#3 Dr. Jordan B. Peterson (Part 2)

So the book's out and the audio is selling well, and you know, it was part of what— it was definitely part of what kept me alive. Hopefully this will be helpful, and that's something I can do, at least in principle, even though I'm sick and in pain. He holds 26 world records for achievements that for most people seem impossible and dangerous.

The cold is my teacher. To me, it's like God.

He might well be one of the most genius humans currently alive. Wim Hof is changing scientists' understanding of how the body works.

I created a method. The components are breathing, mindset, and cold. Wim Hof, the Iceman. Hi guys, I'm Wim, Wim Hof, and every time I go into the unknown, through my podcasts, exploring, exploring life into the depth, breaking the ice to go where nobody has gone before.

You're listening to the Wim Hof Podcast, a Monk Studios original.

And on my side, my son Einar. He's here to keep me on track, which he's not able to do, by the way, but He will try it and together we got a great chemistry. And we got Anne, our producer. She makes things really work.

Welcome back. In the previous episode, Wim Hof and Dr. Jordan B. Peterson talk about fighting depression, dealing with chronic pain, and how to use the Wim Hof Method for Dr. Peterson's medical condition. On this episode, they continue their conversation and Jordan Peterson shares how writing his new book saved his life.

Look, when people go to horror movies, they go to movies that upset them emotionally. They go to movies that are sad and they go to movies that are horrifying. So people are so prone to expose themselves to stressors voluntarily that they will pay for the privilege of doing so, even if the emotion elicited is negative. Because it's a real mystery. It's like, Why the hell would you go watch The Blair Witch Project and be scared out of your skull for 90 minutes? Like, why would you pay for that? Or— and that's a more pure fear eliciting movie. Or you can go to a slasher movie, let's say, and what you're basically exposed to are disgust eliciting stimuli. And that's not pleasant. Same if you watch a tragedy. Well, people— we have knowledge of this built into us in some sense because We're so wired to expose ourselves to stress in a manageable manner that we will pay for the privilege of doing so, and we find it entertaining. And so there's no reason to assume from a rational perspective or scientific perspective or clinical perspective that anything that you're claiming is outlandish. And it's also extremely interesting to me. So you're using See, depression, unlike anxiety, depression is a pain-like phenomenon. So you would group it with frustration. Technically, frustration, disappointment, grief, pain, depression. Those are all manifestations of the same thing. So you could imagine, imagine your nervous system as a tree, and most of it, of course, the the central nervous system is encased in the skull, but it distributes itself throughout your entire body. And different parts of that system can be— imagine that one mode of activation of that system is pain. Different parts of it can be activated. And so you can have more pure emotional pain, and that would be something more like grief or depression. But people who are grieving or depressed are much more likely to report physical pain as well, or to have a chronic pain syndrome. So you're using exposure to cold as a forum where you can experiment with mastery. That's what it sounds like to me. And it is. Well, it's very interesting because it's definitely the case with the— see, when the behaviorists first developed the idea of exposure therapy for for fear, for anxiety. They assumed that you had learned to be afraid of something and that what you needed to do was to expose yourself to that and then to relax and learn how not to be afraid. And so it was conditioning. That's how you acquired the fear to begin with. And then it was counter-conditioning. You learned a relaxation response instead of the fear. But it was found relatively rapidly that you didn't need the counter-conditioning. You just needed the voluntary exposure to fear. And then it was found that you probably didn't learn the fear to begin with. Fear is a default state and what you learn is security. So the whole theory was not accurate, but the exposure worked. And but what was really interesting too is when the behaviorists first started to experiment with exposure as a therapy, the psychoanalysts said, well, you'll get symptom substitution. So imagine, I'll give you an example. I had a client who was afraid of elevators. And she was afraid of lots of things, but she wouldn't get on an elevator. So we started with the elevator. And when I took her out to the elevator, she was about 15 feet away, and the doors opened, and she said, "That's a tomb." And I thought, oh, I see. So this fear of elevators is so specific because you won't get in an elevator. But what's underlying that is a more profound fear of mortality and of death. And the psychoanalysts assumed that, you know, you'd have these topical fears, but they were associated with something deeper. And so that if you just treated the topical fear, the deeper fear would just manifest itself some other way, which is a perfectly reasonable theory. But what happened was the behaviorists demonstrated that when you exposed people to the elevator let's say, they also got less afraid of all sorts of other things. And so that was a mystery. It's like, well, why would confronting an elevator make you less afraid of your husband, let's say, and maybe more likely to bring things up with him? Because that was something that was also observed. And the answer was, well, you weren't becoming less afraid, you were becoming more courageous. And that generalized. So you found that you could go into the elevator even though you thought you couldn't. There was more to you than you had suspected. And that was practically learned as a consequence of mastering that difficult task. Because the first theory would be, well, I'm terrified of the elevator and so I can't go near it. But then you learn that, oh, you can go near it. And You learn how to cope with it, and soon you're taking the elevator everywhere, and then you're taking taxis. And so then you think, "There's more to me than I thought." And so then you get less afraid of everything. And that is what happened. That's well documented in the broad theoretical literature and also in the specific clinical literature.

