Wim Hof Quotes

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid not to have lived.

We can do more than what we think." It's a belief system that I have adopted and it has become my motto. There is more than meets the eye and unless you are willing to experience new things, you'll never realize your full potential.

If you can learn how to use your mind, anything is possible.

In the Bhagavad Gita they say, "The mind under control is your best friend, the mind wandering about is your worst enemy." Make it your best friend, to the point where you can rely on it. Your mind makes you strong from within. It is your wise companion. The sacrifices you make will be rewarded. Life doesn't change, but your perception does. It's all about what you focus on. Withdraw from the world's influence and no longer be controlled by your emotions. If you can grab the wheel of your mind, you can steer the direction of where your life will go.

But, there is still every reason for healthy people to take cold showers, or swim outside in cold water. It gives you the feeling that you are alive.

Do you experience that? Ask yourself, "Have I ever experienced the wonders of life?" Meditate about it. Meditation helps your spirit bloom like a beautiful flower. The experience can be beautiful and great. Poetry is the language of the soul. So listen. "Life is like a dewdrop on a grass leaf. When is slips away, it's gone forever.

Make it simple for yourself by calming your mind from anger, understanding what makes you sad, and replicating the experiences that make you happy. If you want strength and success, just do it!

Fear does not go away by itself. You have to confront your fear, mold it, then learn to control it in it's own irrational reality. Every human being has the power to do just that. To go deep within and confront your inner being is a powerful act. Going deep and developing the will power is the only way.

There is so much more to life than meets the eye if you choose to seek it. The seeker becomes the finder, the finder of so much more than we thought was possible.

O nce you know the way to your spiritual destiny, you can change. Once you realize that there are no limits in your mind Once you realize there are no boundaries to what is possible, you can change.

In nature, it is not only the physically weak but the mentally weak that get eaten. Now we have created this modern society in which we have every comfort, yet we are losing our ability to regulate our mood, our emotions.

I've come to understand that if you want to learn something badly enough, you'll find a way to make it happen. Having the will to search and succeed is very important

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? I change my physiology. If I am near waves, I go surf them. If not, a short, intense kettlebell workout, a bike ride, a swim, a cold shower or ice plunge, Wim Hof or heart rate variability breathing [see Adam Robinson, for a description]. It’s remarkable how the mind follows the body.

As a doctor, he knew that there is no physiological reason for all men and women over the age of 40 to become overweight.

Just breathe and reclaim your soul.

making contact with the Earth’s electrical field—has a favorable effect on health. The Earth is negatively charged while the air is full of positive ions.

Cold is a stressor, so if you are able to get into the cold and control your body’s response to it, you will be able to control stress.

Out of options, I tried something new. I tried to think my cramp away. Visualizing the part of my leg that was throbbing, I began to loosen that area in my mind. Soon enough, the muscle in my leg began to relax. For the first time ever, I realized that I could consciously think away a muscle cramp. I believe it was a direct result of knowing the body with my mind.

Material things are external and have no bearing on the soul. You can only drive one car and occupy one room at a time. But if you seek happiness within your own being, in control over your own life-force, mind, and purpose, nothing else matters. You can be happy unconditionally. That’s the kind of happiness I want to give to the people I love because it comes from within. It’s already there.

We work harder and harder and stress ourselves out to achieve more and more, but to what end? So we can become lawyers and businesspeople? So we can make lots of money to buy a big house or a fancy car but that can’t buy us happiness or health? I saw too much of that misery, which is why I withdrew from that world a long time ago.

penetrates to the core of many diseases related to prosperity.

Piles (hemorrhoids) are also varicose veins, but in and around the anus.

Van der Poel discovered—in addition to Buteyko’s diagnoses—that people with chronic fatigue, burnout, fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis also breathe more rapidly or deeply than is necessary.

Your blood flow, the life-force, the electricity, they’re all in there. But what are you going to do with them? This is the only life you’ve got, so it’s time to move beyond your conditioning. It’s time to move beyond your fear or whatever else is holding you back from living fully because that’s the way nature meant you to be. Your fears are a consequence of a conditioned mind, and they are nothing but a burden.

People come up to me with questions like, “Should I breathe through the nose?” or “The diaphragm this or that,” and I just say, “Yeah breathe, motherfuckers! Don’t think, just do it! Get into the depth of your own lungs!

