The Most Powerful Breathing Technique That Will Change Your Life | Wim Hof

What's up, Believe Nation? I used to get sick a lot. I used to believe that if I didn't eat the right foods, I would get sick, that if I didn't sleep the right number of hours, I would get sick, that if anybody around me was sick, that I would get sick. And guess what happened? I got sick a lot. And then in January of this year, after getting really sick, I decided I am never going to get sick again. Never sick again. I'm always going to be healthy. And dedicated myself to learning from some of the masters, people who have figured it out for themselves on how to never get sick. So that also spawned this new series called Never Sick. And today we're going to learn from Wim Hof, the Iceman, on his techniques, his strategies, his secrets to never get sick. And as always, guys, as Wim is talking, if he says something that really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below, put quotes around it so others can enjoy as well.

To me, God is cold. You could say that. I think of the cold as a noble force. It's just helping me. It's training me. It's bringing me back to the inner nature the way it was meant to be. Me. And this way, I do not only endure the cold, I love the cold.

We live in a world where there's all kinds of false healers and fake alternative medicine programs you can sign up for. It's a rare moment in history when someone comes along who can perform real miracles with real evidence to back them up. Wim Hof has defied logic time and time again, and always under scientific scrutiny. He holds the world record for being able to be submerged in ice for almost 2 hours without his core body temperature changing. He's climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a pair of shorts and ran a marathon in the the desert without drinking any water. He's even proven in a laboratory setting that he can withstand illnesses using the power of his mind. But he's not a freak of nature. According to Wim, anyone can do what he can do. They just have to learn his method, the Wim Hof Method. Using a combination of cold immersion, breathing techniques, and mental focus, anyone can accomplish feats that were previously thought to be impossible.

I created a method.

The components are breathing, mindset, and cold exposure. Gradual, non-forced cold exposure. And that's to optimize the mind-body connection.

Wim has figured out ways, namely through breathwork and through exposure to cold, to take conscious control over aspects of his physiology that for most people they simply can't tune into and control.

The cold, my warm friend, it brings about a whole lot of more energy, and that together with breathing makes you so powerful. But then you lose your wife and it all rumbles down. 4 children I had with my wife, and I was to be with her forever. She was the love of my life. She died. She suicided. It's a black hole within yourself. It breaks your heart and you don't know why, but the train of daily life is going on and you gotta catch up, otherwise you lose it. So I had to be there for my children. And yes, we created a new nest. My children made me survive in that time, but nature healed my wounds. The cold gave me a direct understanding of deeper breathing and how to heal a broken heart. Then I went and did all kinds of remarkable challenges. Apparently they found it very remarkable and great and spectacular. So came in contact with television. One after the other, they challenged me more, more, more, more, more. Hey, go swim 50 meters under the ice. Go swim 100 meters under the ice. Climb Mount Everest in shorts. That led up that the scientists became curious. Hey, what this man is doing is not possible physiologically.

The science of what Wim Hof Method does is one of the primary interests of my lab now because it is so powerful and it's been shown to be powerful in the immune system. We believe it will also hold some real potential for treatment of neurologic diseases.

And this breathing technique brings you right into the deepest part of our physiology. Anybody can do it. So you become the alchemist of your own chemistry.

The first time I went under the ice, water is as sharp as needles. I saw this as a big, huge, sharp diamond. At 35 meters, I lost sight because the retina, it froze. I couldn't see nothing. I couldn't breathe, of course. And then my consciousness succumbed into a lower consciousness. This is survival. I do not fear death. I fear not to live fully. If I live fully, I'm not into death. I'm living.

It isn't all about breaking records. Wim's mission is to use his body as a laboratory to revolutionize our understanding of physiology. In 2011, he was injected with a bacterial endotoxin in an experiment that challenged our understanding of the nervous system. In normal humans, the injection should cause a strong immune response, leading to fever, chills, and headaches, but not in Wim. It appeared that he was somehow able to suppress his immune response by making his body secrete adrenaline, suggesting that his method can allow us to influence our immune system at will. Scientists thought he might just be a freak of nature, So to further prove this theory, they performed the same experiment on 12 subjects Wim had trained in Poland, and the same thing happened.