Yes, sir. And that step she took is actually the first step to enter in the deeper parts of her own brain, making her not only courageous, but also given her the ability to enter past that debilitating neurological pathway she has been in, that conditioning, and she could not get out. And then she found out, I can not only go into elevators, but I can take on stress because I'm the boss in my own brain. We have never learned, and this is what we should teach our kids in school, in primary school, What is the ability to enter in your own brain past your conditioning? And I hold it a moment. Professor Musick, with whom I did research in the brain scans, he said in the new book of Scott Carney, he is an investigative journalist, and he interviewed him. That Wim Hof has found the secret of placebo. So suggestive power, the sugar pill, is no longer needed. We are able to enter in our brain consciously into that what is able to activate an adequate answer to whatever the stressful impact is. Could be emotion, mentally, viral, bacterial, it's all physical. And that is the new— a new dimension in what we could learn in psychiatry that we are able to enter. I mean, if we are able to go into the periaqueductal, which is from the prefrontal cortex into the periaqueductal, the deepest part of the brain, the most primitive, then where else can we not go? And this is—

okay, so there When I was at McGill, I studied with this man named Ronald Melzack, and he was one of the world's leading authorities on pain at that point. And he had this theory that was a gate control theory in some sense, that pain messages coming up from the body could be gated and that those gates could open and close. And so I'm thinking about that in relationship to what you're saying, and the relationship between the prefrontal cortex, the higher order cortex, where that'd be the seat of abstract thought and to some degree the seat of self-consciousness. And it's certainly activated when you're exploring. So imagine— and the periaqueductal gray looks like it's crucial for the production and perhaps production of pain. So if you're in pain and I give you a lobotomy— this was done decades ago for pain control— I cut the connections between the pre-frontal cortex and the periaqueductal gray, let's say. You still feel the pain, but it doesn't matter anymore. The emotional significance of the pain is gone, and so you feel much better as a consequence. Now, I'm not recommending lobotomies for pain, although modified leucotomies are still sometimes used for intractable pain. Now, imagine that maybe You're in pain, so you have your hands in the cold, or you're in a cold shower, or you're in a lake. And instead of running away from the pain and distracting yourself, you start to focus and pay really close attention to all the sensations that you're feeling, even though they're aversive. Like you're paying extremely close attention. So I wonder if that is what's producing the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the periaqueduct of Gray. Prefrontal cortex is opening the gates and exploring all the sensations. And learning that it can do that and learning that perhaps in principle also to master it. So maybe when I'm in the shower and I do the 30-second cold exposure, I should do everything I can to concentrate. It's weird because I can feel myself fleeing from it in the shower. You know, it's like, God, when is this going to be over? I don't want to feel the sensation of the ice water on the front of my body. I don't want to move it onto my back. It's like But I guess what I should be doing is turning around and facing the dragon in as much detail as possible. I didn't know that was possible with pain. I know it's possible with anxiety. That's clear. The literature is clear on that.

So pain, yes. Pain, very primordial. And anxiety, these breathing exercises, they help very good against anxiety. Anxiety makes you shallow in your breathing, and if you go into deeper breathing, you just break the cycle and you get sense back and you begin to—

Yes, and that's classically used in behavior therapy as well. You get people to learn how to deep breathe, and that does often stop the development of a panic attack, which is like a positive feedback loop.

If you have any question, I'm here. And besides of this, this podcast, uh, I want to— if you please let me talk to you more, like, uh, by WhatsApp or whatever, because I got thousands of hints for thousands of little problems after 44 years of field experience. I got it all done, and I cannot reproduce that here in the podcast.