I don’t need that kind of external validation. If you engage too much in outside validation, you lose the path to yourself. You get off course. Self-love is being proud of yourself by your own lights. What is your best? Move toward that, not the best of your neighbors. Back yourself. Care for yourself. Not by protecting your ego, no, but by remaining present for your being when you feel most afraid, most uncomfortable, or awkward. Be calm in your love for yourself. It will enable you to see others more clearly and with more compassion. Don’t seek to change others; change yourself. Just mind your own mind and let others mind theirs. Show them who you are through your actions, through your conviction. Be clear and transparent, vulnerable. If I cared what others thought of me, I would have stopped going a long time ago. I would have been eaten by the system.

It is moments like this that one needs to face his fears. The best way to have such a moment is to gradually confront the fear and approach it in a way that is both exciting and inspiring. You have to be decisive and physically prepared to do your best. After that, little by little, you will see progress.

Spontaneous events are puzzles in the mind that you have to figure out on the go. It's a part of living in the present. You have to be at your best and be alert to potential mistakes, because in that moment, the mind and its thinking process are one. You have to be ready to mold yourself to whatever life gives you. To be ready, you must be alert within.

THE WIM HOF WAY TO GET WARM Are you one of those people who feels cold all the time? Would you like to be able to warm your body even when you don’t have access to an external heat source? If so, the following exercise can be done to activate brown fat tissue (or brown adipose tissue — BAT), which is capable of energy combustion, and your intercostal muscles. The intercostal muscles are several groups of muscles that run between the ribs and help move the chest wall during respiration. Activating them also generates heat. Do as follows: 1​Sit down. 2​Inhale slowly and deeply five or six times, letting your breath go naturally each time. 3​Inhale fully. 4​Relax to exhale. 5​Inhale fully. 6​Hold your breath, for no more than five seconds. 7​Tense your upper-back muscles and chest while you hold your breath — but don’t tense the head. Keep your jaw relaxed. 8​Let go.

Here’s how to do it: First, sit down, get comfortable, and close your eyes. Make sure you’re in a position where you can freely expand your lungs. Wim suggests doing this practice right after waking up since your stomach is still empty. Warm up by inhaling deeply and drawing the breath in until you feel a slight pressure. Hold the breath for a moment before exhaling completely, pushing the air out as much as you can. Hold the exhalation for as long as you can, and then repeat this fifteen times. Next, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in short, powerful bursts, as if you’re blowing up a balloon. Pull in your belly when you’re exhaling and let it expand when you inhale. Do this about thirty times, using a steady pace, until you feel that your body is saturated with oxygen. You may feel light-headed or tingly, or you may experience a surge of energy that’s literally electric. Try to get a sense of which parts of your body are overflowing with energy and which ones are lacking it—and where there are blockages between these two extremes. As you continue breathing, send the breath to those blockages. When you’re done, take one more big breath in, filling your lungs to maximum capacity, and then push all of the air out. Hold this for as long as you can and try to feel the oxygen spreading around your body. When you can’t hold it anymore, inhale fully and feel your chest expanding. Hold it again, sending energy where your body needs it. Bonus points if you do what Wim had me do when we demonstrated this technique onstage at our Bulletproof conference—as you are holding your lungs empty, count how many push-ups you can do before you have to breathe again. I got to twenty! It seems impossible, but you can do it, and that short bit of low oxygen forces your body to better deal with lower-oxygen environments. I recommend you research Wim’s work and watch one of his many videos online demonstrating his breathing technique. I don’t think it works as well as mechanically filtering oxygen out of the air you breathe, but the Wim Hof technique is absolutely free, totally portable, and Wim is capable of things I could never do! His breathing method helps your body adapt to bursts of oxygen and puts you more in tune with the way your body uses your breath to create energy. It also makes you more resilient to cold temperatures, but there is evidence that cold temperatures themselves are good for your mitochondria.

WHM PROTOCOL: BASIC MINDSET EXERCISE The greatest accomplishment you can achieve is stillness of the mind. It is only when your mind is still that you can go from external to internal programming. In the absence of thoughts, this stillness brings your feelings into alignment with your innermost being, reflecting the true self in a direct mirror. This is how I was able to set all of my records, and you can do it too. First, take a step away and find a comfortable place to sit down. Then begin to follow the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. Peacefully following the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. A sense of calm will begin to settle over you, and it is in this moment that you can set your mind. Begin to scan your body while visualizing what it is you are going to do. Perhaps you want to stay longer in the cold shower or achieve a new personal record for push-ups. Maybe you want to hold a particularly challenging yoga pose or take a longer bike ride than you ever have before. Now is the time to scan your body and set your intention. Take your time with it. Tell your body what you expect it to do. Scan yourself for how you feel. You will be able to detect any misalignment of your intention and your body’s feeling. Just remain calm, keep breathing, and wait for the moment in which there is a sense of trust, of centered energy, of alignment. Give power to that feeling with your breath and then go and do what you intend to do. Success.

