Ep 13: My Wim Hof ice bath experience!

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Have It All Podcast Brought to you by me, Emma Naylor, Life Purpose and Career Coach. This podcast is for the ambitious and motivated individuals who are ready to take the next step in their life and turn their dreams into their everyday reality. To guide them to live a life of fulfillment within their career, purpose and beyond and to show them that you really can have it all.

Welcome back to the youe can have it all podcast. I thought I would do a podcast episode around my experience with the ice bath. As many of you would have seen on my Instagram on Sunday, I took part in a Wim Hof Fundamentals workshop. Just a quick disclaimer, I'm not a Wim Hof instructor, I'm just talking about my experience. You should always do the breathing exercises in a safe environment and if you have any medical conditions or if you're pregnant, you should consult with your doctor before trying this method. Never overdo it and always listen to your body. So as I said, many of you will have seen that I did the ice bath on Sunday and many of you have probably seen people sharing ice cold baths, cold showers and breath work over the last few years. More recently, a new TV show called Face the Fear with Wim Hof has been airing on BBC one. It's based in the Italian mountains in sub zero conditions where Wim Hof takes eight celebrities over the course of a few weeks to face a number of ridiculously cold challenges designed to push their minds and their bodies to the limit as well as out of out of their comfort zone. For those who don't know who Wim Hof is, here is a sort of a little bit about his life. So he lost his life. He lost his wife when he was very, very young. She unfortunately took her own life and it really caused him to spiral into a big depression and he was left to raise his four children. So to cope with his grief, he really talks about how he turned to the cold by enduring these extreme temperatures and undergoing training to control his breathing and really help him work through a lot of this grief and a lot of this depression. He really said that he gained so much of his energy back and so many amazing things happened to his body that he knew he had to share it with everyone else. So he really been working around sharing his knowledge and his experience through the Wim Hof method that he's created and he's now scientifically shown that we can train our bodies to better cope with stress, strengthen our health and gain overall control in our immune system. So the Wim Hof method, breathing exercises essentially act as a short stress response. So, so it's known as controlled hyperventilation. And when I heard that, I was like, why would I want to hyperventilate on purpose? And it's basically proven to lead to more resilience and control in our everyday life. So the method that he does involves deep rhythmic inhales and exhales followed by retention time, holding the breath for minutes at a time, which again, I was super confused about how I would be able to hold my breath for an extended period of time. But it is possible because I've now done it. So the way that he talks about sort of starting off the experience is kicking things off with cold showers, easing your body in, starting with your hands and feet, shoulders, then the rest of your body without force. Remember a lot of this that he talks about in his experiences. It's not meant to be forceful, but it's meant to push your body to two extremes. So based on his story, he then created the WIM HOF method, which is based around three main pillars. So it's the breathing, the cold therapy and the commitment. So obviously when we talk about the breathing, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in my experience. But for me, I've done a lot of breath work, but I've never experienced anything like this in my life. The cold therapy, again, that runs from everything, from the cold showers, we all the way to submerging yourself into the ice cold baths. And then we talk about commitment and we talk about the commitment part from where I'm sat, that's an ongoing process. It's the willpower, it's the self control that we need to live a successful and happy life. So in a modern world, so many of us just live in these routines and these patterns. We've kind of just developed the habitual way of living. We don't really push ourselves that much and we don't really have that much control over our willpower because we're just so used to doing things. And for example, we try really hard to lose weight, to look good, to get educated, to be the best version of themselves. But in order to do that, we have to have the willpower. We have to have the willpower to wake up at the 5 o' clock in the morning and go to the gym. We have to have the willpower to not pick up that food for us that we know isn't good for us. We have to have the willpower to wake up and want to go to classes, to continue to study to better ourselves. But if we do want to continue bettering ourselves, he often talks about how important the willpower part is. And with his method, it's something that you have to have in order to, to practice this. And it again, over time pours into different areas of your life. Because if you can have willpower in this situation, you can absolutely have it in other areas of your life. So my fiance and I signed up, as I said, for a Wim Hof Method fundamentals workshop with our family friend and my father's PT called Graham. He's someone who's been in our lives for about 15 years. I, I, I really trusted him. I, I really felt like the space that he'd created was very, very safe. So I knew that this was sort of the first practice that I wanted to have, going in an ice bath and really practicing this breath work. So first of all, we started with the breath work. Now, when my fiance and I watched Face the Fear with Wim Hof, he was so baffled as to why people were crying and shaking and getting really emotional with this breath. Breath work. Now, the breath work that we did was the real basis of what Wim Hof does. So it's essentially 30 deep breaths in, 30 to 40 deep breaths in and deep breaths out. Then it's the hold. And after we exhale for the last time, you inhale for one final time as deeply as you can. Then you let the air