But right, well, let me experiment with it some more from given what you told me today. And maybe we should have another public discussion too and investigate it a little bit further. But I will try the hand and feet technique, but I'm also going to try concentrating more attentively on the sensations when I— but I would like to do the breathing with you again during this podcast just to make sure that I'm doing it right. To answer your question, no, I don't enjoy it. I can't say that I enjoy it. I'm not at the point yet where I'm getting bursts of energy or anything like that. I'm still way too afflicted for that to be happening. So it's better than it was by a lot, but no, I'm nowhere near that yet. I'm still mostly consumed by pain.

Last thing about the pain. Whenever you feel pain. This is what I do with people. I do hormetic stressful exercise. That means self-inflicted deep stress just for, say, 5 minutes. Make people doing a plank for 5 minutes or scissor kicks for 5 minutes and then stay in control. It's not about endurance or toughness. It's about learning how to connect with the mechanisms by thought to control pain and to make it in the moment different by being conscious at that moment there and not panic and go, oh, no. So relax, go to it, face it, and make the difference. There, the neurological pathways are beginning to establish themselves. And then you find that you are able to endure the deep stress and with less effort. That means that opioids come in and cannabinoids come in and you feel good about it. You got a victory like, I'm just in control here. That's amazing. It's not about physical exercise. Do. That is a nice bonus. But it is about the mental— a pure mental control which we never learned in our schools. And that is—

Okay, so if you have someone do a plank, tell me exactly what you do with them and for how long. Like, if I did a plank, how long would I have to maintain it, do you think? I mean, is it as long as I can?

No, I do it quite long with people. Today I had Olympians who go to Japan very soon, chief, a woman, very strong, fourth Olympics. She had many gold medals and she is very disciplined. And I say, I love you for doing always, for giving you your best always. And then you get the best and then you are at the ceiling of your performance, now your capacity. But I will show you that there is another story on top of your performance level. And I did that and they swim, say, 23 seconds, 50 meters in 23 seconds. And I had her doing push-ups while not breathing after the exhalation. So no, no air in the lungs and then doing push-ups. She did 28 push-ups in 25 seconds. And I said, and I saw, I can feel you can do 35 push-ups. That means increasing the velocity, the power. And you know what? You will then be able to control your performance capacity when you are at the Olympics and swim the 50 meters with a higher capacity. That means gold. But that's not the thing. The thing is I want you to show it to yourself today and in the coming days. And we will have contact. And then to me, it's data. It shows that people who are at the ceiling, who are the best in their discipline, are able to get a story better. And that's incredible. That is an untapped potential. We never knew of. It's like the autonomic nervous system could not be influenced at will. Now it is. There is a total new perspective which needs a landing. It's like the pioneers going to the West. There is new area to cover. And so I'm just bloody excited again to meet a great schooler who knows what I'm talking about and to bring it within these definitions of neurology and all. Yeah, okay.

So, okay, so with the push-ups, you said you had her do them on the exhale. So she's holding her breath on the exhale. So after breathing in and out how many times? Would be a great question for you too. Okay, I'd like to know exactly how to do it. What exactly would I do?

So 30 deep breaths. You got a belly, which is the diaphragm. When you move that, then you move the down part of the lungs. They open up. So more oxygen is able to get in. So I do belly, chest, open up chest, and then let go. Fully in to the 1 atmosphere. Not fully out, only letting go, letting go. There's 1 atmosphere at sea level. If you do, then you are below 1 atmosphere. What we do is beyond 1 atmosphere, that is, it is beyond our 1 atmosphere. And then we go to 1 atmosphere. This we do repeatedly, 30 times, 40 times, until it becomes light.

So you don't exhale all the way out while you're doing that?

Just letting it go.

Okay, and what rate are you breathing?

Fully in, letting go. Fully in. Letting go. This we do 30 times, 40 times. You feel lightheaded, a little bit dizzy. That is all right. And that's only because the carbon dioxide will be blown off. Body becomes very alkaline, more than the normal. And that has been shown in the university as well in the blood, etc. And that's exactly what we need to perform. When the muscle tissue is alkaline, then acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter, is able to move. When it gets sore, it's not able to move anymore. It's when we stop, we have no energy anymore, no neurotransmitter transport anymore in the muscular tissue. So what we do is trick the brain, trick the muscular tissue, and it will have a profound effect on your feeling. On your being, your well-being. So 30 deep breaths. This is a great exercise. I did that.