Toma una ducha de agua caliente, como siempre. Después, con el agua aún caliente, empieza a realizar ejercicios de respiración. Inspira y espira poco a poco. Toma una respiración profunda y expulsa el aire despacio. Continua haciendo esto durante un minuto, aproximadamente, tomando entre seis y diez respiraciones. Entonces pon el agua fría. Lo cierto es que empezarás a respirar con más rapidez y el frío te impactará. El truco es volver a respirar con calma. Controla tu respiración bajo el agua fría. En el momento en el que tengas tu respiración bajo control, sentirás el frío de un modo distinto.

was able to stop taking her medication.

For a month, they ate as much as they liked and whatever they liked, but only between five in the afternoon and ten o’clock at night.

In the Bhagavad Gita they say, "The mind under control is your best friend, the mind wandering about is your worst enemy.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This

First, you prep that amazing brain of yours, and this is where mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, tapping, and so on are essential. You can do some breathwork (my favorite, because of its scientific base and effectiveness, is the Wim Hof method)3 or something similar. This is a simple, mind-driven action that prepares your mind and optimizes your brain and body, allowing you to calm down enough to react in the most favorable way. Next, you go beyond the mindfulness your preparation has created into directed neuroplasticity through the 5 Steps:

The Manual of Breath Therapy, wrote in a 2015 article, “With more breathing, there is simply more ATP, while the production of lactic acids is reduced, which keeps the body in an alkaline state. At the same time, with deeper breathing, more CO2 is exhaled, the blood pH level becomes more alkaline, and thus more aerobic dissimilation can happen.

WEEK 1​Thirty seconds of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 2​One minute of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 3​A minute and a half of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 4​Two minutes of cold water at the end of a warm shower Do this gradually and work your way up, at least five days a week. Follow the feeling. Don’t force anything. It’s also fine to start with fifteen seconds and build up more slowly, as we do in our 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge.

We will become able to act naturally within heat and cold and withstand all the elements of nature without significantly impacting our core body temperature. And it’s amazing what kinds of health benefits stem from there. Not only is it good for our vascular system, which again is the transportation system for all of the vitamins, oxygen, and nutrients our cells need, it also relieves the cells of biological stress. With that comes peace. Deep peace.

Sit down in a safe, comfortable place and clear your mind. 2​Start connecting to your breath. Let yourself breathe naturally. 3​Start counting your breaths. Each inhale and exhale is one count. Count your breaths up to seven, and then from seven back to one. If you find yourself suddenly thinking about your daily life and your to-do list, return to counting the breaths. You will eventually find yourself able to just count the breaths, up to seven and back down again. The blood flow will go into the deeper areas of your brain, awakening feeling, not thoughts. Let the feeling become stronger. Follow the feeling and go as deep as you want. As you go along, the counting will fade away, like a song fading out. Follow the feeling and go deep into yourself, deep into peace.

What Doesn’t Kill Us,

But sadly, mankind as a whole has lost its connection to this power because we rarely, if ever, venture out into the elements anymore. We stay snugged-up in our cozy, heated homes, safe from the environmental stressors that enable this power to rise within us. Thus, our minds are not able to transcend the impact of extreme forces on our bodies or to accept the truth of mind over matter.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken. •

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control.

A conditioned mind can cause narrowed perception, especially when you only focus on one sense and rarely use the others. Also, it's not about simply using them; it's about forming your entire perception through those other senses. Subsequently, you can begin to see the world in a different light. Tom and I discovered this as we spoke during our progression through the canyon.

Obstacles in life consume energy. Because Tom and I were able to overcome the obstacles in our way, we experienced a new type of energy. We felt powerful and full of vigor as we continued on. As we approached the final part of the canyon, moonlight began to peak through the rocky walls. It was a beautiful sight as we began to regain our vision and realize what we had just accomplished.

Challenges bring about the true nature within me. It alerts my body and mind, altering my state of being. It makes me feel so alive! It's like I always say, "We can do more than what we think." At those moments when I encounter a challenge, I become extremely aware of the deeper layers of my soul.

After taking cold showers for a month, and after consulting with her doctor, she

In the book, he explains that this practice trains your body to mainly use fat as fuel instead of glucose.

After my message on Twitter, I received a number of responses from people who were cured—completely unexpectedly—of their piles after practicing cold training.

daily Wim Hof breathing practice, outlined in Chapter 16. This moves (or exercises) the diaphragm, the main muscle that brings lymph flow back into your heart.

Do you know what a happy person needs? Nothing. Because he is happy. That is what I want to give to my children, to the beloveds around me, to all the living beings around me. I want to be happy, and I want the same for you.

