You won't find me in the video since I couldn't film myself while sitting in the water).

What is the science behind the Wim Hof Method?

Over the years Wim has done some amazing research and collaborated with some of the top universities in the world to prove that his methods can be used to heal and help people with many health issues. The first study was done in 2007 at the Feinstein Institute in New York, where they discovered how meditation and breathing influenced blood oxygen levels and how it affects our autonomous nervous system. Since then many more studies have been done that prove the health benefits of the Wim Hof Method. Personally, I find the benefits for inflammation, pain, metabolic activity, and depression the most interesting. You can find the full list here.

How you can get started?

I'm not a certified Wim Hof instructor, and the best way to learn the method is to go to one of Wim's live events which you can find here. But if you're curious and can't wait to try it out, here are some things you can do (again, this is not the full method just a simplified technique you can do):

Start with your morning shower.
Five minutes before you start your shower, sit comfortable and upright on a chair. Breathe in and out to your nose, your mouth, or both and take between 20-30 full breaths filling up your lungs. Don't push too hard, just simple, deep breaths. Just create and hold this simple breathing pattern as the depth of your breathing goes back to normal.
Start your shower with your preferred warm water temperature. Remember your breathing pattern.
Before you finish, turn the water all the way to cold. Start breathing deep, remember your pattern, and expose your entire body to the cold water, head, shoulders, back. Stay under the cold water for 30 seconds or 1 minute. You can increase the time you spend in the cold as you like, in my opinion, this is an excellent preparation for the real ice bath ;-) - ENJOY!

My experience with the method?

Since I've learned the Wim Hof Method, we moved up into the California mountains, and we live now at about 5,500 feet altitude. The beautiful thing about the mountain life is that we have a lake that gets really cold in the winter. It cools down to about 42 degrees Fahrenheit or 5 degrees Celsius to be precise. The perfect training ground to apply my newly learned skills. During the last winter, I took my weekly ice bath and could handle to stay in the cold for up to 2 minutes. Sometimes I just didn't want to go, and my body resisted, but I did it anyway because the 'High' afterward was so amazing. The most profound effects I experienced when I was in a bad mood or stressed from work. These were the times when I least likely wanted to go, but my wife encouraged me to do it exactly in these moments, and I have to say after 2 minutes in the ice cold water all the stress of the workday or any bad moods were gone! For the summertime, I'm working on an ice chest setup that I can regularly use for my ice bath ;-).

Over the last couple of years I've written about digital detox, I think the Wim Hof method and ice bathing a great tools to bring you out of your head and into your body and help with minimzing the use of digital devices.

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice, these are just methods and products I've tried myself and that have worked for me. Please always consult a physician before trying any of this.