Show me the rate. Show me the rate. Do it for 10 seconds, if you would, just so I can see.

So I stand where I stand is I think intention is I'm going to give my best. I'm going to get the best. I'm going to give it all. So I'm going to do this exercise, push-ups. After the exhalation. But first, I'm going to prime myself, alkalize my blood.

How?

Can be through the nose, through the mouth, doesn't matter. Whatever feels good. So this is the rhythm.

Okay, it's not too fast.

Not too fast.

Not too fast, but deep.

Deep, nice and deep. Then the change will be felt. Your blood becomes more alkaline, carbon dioxide, the breathing trigger Goes out of you, you de-acidify, you become very alkaline. And then that gets into the muscle tissue. Then after 30, 35 breaths, the last one, you stop breathing and you go do push-ups. And you will—

Okay, now do you exhale all the way out on the last one, or is it 1 atmosphere again?

Yes, 1 atmosphere, just letting go. Then you go do the push-ups and you just go like a machine. I mean, you will see, hey, still doing push-ups, it's amazing, what's happening? You know, your thoughts go, yeah, just go. And you should be able to do 30 push-ups, 40 push-ups very soon. If you never did push-ups as a man like your stature, you should be able to do 50 push-ups without air in your lungs. I mean, with only residual amount of— after letting go, a little bit of air is still there, but that is not enough normally to perform 10 push-ups. No way. Agony. Painful. Not good. But now you're suddenly able to go way past that. Way you are controlling pain, you're controlling performance, muscular tissue, the brain functioning. It's all there. It's like adrenaline shoots out because there's a very abnormal situation going on. And the doctors, they, they said in the university, because of this breathing, you alkalize the body so much, that's why the adrenal axis is so so deeply activated. And then bacteria suddenly has no chance. And you know what is bacteria? It's like virus, it's like emotional stress, cell biological stress. And the body is then primed and able through this tricking the brainstem to get into the adrenal axis activation, which resets the body to the way nature meant it to be. Then pain is gone, Bacteria is gone. Emotional stress is gone. You are just feeling good.

When you're doing the breathing techniques, when I'm doing the breathing techniques in the shower, I breathe all the way out on the last exhale, like all the way. Is that too much, or should I just be stopping at 1 atmosphere?

No, in the cold shower, just keep on breathing. Long exhalations, no stopping of breath. It is just follow the breath so we are not into the pain of the cold. That when you are able to fix on, be focused on the out-breath, your body tranquilizes. And then your body is able to do what it needs to do to be adaptive.

Well, let me tell you exactly what I'm doing and tell me why it's wrong, OK, so I can do it right. I do 30 inhalations and exhalations deeply. Like that.

Yes.

And then, and in the cold water.

Don't do that in the cold water. Yeah, you don't do that in the cold water. There's this— I heard you said this before, but in the cold water we only go before we go in, we could do some breathing. But you set your mind, and when you go in, deep breathing like— this is what I say to anybody like 80 years old, heart conditions. I say, easy does it. Bring it down. We have an innate capacity to adapt to stress. And they get it in one afternoon. I say, deep breathing and stay with the breath. Don't be there, there, there. Stay with the breath. And when once they do that, they get the trick. They stay there and suddenly the body is changing inside. We interfere.

So I was probably trying to be hyper-efficient. So like I said, I did combine the breathing and the cold. So I should do those separately?

Yes, sir. Long out breaths. That's what I recommend. And that has worked with tens of thousands of people I met. Long out breaths, going into the cold, and 30 seconds. Jordan, you should be able to go in wintertime into the Jordan River and swim and have happy times and come out strong. 30 seconds for you, 50 push-ups On the exhale, controlled, in retention, you should be able to do that. Climbing toward it. That means you get a hold of those mechanisms.

Okay, so I want to go over the 4 things that you've taught me so I make sure I've got them right.

Yes.

Okay, because I want to practice them properly. So when I do the cold immersion for my hands and my feet, I don't have to worry about breathing at that point. I can just concentrate on the cold.

Yes, sir. Okay, fine. Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, so now if I'm doing the breathing, it's in and I concentrate on the exhales, but I don't exhale all the way out. Yes.

Fully in, letting go. And then fully in again, letting go. That's it.

30 times. And at the end of that, I can hold my breath for a minute.

