Personal View: Trying Out The Wim Hof Method
My first 2 weeks trying breathwork and cold exposure…
If you already know all about Wim Hof, feel free to skip down to the next paragraph. Many of you will have heard him called “The Ice Man”. A Dutch extreme athlete who has broken endurance records for strength and cold exposure. He goes up into snowy mountains just wearing shorts and he trains other people to come with him. He has been studied in university tests, such as the now-famous Radboud University test where he was injected with a bacterial pathogen that should have made him ill with virus-like symptoms. He focused on his breathing to increase his immune system response and was surprisingly fine. Suffice to say, this guy backs up his talk with a frosty minded walk! Or a sit in freezing ice. This is how he claims to have discovered this breathing technique, by going into nature, instinctively teaching him what to do. He says he was just drawn to the cold. The Wim Hof Method combines elements of breathwork, meditation, yoga, and cold exposure, it claims, all for greater health.
How I Got Started
You can find out the rest of his story from him, but to continue with mine — I bought the 10-week original video series while it was on sale. Time passed. I meant to use it, I really did. But life kept throwing things up and…and oh come on! That is all codswallop and excuses that we tell ourselves. What it boils down to is this: we don’t have enough inner strength or commitment to do it. But that can change, and it did change, for me at least because of COVID-19.
My health anxiety kicked into overdrive when I heard how the virus affects peoples’ lungs in particular, depriving patients of oxygen. Then I remembered that the Wim Hof Method (WHM) is supposed to promote oxygenation and strengthen the immune system. I also suffer from auto-immune conditions, which it claims to help with. Clutching at straws of hope? Probably, but the guy seemed to check out, with some excellent user testimonials to be found. So I just started. Fear is one heck of a driving force and another thing Wim has going for him is just how convincing he is. Just watching him talk filled me with energy and enthusiasm from his compelling attitude. So here’s where I am from about 2 weeks in.
Breathwork:
Wim suggests a round of 30–40 deep breaths, breathing deeply in, but only letting go of the air, not expelling all of it. You’ll know how much air you never expel, funnily enough, if you breathe out and then push on your belly to force out that last bit that normally sits at the bottom, like stale air. But I digress — After 40 of these, you then breathe out completely, emptying your lungs of air and try to hold it for as long as you possibly can. Once you absolutely must breathe again, you take a single deep breath in and hold it for 15 seconds. Wim explains that you might feel light-headed, tingling in the hands, loose in the body, but that means it’s working, and to breathe into that feeling, not fear it. It sounds a bit like hyperventilation, doesn’t it? But the magic part comes from the body’s chemical exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide — the key added element being the breath hold out, then the 15 seconds hold in. “Hoffers” call the breath out “retention time”. I recall hearing the minimum you want to get retention for is 1 minute 30 seconds to really be doing some good. You can build slowly to adjust your body, and that’s what I did. Some days I get decent readings, 1 minute 53 seconds is my best. Some days I get abysmal ones.
I’m able to chat about these sorts of things via the Wim Hof Facebook group, which is good for support — reading that these good or bad days are normal fluctuations for what the body needs to do at that moment. It’s as Wim says: Never force it, and listen to the body. But the bad side of the Facebook group for me is the unintended toxicity that comes from people screen capturing their retention times on the WHM app; times that far exceed my own. In fact, the app even has you record your times and graph chart it.
Some unexpected things I learned after doing this for a fortnight:
- Breathwork is an ancient tradition amongst cultures, such as pranayama in yoga.
- Some newer types of breathwork exist, such as the Buteyko method, but they are not at all like this one.
- Someone watching you can shorten your retention time. Oh yes.
- This needs to be done on an empty stomach, and for me, without caffeine in my system to get the most out of it.
- You will have different results from sitting versus laying, personal to your physiology.
I know this all sounds wacky, but I can report, even from my limited experiences so far that there is something very real going on here.
No Timing Like The Present
I realized that timers were no good for me. During retention, you’re meant to clear your mind and try to slow your heartbeat. I can’t do that with pressure, so I ditched the timer altogether until I can sort my own head out. I am doing my best. It will have to be good enough. If you have any negative voices in your head, they can emerge to weaken your retention too. Just someone I know telling me how my breathwork is ‘loud and annoying’, or suggesting that I am wasting my time is all negative influx that will come up and start messing with me while I’m trying to hold the breath out. My willpower can only fight so much. It’s hard to commit yourself to something like this every single day anyway, almost impossible with negative voices ringing through your head. The battle is very real and it is inside our own heads, even when nobody is about. Don’t believe me? Think of how many things you yourself have started in earnest and no longer bother with.