out and stop breathing. And you hold until you feel the urge to breathe again once. You then feel the urge to breathe again. You draw one big breath in to fill your lungs, feel your belly and chest expanding. You hold for around 15 seconds and then you breathe out again. We did that cycle around, I think it was five times that we did it. And every single time that we did it, we increased the hold all the way up to three minutes. Now, three minutes sounds like a ridiculously long time to hold your breath, but when you're in the moment, you don't actually realize. I didn't realize it was three minutes until we finished. Now this breath work for me, and I can't even get into words how incredible it was. I want to say it felt like a mixture of I was floating, but I couldn't feel my body. And it was the most euphoric feeling I've ever felt in my entire life. And from someone who has taken different types of drugs and gone out drinking and partying and felt that going into a different dimension via external things, this was something that I've never ever experienced before in my life. And once we came out of it and we sort of regrouped and spoke about was really interesting because. And I'm not going to share too much of the experiences because other people's experience, because obviously it's very, very personal to them. But there were lots of people in there who were crying, who were literally convulsing and shaking. There was so much coming out. And my experience was a very emotional one. It felt very emotional, it felt very intense, but it felt very euphoric at the same time. I can't really explain it in words. It's very, very hard to explain in words. But all I can really, really say is I've never felt anything like that in my entire life. And my fiance who has said I can share this, has said he finds it hard to switch off. And for the 35 minutes he said there was nothing in his head apart from just really feeling so relaxed and so calm and rested. And it really got me to thinking about how many of us find external, external things such as drugs and alcohol to try and escape from what's going on. And actually we, we have the power to do that within ourselves, but it's quite easy, and myself included, to run away and try and get all of those extra feelings. So there's an app that you can download that will talk you through exactly what we went through as well. And if you haven't done it, it's absolutely incredible and I would love to hear what your thoughts are on the breath work. The second thing that we did was the ice bath. So it's something I've wanted to do for a while. I've seen a lot of people posting on social media, I've seen a lot of people talking about the benefits of it. And I've only really been able to do kind of 15 cold seconds, 15 second cold showers up until we were preparing for this workshop and I realized that I would have to start doing more. So I started off with 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 30. All the way up to adding 2 minutes of a cold shower on the end of my shower daily. So on the day, as prepared as I felt, I didn't feel 100% prepared because it's something I'd never done before. I wasn't 100% ready to put myself voluntarily in an ice bath, but I knew I was there for a reason and I knew it's something I'd wanted to do. So having done all this great breath work, we then shifted onto a different breath work which was two breaths in and six breaths out. When people say something takes your breath away, I knew that the ice water was going to take my breath away. And the natural thing when you go into that state is to almost start hyperventilating and almost try and over breathe. And actually, for me, this was a really good time to take a step back and be able to actually regulate my breath before I got in the water. So we sort of waited on the side of the bath, and then Graham told us to get into the water. So you get into the water, and my breath was taken away. I will not lie to you. My breath was fully taken away. And I've never experienced a level that cold before in my entire life. And so I submerged myself into the water. I lowered myself into the water and. And started doing the 2 in, 6 out, 2 in, 6 out. We did two minutes in 0.6 degrees. Now, if you just take a minute to think how cold that actually is, in theory, we should get in and go, oh, my God, this is so cold. Oh, my God. By doing that, we're not actually helping our body. We're not allowing ourselves the space to breathe and take that step back and actually understand that our bodies are actually able to do this. And our mind may tell us that it's not, but our bodies are actually able to do this. So after the two minutes, which, by the way, went very quickly, I got out and I felt this feeling again that I'd never felt before. And in all honesty, I wanted to go straight back in the water. And I know that sounds absolutely insane, but I wanted to go back in. I wanted to fully submerge my head underwater. I wanted to get back in and do it again. And it was such an interesting setup because we then got to watch other people getting in the water. And when you're sat from a side watching in, you can see the concentration and almost the conversations that people are having in their head, going through that breath work, calming themselves down, getting themselves into that amazing place. We then finished off the session by regrouping and kind of sharing how our experience was, talking about, you know, what we found good, what we really enjoyed. And it really felt that I'd opened my eyes up to this whole new world that I'd seen from afar. But I never really realized the benefits of it. I'd never really realized the benefits of actually getting in the cold water in the short term, but also also in the long run. So I absolutely loved the whole experience. I can honestly say I would absolutely do it again. And I'm already looking to sign up for my next workshop to do because there's a, there's sort of a few reasons. I think the first reason was I did something that was super out of my comfort zone. Now I really want you to think about when was the last time you did something that was really out of your comfort zone, that made you feel, why am I doing this? And often there's not a lot of us that will do things that make us feel uncomfortable. As