You should now go for at least 2 minutes after the exhalation.

I haven't been able to do that while I've been breathing when I'm in cold water. So maybe that's the problem.

That is not for going into cold water. This is for being on the sofa Or in bed?

Okay. If you do the breathing. I must have decided to combine them to be efficient or something. 'Cause I thought they had to go together. So this is why I know as a clinician, you know, when I'm working with someone, I always write things down in great detail because it's so easy to forget them. Okay. So in the shower, if I'm exposing myself to cold, I just have to stand there and breathe regularly for 30 seconds and pay really close attention to the cold.

No, to the breath. So long exhales. Let the body do what the body is capable of doing by not interfering with its physiology, with its adaptive processes. Let the body do what the body is able to do. That is just fine. So long out breaths.

Right, when I go into the cold, my breath will change by itself.

Yes, but make it long out-breaths, like consciously, very— just on the long out-breaths. Just keep on doing that and keep your mind over there. The body will then be able to adapt to the stressor, to the impact. And then you will see. If you don't interfere, then you will be able to look, observe the body adapting to the cold. And then suddenly 30 seconds is nothing.

It's—

you should be able to go 3 minutes and have a nice shower. That is the power of the body taking over. Once that happens, once that happens, a lot of benefits come there from like the universal principle we talked about. By going from the air into the elevator. That also helped bring down the anxiety of their courageous being. And it's the neurological pathways then are going past the conditioning. And then you find yourself that you have so much more power suddenly. And that's what the cold is doing. So long out breaths.

Okay, so now you've been in cold extreme cold for like 45 minutes. You were packed in ice right outside the museum. How long have you been packed in ice?

1 hour 53 minutes. And like next week I'm having my birthday, 62 years. I want to go 62 minutes into icy water and show some— not resilience, control. And this is an innate capacity of everybody of us, and I just take it to the extreme and show, amen, anybody on regular basis going into cold water growing older is not becoming sick anymore. That's—

okay, you're gonna go into a lake? How are you— where are you gonna do this?

I got a barrel, you know, a wine barrel. I fill it up and then ice cubes in and cool it down.

Ice cubes? Jesus.

Yes. Oh yeah. Oh, it's going to be nice. It's my happy place.

So, okay, so when you're there for like 50 minutes or an hour, what are you doing mentally?

Just staying there. Just being there, not interfering with the body. Observing the body. If you observe the body while it is adapting, it's amazing. And then at a certain moment, you don't need to do anything anymore. I had Russell Brand asking me when we went into the River Thames, it was 7 degrees or something, "What do I have to do?" I said, "Nothing." And then he thought to be intelligent, so sort of tricking me, and, "Hey, where do I have to put my—" attention. I say, nowhere. Yeah, and we had a great time. He's a great friend now, and we're gonna tour through the world and show that we got so much more coming within us.

Yeah, I've talked to him a fair bit lately. He's got quite the mind. Yeah. So we've had very good podcasts. I found them very enjoyable. He's very sharp and witty and and he's a great intuitive mind. So that's been quite fun. Yes, yes.

Jordan, so you just released your book in March. Let's also talk about it. Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

That'll make my publishers happy.

It's a great book. It's a great book. All right.

All right. I appreciate it. Great man.

Great book.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Strong.

Good. Which of the 12 life rules do you have troubles with yourself?