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.

The control you will gain won’t be limited to your body’s response to the cold though. It can be applied to stress in any form, be it heat, emotion, work, frustration with the traffic, relationships, whatever. Because the cold is merciless but righteous, we can learn from it. And what it shows us is that we have an innate capacity to deal with stress.

If you engage too much in outside validation, you lose the path to yourself.

I was beginning to segregate from the normal culture. I suffered from efforts to suppress my nature, as many people do. Once I accepted that I was different, and made my peace with it, I began to segregate even further, specifically with respect to my consciousness and the way I perceived the world around me.

Nothing else matters. Wim Hof was right. He discovered, in our backyard ponds and on banal coasts, the lair of a terrible god, a place beyond self-pity, beyond grief.

The true story is that Wim has shown us what we all can do. The underlying method requires something uniquely human — the power of belief in ourselves, the power of strong intention combined with directed attention.

Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

The limit is not the sky. The limit is the mind.” -Wim Hof

Leonardo Pelagotti is an Oxygen Advantage instructor based in Paris, France. He was a national-level gymnast for 15 years and achieved a black belt in Kung-fu Shaolin after just five years of practice. Since 2017, he has been an instructor of the Wim Hof method,

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.

ICE-WATER BATH FOR WARMER HANDS AND FEET Are you someone who suffers from cold hands or feet? If so, try this exercise.

The best thing you can do for your skin is to go into cold water — not shockingly, but gradually; I’m sixty-one years old, and I still have skin like a baby’s.

Once you become happy, strong, and healthy, you radiate like the sun, and you pass your warmth onto others. You become a healer, and there is divinity in that healing that transcends language and the dogma of our societal conditioning. We are here to share the love with the mothers in Baghdad, New York, Beijing, and any other place in this world. We are here to give peace, strength, happiness, and health to all of our children, because that is what they deserve.

WHM PROTOCOL: BASIC BREATHING EXERCISE Before engaging with this breathing technique, remember to be mindful. Listen to your body and learn from the signals your body and mind send you while you are doing the exercises. Use those signals as personal feedback about the effect of the exercises on your body and mind, and adjust them as needed to find what works best for you.3 STEP 1​Sit in a meditation posture, lying down, or whichever way is most comfortable for you, in a quiet and safe environment. Make sure you can expand your lungs freely without feeling any constriction. STEP 2​Close your eyes and try to clear your mind. Be conscious about your breath and try to fully connect with it. Take thirty to forty deep breaths in through the nose or mouth. Fill up your belly, your chest, all the way up to your head. Don’t force the exhale. Just relax and let the air out. Fully in, letting go. STEP 3​At the end of the last breath, draw the breath in once more and fill the lungs to maximum capacity without using any force. Then relax to let the air out. Hold the breath until you feel the urge to breathe again. This is called the retention phase. STEP 4​When you feel the urge to breathe, take one deep breath in and hold it for ten to fifteen seconds. This is called the recovery breath. STEP 5​Let your breath go and start with a new round. Fully in, letting go. Repeat the full cycle three to four times. After having completed this breathing exercise, take your time to enjoy the feeling. With repeated practice, this protocol becomes more and more like a meditation. Once you have a little experience with the basic breathing exercise, try this additional technique: In round 2, step 4, try “squeezing” the breath to your head when you take your recovery breath. You do this by tensing your pelvic floor and directing that sense of tension to the core of your body and up to your head, while keeping the rest of your body relaxed. You should feel a sense of pressure in your head. Then relax everything when you exhale.

To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.

BREATHING EXERCISE WHILE WALKING AT HIGH ALTITUDE 1​Consciously breathe more than you feel you need to. 2​Focus on your breath. Feel yourself breathing as you move. 3​Synchronize your breath and your pace so you can get into a cadence. Find your own rhythm without forcing it. RESTING BREATHING EXERCISE TO ADJUST TO AN ALTITUDE GREATER THAN THIRTEEN THOUSAND FEET This exercise can help you to forestall the potentially dangerous symptoms caused by a low oxygen level in your body that you may encounter if climbing or visiting somewhere where the altitude exceeds thirteen thousand feet. Please do not rely on this exercise to prevent altitude sickness symptoms without the proper supervision or experience. The best way to safely learn it is to participate in one of our expeditions. See “Further Reading” for more information. It is helpful to use a saturation meter to measure your blood oxygen level when doing this. 1​Wake up four to four-and-a-half hours after you went to sleep. 2​Do the Basic Breathing Exercise until your saturation meter reads a minimum of 95 to 100 percent saturation. 3​Practice the breathing exercises for at least a half hour. 4​Go back to sleep.

