The Wim Hof Method Method: Meeting Wim
My goal with this Medium is to record my progress of the 10 Week video course of the Wim Hof Method. I am now on week 2 and will record my Week 1 experience in a follow up post.
Like many, I first discovered Wim Hof via Tim Ferris’ podcast. I am naturally interested in ways to improve health and fitness (primarily for purposes of longevity) and Tim’s interview with Wim caught my attention. A few weeks later I stumbled upon the Vice documentary on Wim which intrigued me ever more.
Greg, my old roomate who is currently living in Singapore and also interested in meditation, yoga, and all these new-agey things shot me an email saying that Wim was coming to town (Toronto) and that I should check it out. I completely agreed and purchased a ticket right away. It wasn’t cheap (about $250 CAD) but I didn’t know when I’d have the chance to see Wim again and the chance to see him in action in person seemed too good to pass on.
A few weeks passed and the day of the event came. I jumped on my bike and pedaled up north to Evergreen Brick Works (if you haven’t been and live near Toronto I would highly recommend it! It is great for all ages with beautiful hiking, fun activity centers and more. It is also an early Turnstyle customer which is a bonus). The event was bigger than I expected it to be, with between 150 to 300 attendees (I am bad at guessing sizes of groups).
We were asked to bring yoga matts and swimwear. When we arrived we laid out our matts as seen in the image below. Everyone was very friendly and it seemed like there was a mix of noobs (me) and experienced Wim Hof followers.
The session started with Wim talking about a bit of his history, how he got into breathing excercises / cold exposure (it’s related to finding coping mechanisms to cope with the death of his wife -> there is lots of material out there so I won’t rehash it) and then we started doing some movement exercises with vocal outputs (think repeating: huh, hah with increasing intensity as you stand in a squat moving your arms around). A pro of the high ticket price is that everyone seemed to take the exercises seriously. It could be easy to be skeptical or feel silly doing them but everyone was involved and participating.
We then moved onto the breathing excercises. We did four rounds of the following:
- Breath in as deeply as you can
- ‘Let go’ of your breath (i.e. exhale, but don’t force air out. Let your lungs exhale naturally)
- Repeat 30 to 40 times
- On your last loop, exhale and don’t breath in until your body feels the need to (you can last a surprisingly long time like this without breathing!)
- When you feel compelled to breath, take a breath in and hold 10 to 15 seconds
- Go back to step 1 (repeat 4 times)
This was my first time doing any type of breathing exercise like this. My arms were tingly, I felt light headed, and slightly euphoric. I wasn’t timing myself at this point (more on this later) but I would guess I went for over 1.5 minutes each round without breathing… impressive considering I could go about a miute with a deep breath in! Apparently the mechanism that drives our body to breathe is based on the levels of CO2 in our blood and these exercises lowers the CO2 levels.
We did similar breathing exercises and then did pushups with no air in the lungs. I did around 50 which surprised me (I can usually do 25 to 30 pushups regularly without pushing myself, I don’t know what my max would have been at that point).
After these exercises we had lunch (various types of wraps, coffee, water), mixed and mingled and then went back to the mats for more breathing excercises while the Wim Hof team filled up a large inflatable pool with lots of ice. We then took turns (about 15 in the pool at a time) going up to our necks in the ice water, sitting down, focusing on (or at least trying to) our breathing. Before we were allowed out we had to sing the chorus of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’
Like the breathing exccercises, the ice bath was a first for me. It was intense, but with the social pressure of everyone plunging in together I didn’t see anyone backing out which was awesome. Wim was coaching us through the experience, reminding us to “just breath”. It certainly helped calm people down and stick in the water. I was quite cold and experienced quite a bit of shivering after getting out of the pool, but it didn’t deter me from going in for a second round.
So, what are the benefits of the breathing excercises and cold water exposure? According to Wim and team, people can learn to control their autonomic nervous and immune systems, giving us more control over our bodies to fight colds and diseases. The most compelling study that I have seen so far can be found here (TLDR; a group of 24 individuals were selected for an experiment. All 24 participants were injected with a bacterial endotoxin. 12 of the participants were taught the Wim Hof method for 10 days before the injection, and the other 12 [control group] were not. Upon being injected with the endotoxin, the 12 who followed Wim’s method experienced signifiacntly less symptoms than the control group). You can read more about the science here. There is much more research to be done analyzing the benefits (and risks) of Wim’s method. Fortunately, according to Wim, the proceeds of the ticket cost are going to funding additional scientific research.
I am now 5 days into week 2 of the 10 week training course. I will create a new post for each week of the course, showing my progress throughout. Stay tuned :)