humans, we like to not be uncomfortable, we like to sit in our comfort, we like to sit in a place that we know what's going to happen and we don't challenge ourselves. The second thing was really understanding what the long term benefits are, such as, you know, boosting your immune system, increasing our energy, relieving stress, improving our sleep, you know, again, as I said, increasing our willpower, relieving symptoms of depression, improving our concentration, really helping, you know, with actual pain in your bodies, improving our mental well being. There are so many reasons why, why people would do this. And again, for me, that was one of the reasons I really, really wanted to do it. So in terms of my biggest takeaways, and this has been something that a lot of people have been asking me, like, what are your biggest takeaways? Why did you, why would you want to do it? Like, what instant kind of benefits did you get? And obviously something like this is going to take, you know, time to see the benefits, but actually I really felt benefits straight away. First of all, breath work is fucking powerful. I had dabbled with a bit of breath work before, but honestly, this was absolutely something else. Being able to change my state, release trauma and switch off in the space of 35 minutes was something that I never thought possible. And honestly, this breath work is something that I'm going to incorporate into my day to day life 100%. Second of all, two minutes goes very, very, very quickly. Two minutes, when you think about doing something that you don't really want to do, can often feel like a very, very long time. Because we're thinking, I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this, why am I doing this? As soon as we shift that state into I know why I'm doing this, I'm focusing on the now I'm being super present, I'm understanding why I'm doing this. That massively shifts that two minutes from feeling like two days into literally feeling like 20 seconds. It goes so, so quickly. The third thing, I have never slept so, so well. In my life. I came home after and I actually had a two and a half hour nap. I was exhausted. I feel like with the breath work a lot of stuff came up, really started working through a lot of things and I was absolutely exhausted. When I went to bed in the evening, I was very worried that I was not going to be able to sleep. Having had a two and a half hour nap, I slept for ten hours straight. Ten hours straight, if you know me well, is absolutely unheard of. I do not sleep for 10 hours, seven hours maximum. And it's usually disrupted sleep and broken sleep. But here we are having slept a two and a half hour nap yesterday and then a ten hour sleep last night. One of the big things that I also had as a takeaway is I don't have to do an ice bath every single day or do 40 minutes of breath work every single day. I can do five minutes of breath work a day and have a quick 22nd, 32nd a minute, whatever it is. Cold shower on the end of my shower. Now me as an addict, my addiction brain wants to go. You must do an ice bath every day, you must do 45 minutes of breath work. And actually the one big thing that I really took away was being able to incorporate this into, into my day to day life. So the big question, will I do it again? Yes, I will absolutely be doing it again. I had a cold shower this morning and it felt absolutely incredible. If you're looking to start exploring into the WIM HOF method, if you're looking to incorporate cold showers, as I said, the best way to start is downloading the WIM HOF app, which has been super, super useful for me and really just start incorporating those quick 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds of cold shower into your shower in the morning and I promise you, you are going to start feeling so, so different, so much more energized. You're going to start sleeping better. And again it's about finding out what works for you, what breath work works for you, what time of the day, how it benefits you and really starting to see what those sort of long term benefits. So this is really, really the beginning of my journey. But I really wanted to share it from the beginning because I think it's really important when we're exploring new things and they work for us to share them. Especially being in this space, it's so important to share what works for me and what I'm really enjoying. I've learned that I'm so much more capable than I believe myself to be. Much of my daily life and lots of other people's daily lives is within staying in that comfort zone. And it's not only really scary that so many of us just stay in that comfort zone, a lot of us don't know how to leave that comfort zone. So while I really, really love the physical benefits of obviously the breathing exercises, and I know that it's so good for me, it's really opened up my eyes to how our bodies and minds can actually do so much more than most of us really ever thought possible. So as I said, this is really, really the beginning of my journey. I'm absolutely going to be sharing more and more, but I'm so invested in this now. Now that I know a four hour workshop has made such an impact and made me feel amazing, I really do wonder if I start incorporating this into my everyday life and really start understanding and believing I'm way more capable than what I think I can do. If you told me that I was going to have an ice bath for two minutes a few days ago, a few months ago, I would have said absolutely not. Now I know I've done that. I now know that that's just opening doors for me to show that actually everything I want to do is possible. I just have to continue pushing myself and getting out of my comfort zone. I would love to hear any of your experiences with Wim Hof, with ice baths, with breathwork. I would absolutely love to hear your experiences, how it's changed your life and your journey. So I really hope that you enjoyed this podcast episode. As I said, I really just wanted to share a little bit more about my experience and everything that happened in the session yesterday. And as I said, this is just the beginning and I will absolutely be sharing more. I I hope you all have a beautiful rest of your week and I will see you in next week's episode.

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