All of them. Well, yes, but I would say the one I struggled with most recently was the last one of the last book, which is be grateful in spite of your suffering. So I'll tell you what I did recently. So I said already, I told you guys already that I've been in excruciating pain and it's chronic and it's much better than it was. It was literally unbearable for more than a year. And it was making me bitter because this happens if you get ill. It happens to everyone. Whenever anything negative happens to you, especially someone close to you dies, especially if they die horribly, and you want to shake your fist at God and say, what the hell? This is no good. This is unfair. And then you get angry and you get bitter and you get resentful. I could see those thoughts developing in my mind because I had been striving to live properly and to speak truthfully and all of that. And yet I ran into this terrible series of problems. And so in the last month, partly because of talking to my wife who went through a near-fatal illness and then a near-fatal surgical recovery And so she's been through her catastrophe. And I was talking to her, my wife. We were trying to sort out everything that I might be doing wrong that was contributing to my suffering in some way that could conceivably be rectified. And I wrote down all of my angry thoughts in detail, every single one of them, as far as I could manage. And then I practiced not having, not repressing them, but I had to think through like, well, I'm in pain. Does it help me to be angry about it? Well, no, actually. You're actually feeling better when you're grateful about things. And so the last rule is be grateful in spite of your suffering. And of course, the more you're suffering, the harder that is. But it also might be that the more you're suffering, the more necessary that is. Because I knew there were all sorts of things around me that were good. My family connections, my the support I've got from my readers and viewers and listeners and all of that. I could see all that, but I still had these bitter thoughts, let's say angry thoughts. And so I worked very hard to identify all of those and to think through why they were counterproductive and unhelpful, and then to notice them when they were coming up. And I mean, I've done that my whole life to some degree. With regards to counterproductive thoughts. And something you do also if you're a cognitive behavioral therapist with your clients. But I felt in some sense that the amount of pain that I was in, which made it impossible for me even to sit down, was literally unbearable. I couldn't figure out how I could live with it. And I couldn't figure out how, if I couldn't live with it, if I couldn't even sit down, how I could possibly think about it in any way that wasn't entirely negative. But I did realize that that wasn't productive. It wasn't helpful. And so I've been really trying to nail down anything that's making me want to shake my fist at God, let's say, and dispensing with that, replacing it as much as I can with an appropriate gratitude. I'm not trying to force it or falsify it, any of that. It's not fake, you know, like I'm— but so anyways, that was a particularly difficult— and it was difficult to write that chapter as well during all of this because, you know, I was wrestling with this terrible contradiction. But it's been very helpful. It's been very helpful to do that and to replace the bitterness with gratitude.

You said the book, writing the book It saved your life. But how did you make it possible while this suffering was going on, this pain was going on, these physical problems were going on so intense?

Well, it was better than the alternative. You know, I mean, and that's— there was all sorts of reasons that I continued to write it. I was hoping that it would be helpful like the last book appeared to be. And that's a tremendously powerful motivation to produce something that's of aid to other people, especially when they're in trouble. That's unbelievably motivating. I mean, I don't know why we don't talk about this more as a society. I interviewed this guy, Chris Williamson interviewed me last week. And he did a great job, I thought, and he was unbelievably precise in his use of language. He didn't say "like" or "you know" or "um" or have any pauses. He was very attentive. He told me during the course of the interview that he'd been practicing that because he had read something I'd said about being precise in your speech and that I'd practiced doing that. Practiced attending to how the words I was saying made me feel. And not saying words that made me feel chaotic or unintegrated or false. And it was a shock to begin with because almost everything I said made me feel that way to begin with. And I noticed that. In any case, he has changed his life around a fair bit. And he was involved in nighttime entertainment world, in the nighttime entertainment world, and was quite successful at that. And is an attractive person and no doubt had his fair share of attention from the people he wanted to have attention from. But he said that because he's now started this podcast, which is called Modern Wisdom, and he's trying to help himself and other people get to be better people, you know, to put it bluntly. And he's got feedback from people about his endeavors saying that it's been extraordinarily helpful to him. And he said that he'd never experienced anything that was that rewarding before, despite his success in a more— what would you say— kind of obvious way. And I believe that's the case. I don't think there's anything that is more rewarding than being of genuine service to the best in someone else. It's so rewarding, it's ridiculous. Well, so that's partly what kept me going with this book. It was like, well, hopefully this will be helpful and that's something I can do, at least in principle, even though I'm sick and in pain. And it was something I could do. I mean, when I recorded that book, the audio version, I was almost convulsing in the car on the way to the recording studio. I couldn't stop my—

Yes.

I couldn't stop myself from moving, like continually, like I was being tasered. And I would get to the studio and be like that even in the lobby, and I'd get upstairs and sit and focus and concentrate, and then that would settle down, and then I could do the reading and It was the hardest thing I've ever done, I think, doing that. I think. But it, like, the alternative would have been much worse. So when I managed it, and so the book's out and the audio is selling well, and you know, it was part of what, it was definitely part of what kept me alive. And that and my family and my friends. Amazing.