Normally, it's very difficult to increase your adrenaline levels by your own will. Adrenaline is released by the autonomic nervous system, and autonomic means that you cannot voluntarily influence it. So if you walk outside and you are robbed on the street, you will have a heart rate of 160 and your blood pressure will be sky-high within seconds. But if I ask you now to increase your heart rate, you cannot do that. You cannot voluntarily modulate that. And with the techniques of Wim Hof, we showed that he was able to increase his adrenaline levels to very high concentrations, even higher than people that go bungee jumping for the first time. That was something that we didn't think possible before that.

Right now we are right over here, 750 meters. We go up to 1,400 meters. That's the Kopa. From the Kopa we go to the Śniska, and, uh, it's cold. So all you have studied, Matt, you are going to need it. And now just don't think but focus. Trust your body to be able to cope the elements up there, and you will be able. And with that, you are going to show for yourself, hey man, I can do this. Wow.

If you ever wanted a real test of the Wim Hof Method, this is it. If you concentrate hard enough, the snow looks like sand, and you just feel like you're at the beach.

Exactly. That's the mind. If your mind is on it, Then you're quite capable of dealing with the elements.

Yeah, because it is a bit nippy, really.

Yeah.

There's a method to this. What I'm doing is breathing in more oxygen than I need and then breathing out without fully letting go, doing that 5 times. And on the final breath, squeezing the oxygen into your chest, neck, and head, and that creates either real or illusionary heat. And then you let go, and that's how we get to the top of the mountain. My cramp-ons. Minor cramp-on emergency. It's fine. There are a few theories as to why Wim Hof can do what he can do. One is that he has a higher level of brown adipose tissue, or brown fat, in his body. Which is a heat-generating tissue in the body. Studies have shown that people who work outside in the cold have higher levels of brown fat, so it's possible that he's able to manipulate the level of brown fat in his body by exposure to the cold like we're doing right now. Another theory is that he's able to secrete the hormone noradrenaline at will through breathing and by jumping into cold water. And that adrenaline allows him to overcome coldness and illnesses. Another theory is that he uses a form of meditation similar to the Tibetan tummo meditation, which, by shutting off the activity of the mind, your metabolism gets redirected into generating heat. It's probably a combination of all those three and some as-of-yet unexplained physiological phenomena as well. But Wim takes it a step further. He says that using his method you can go deep into the body and actually control your own autonomic nervous system and immune system.

I went to the scientific scrutiny of research and put me to the test, and they saw amazing things. But then they said, you are the Iceman, you are just one test subject. And I said, no, what I can do Anybody can do.

You can just start doing these techniques and you can modulate your adrenaline levels by will. Stress hormones are able to modulate your immune response. There are many diseases that are influenced by your immune system, and you can imagine that it would be of interest if you could modulate that immune response and suppress it, that it might be of benefit for patients with diseases like that.

How did it How did it feel when you finally got recognition from the science world that your methods work?

I cried, really. You know what happens when your wife, whom you love so dearly, she suicides? You don't understand. You just don't understand. You have no power anymore. And finally, because you have been everywhere looking for how to silence the grief, and finally get scientific recognition, time when you break. That's the time where you can relieve. That's the time you can let go. It's when you cry. Look at, look at the cloud! Oh, whoa! Wow, wow! Mother holy mama! This is nice, huh?

It's amazing what the body can do when you actually force it to go to its limits.

Yes, to its natural ability.

We've crossed the border from Poland into the Czech Republic, and now we're just about to summit the tallest mountain in the Czech Republic. Inner shorts.

Well done, man. All the way. Good.

How are you feeling?

Ah, feeling good. Once again, back home.

They asked the professors and all the scientific world, what's happening with this guy? Because this is not possible. They're genetically the same imprint, my brother, and they see he is not capable of doing what he is capable of.

And why?