BREATH 1​While seated or lying down, take 30 to 40 full conscious breaths: Breathe fully in to the belly and the chest, then letting go, without force. 2​On your final exhale, let the air out and hold it out for as long as you can without discomfort. Listen to your body and don’t force it! 3​When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Then release and relax. 4​Repeat the steps above two or three more times, paying attention to how you feel and adjusting your breath as needed. 5​Rest in this elevated state until you are ready to move on with your day. Alternatively, use the energy you just generated for your morning workout or yoga practice. Experiment with what feels right for you. Congratulations! You just influenced key drivers of your health, increased your vitality and focus, busted your stress, reduced inflammation factors, and optimized your immune system. FOR COMPLETE WHM BREATHING INSTRUCTIONS AND SAFETY GUIDELINES, SEE CHAPTER 4. MIND Your post-breathing practice state is the perfect time to program your mindset. Try this: 1​Before you get up from your breathing practice, bring up a thought in your mind like “Today I’m going to stay in the cold shower for 15 more seconds than yesterday,” or “I feel happy, healthy, and strong.” 2​Reflect on this thought and notice how your body feels. 3​If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, just keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and mind. With practice, your sense of your inner experience, or interoception, will sharpen, allowing you to more consciously observe and control your body and mind. SEE CHAPTER 12 FOR DETAILS. COLD 1​At the end of your warm shower, turn the water to cold. 2​If you like you can start by first putting your feet and legs, than your arms, then your full torso under the water. 3​Do NOT do the WHM Basic Breathing Exercise while standing in the shower. 4​Gradually extend your exposure every day until you can handle two minutes in the cold. 5​If you are shivering when you get out, try the horse stance exercise. (See “How Long Can You Hold a Horse Stance?” for details.) Success! You just improved your metabolic efficiency, regulated your hormones, further reduced inflammation, and are enjoying the endorphins and endocannabinoids released in response to the cold.

Our vascular system needs to be stimulated to achieve the desired muscular tone. It doesn’t need training, only awakening. Then, once it’s awakened and optimized, let’s say in ten days, a whole sequence of magic begins to occur within the body.

Cold showers are the gateway to flow and energy and peace. I’m not exaggerating. It’s the entry point from which you will learn the power of the mind over the body. If you do just ten days of cold showers after warm showers, meaning that you end your regular, warm showers with a minute or so of cold water, then you will be able to command your vascular system to close up when you go into the cold.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken.

Wim Hof method is energizing is that it reduces the chronic stress that makes you chronically tired.

The Power Shower Turn the shower to hot and wash. Do Wim Hof breathing (thirty to fifty breaths, or until you feel tingling and/or mild light-headedness). Turn the shower as cold as it can get. Continue Wim Hof breaths until breathing calms. Hold at the bottom of breath until the gasp reflex kicks in.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.

The more often you take cold showers and the more accustomed you get to that initial shock, the more you begin to crave the sensation.

So many in the world today are consumed with artificial desires. We grasp at imaginary straws. We work harder and harder and stress ourselves out to achieve more and more, but to what end? So we can become lawyers and businesspeople? So we can make lots of money to buy a big house or a fancy car but that can’t buy us happiness or health? I saw too much of that misery, which is why I withdrew from that world a long time ago. And it’s also why I began to think, What is the soul? Where is it? Well, I found it first in the cold and then in the breath that followed. There’s nothing mystical or abstract about it. It’s physical. Your breath is your life-force, right here, right now. It could not be any simpler. Just breathe and reclaim your soul.

So many of us today are afraid or unwilling to let go. Our lives are governed by rules, morality, and a sense of ethics driven by conformity, and informed by the commotion of politics and the unceasing cycle of current events. This has caused us to become too narrow-minded in our perception of the world, which is the opposite of freedom.

When we tackle the real terrorist - disease, physical and mental - we can guarantee happiness, strength, and health for ourselves and those we love.

If you engage too much in outside validation, you lose the path to yourself. You get off course. Self-love is being proud of yourself by your own lights. What is your best? Move toward that, not the best of your neighbors. Back yourself. Care for yourself. Not by protecting your ego, no, but by remaining present for your being when you feel most afraid, most uncomfortable, or awkward. Be calm in your love for yourself. It will enable you to see others more clearly and with more compassion. Don’t seek to change others; change yourself. Just mind your own mind and let others mind theirs. Show them who you are through your actions, through your conviction. Be clear and transparent, vulnerable. If I cared what others thought of me, I would have stopped going a long time ago. I would have been eaten by the system. I just keep on. This is my mission.

relief

We have accessory respiratory muscles in our necks that help us breathe faster for short periods.