Think of the mind as the control center of a complicated flying craft. We have pretty good automatic controls (e.g. breathing), but sometimes we need to actively steer too.
Now imagine also on the bridge (usually when you are on autopilot), an unruly, frightened, misunderstanding chimpanzee running loose, pushing buttons, pulling out wires and throwing feces. Only when we take back control again do we see who was in control, and we’re left with a confused animal feeling sorry for itself after a telling of. We all have this maniac inside trying to sabotage us. I recommend The Chimp Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters for more on this.
My own experiences
Studying Wim’s 10 weeks “classic” course, I found I had to repeat week 1. Again, we must work at our own pace. I soon increased the breathing from 3 rounds up to 4 and eventually to 5. Some people do many more but I am gradually letting my body adjust. By the 3rd round, my hands are not just tingling, but vibrating quite powerfully. This was initially disturbing, but things got stranger still. On the breath retention, I was getting tinnitus combined with partial deafness. Those symptoms quickly faded on the final deep breath in (the one you hold for 15 seconds). But that full breath in brought its own surprise too: A weird rush of something flowing through my head. It’s hard to say whether it was pleasurable or not. I only know it was powerful, but likewise faded quickly. Wim followers actually refer to this as the body’s own DMT.
‘Get high on your own supply’ — Wim Hof
I know this all sounds wacky, but I can report, even from my limited experiences so far that there is something very real going on here. It’s too early to tell what good it is doing. Wim actually advises that it takes about three weeks for the body to fully adjust to this, and that negative symptoms can occur during this “cleansing” process. It’s all in the FAQ on the website.
A Case of Nerves
The autonomic nervous system is the part of our body that runs things that we don’t notice happening. An example would be your white blood cells rushing to the site of an injury. You don’t make them flow there consciously. Wim says that this breathing takes you deeper into that nervous system where you can boost all sorts of effects in the body. The advocates of this technique anecdotally list more positive outcomes than I could possibly mention here.
Cold Exposure:
The other half of the Wim Hof Method is the daily gradual exposure to cold. This can be started with showers, but later down the line end up in ice-filled tubs!
I’ve been trying the cold showers and I am not really one of those people who took to them well but I’m used to it now. The first ones I tried, I did not attempt gradually as he suggested, but I was glowing with my body’s own source of heat afterward.
How You Can Start
You are meant to have a normal, hot shower and then turn it down as low as it can go. If you really struggle, you can start like I did by easing the warm shower down in increments to adjust the body, bit by bit. Then you can start in the cold for 15 seconds to begin and then extend that daily overtime. What I found was best though, was taking the showerhead in hand, and manually putting it on myself. There’s something powerful in the psychology, for me, of wielding the cold force rather than stepping under it passively — then running it across the limbs to start before introducing the rest of the body, to get all of the heat out. Do this for as long as feels right, but don’t overdo it.
A cold shower a day keeps the doctor away — Wim Hof
Wim says that this activates brown fat in the body, which should mean you’re not shivering either. If you do shiver, one thing I learned was to hum. Well, it works for me. It’s commonly known that the skin is the largest organ in the body, and Wim says stimulating it lets you tap into your vascular system for various benefits.
I can report that it does get easier over time and there is something to say for the adrenaline rush you can give yourself by sudden cold exposure, that reflexive gasp of air. I have found myself laughing eventually, and some people profound emotional reactions in the cold. It’s as Wim says that going into the cold taught him everything. Well, it certainly taught me more about myself.
In Closing
You could start as I did. By taking a look at the many free videos out there, many starring Wim himself, like this one, and maybe read his free eBook. There’s enough free content to do it all really, but the paid options give you new things on top, so consider what is right for you. I am doing this as a leap of faith, but there are so many positive testimonials out there that I have a good feeling about this one. I have also started research into other forms of breathing, either to complement the WHM or to spice it up when repetition eventually dulls the practice. Things like this, “Water, whiskey and coffee” breathing:
Do any of you use the WHM or other breathing techniques? What worked best? Let me know in the comments.
I will keep going on this new path and see where it takes me. Take care, everyone, stay safe, and well. See you soon.
The wellness topics from this author are personal, unaffiliated viewpoints only and do not necessarily constitute those of any publication they appear in. They are not to be considered a replacement for medical advice. If in any doubt, please do consult your doctors.