Because I just dove deeper. It's by breathing. If we just breathe more deeply, Change the chemistry inside. Not shallow breathing, deep breathing. Slowly but surely. This is what you do consciously. You do this 30 times, the chemistry in the body, in the tissue, is changing. And it's changing so that the body is becoming oxygenized, alkaline, and then suddenly the brain-body connection Expansion is possible by pressurizing, by— Once you begin to have that connection with the body, then you are able to connect within, in the brain. And that's what we do right now with Stanford University to get rid of PTSD, fear, trauma, and depression, to learn to expand. Consciousness. And together with breathing, you create the right chemistry, and then the neurons, they channel up, and thus your perception, your consciousness is going to be— you smell more, you see the colors brighter, you experience deeper. And that's the brain, and then connecting once again with all the cells makes you a beautiful living being. Are you ready?

Relaxed. Deeply in and let go. Deeply in, let go. Once again, deep in. Make it circular. Feel lightness, loominess in the body, lightness in the head, tingling in your fingers. Make it effective. We have to get rid of the CO2 in the body. That will enrich the oxygenation, that will enrich the O2, the oxygen. Within the body, and we need the oxygen in this exercise. This exercise consists of 30 breaths. Fully in, let go. Fully in, let go. Some people will do it by the mouth, mouth. Some people will do it by the nose. Who cares? Just do it. CO2 reduction is what we want, is what we aim for. Thus, O2 or oxygen will be enriched in all the body, and we will consume that O2, that enriched O2, the oxygen, by doing push-ups without breathing. She will show that she is able— she told me she could do like 10 push-ups. Let us see how many push-ups she is going to do without breathing. We'll see. Okay, 5 more. She is focused, as you can see, and that's what we need to release the right hormones which make you stronger. Dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and it's all concentrated by the mind. You can control this hormone, and there she goes. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Without breathing. 17, 18, 20. Wow, look at her. 22.

This is the exercise with the shower. The shower exercises to train the cardiovascular system. We got muscles everywhere in the system, 100,000 kilometers. So we are going to trigger it. How?

How?

By not choking when you go into a cold shower. In the beginning, of course, of the course, you go from the heat to the cold. Your body learns to adapt. I mean, the veins livent to adapt. And they are triggered, the muscles work, and in a couple of days it's bearable. You can do it because the condition elevates. Right now I'm gonna go into this cold show. What should you do? Have mental focus. I'm gonna do this wholeheartedly. I'm not there and there with my mind. I'm right over here. Okay, that's number one. Then The second is the breath. The breath is inside, as you know, and it can control, and you have learned to use the— manipulate pneumatically the force of the breath within, and it triggers the nervous system and the cardiovascular system. So keep your control by referring to your breath, steady It's your control. He is a trained person, of course. My cardiovascular system works almost directly on it. So, it closes up down here, around the liver, the lungs, the heart, and the head. You know, the brain. The core temperature needs to be the same always. So it closes. And that's what I did with my mind just before, just when I talked to you. Right now, and you can learn this too. Actually, it's to elevate your power, which you got already over there inside. And for the rest, have a nice shower. And if you feel like, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, then that means it's not closing right. That's why you are choking. So learn to have the right cardiovascular system. By following this step. First hot, then a little bit colder, up to bringing it to really cold, and then directly like this, directly into the cold, and have a great shower because your cardiovascular system is great.

Why I teach this method? To show that with a simple method out of nature, we are able to tackle the greatest problems, which is depression, fear, anxiety, And pain, people with chronic pain, that's all unnecessary suffering going on. And all this industry is keeping on and say, yeah, that's normal. And I think that's sick.

If it turns out that non-ingestible approaches such as breathwork or cold exposure can approach some of the potency that medications can provide or have failed to provide, then it's quite possible that one can heal from the inside.

Guess what? We found the proof to tap into our body and mind, enabling us to become happy, strong, and healthy.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know, what did you think of this video? Are you inspired by it? Did you take something from it? Are you going to learn more about it? Are you going to try this breathing and cold exposure strategy. I've been testing it myself so far, getting some early results, but I'm excited to continue to test. Are you guys gonna try it? I'd love to know your thoughts on this video as well as the series. Do you want to continue this series and profile other people and their thoughts on never getting sick again? Leave it in the comments below. I'm super curious to find out, and I'm gonna join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Victor Lim. Victor, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really, really, really appreciate your support, and I hope you enjoyed it. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. See you soon.