Inflammation. Inflammation, the cause and effect of 60-70 million deaths in the West per year. Yep. 1.5 million died of COVID 60-70 million people of inflammation every year. We showed to bring inflammation down within 15 minutes in a clinical study. So that is number one. Then number 2, if you talk about this moving and not being able, that is like the cold. You will learn to suppress and to observe what is going on, and you will be able to neurologically connect with that control that makes your body go down, and you are in control, and the inflammation goes down. That is one thing. Number 2 is mood regulation, that the power of intention, then suddenly you are the captain of your neurology because the prefrontal cortex is connected to everything. And so you got the steering wheel. And we have never learned about these things. When real stress comes and the shit hits the fan, we don't know what to do. We panic with anxiety. We got pain. We do pharmaceutical drugs. The whole thing, the whole system. It should learn that we have a much better innate control awaiting. And this is what I want to talk with you. I could endlessly talk from my field experience matching with your clinical understanding of how that psychologically and neurologically all works. I think now, because this podcast is I don't know where we are, but I love this conversation. I love you for your work and the way you vulnerable— vulnerability is showing itself.

It's an—

and we are able to say cooperate. And this is my intention was into this, going into this podcast like any world record I do is say, I go by the power of intention. I want something have moved beyond order, beyond order and beyond the order. That means we propel something into the future. We will kill depression and we will kill inflammation and make this world a better place. And to start with, our families, to bring peace to our families.

When I'm doing a podcast, and I'm really interested in the long-form interview discussion format because it's revolutionary to have this time to engage in these conversations and to be able to share them with thousands and thousands of people. It's revolutionary, right? It's a new thing. And I'm always intending before the podcast to get the discussion into that zone where you are literally going beyond order, both of you, because you come to the conversation with your preconceptions. But we come with different preconceptions, different knowledge, and so then we can exchange viewpoints. And with any luck, if we're listening and attending and asking questions intelligently, we both go beyond our current state of order. And that that is meaningful. It's almost the definition of meaning. And so, if to the degree that we're able to stay in that place— that was technically called the zone of proximal development by Vygotsky, who was a renowned Russian developmental psychologist. He said, here's something cool. If you have little kids, you naturally speak to them at a level that slightly exceeds their current level of comprehension. You do that without being consciously aware of it. So they can mostly understand you, but not quite. And so they have to engage in effortful cognitive activity in order to keep up, but that pushes their development. And you do that, and if you're an attentive parent, you're interacting with your child to see that you've got shared attention going, and you can see that that connection is being made. But We do the same thing in a conversation if that's our intent to begin with. It's like, well, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to say what I believe to be true. But I'm going to listen to see if there's anything that I can learn. And to the degree that you can do that, the conversation is immediately engaging and meaningful. Not only to you but also to people who are listening. And so that's so That's incredibly cool. And it's incredibly positive. And it's been so amazing to see some of this. So I was interviewed by this guy named Akira the Dawn. He's an interesting person. He's a DJ and he set some of my speeches, parts of them, to music. And he has— so he calls this meaning wave and it's It's like a variant of rap, except it's more melodic than rap. And he has a subculture around that. It's not huge, but it's not trivial. It's tens of thousands of people and he gets tens of thousands of downloads. And so, it's a football stadium full of people. It's not no one. And we had a conversation about his music. And then I read the YouTube comments. Afterwards. And they're just unbelievable. You can't believe how many positive comments can be generated in a row. And they're not naive either. They're not. They're people genuinely— what would you say? They're genuinely inspired. Genuinely inspired and willing to communicate that. And then the people they're communicating with on YouTube in the comment section of all places, because that's usually often extremely toxic. It's like he said that conversation for 2 days, there wasn't a single dislike.

So it's amazing. It's amazing. It is amazing. That blesses the soul. That's the work we do. We give ourselves, we expose ourselves. We're not into our egos and stay inside and enrich ourselves from that standpoint. We try our best, we become vulnerable, and then suddenly something emerges which we cannot even see. But then when the comments go with this medium, then you will see. And I think this is a great conversation because it's a frank two men meeting each other and the team here, the team there, you know, just a couple of people into me. And they come together and they produce something just bloody great because we wanna find the soul and we're gonna kill depression and we're gonna kill inflammation and we're gonna find new insights 'cause we are humans and we love to develop. And until I die, I will neurologically inside grow because I should expand my consciousness until I know why I am here for. Fully without fear. Any question? If you got something, try— you need to get my phone number for making a WhatsApp. A WhatsApp. I'm a man, I could talk for days because the extension of fieldwork I've done, it's still waiting for labeling. It's amazing what we found in nature. There's so much more than we thought is possible and already shifted inside medical understanding of what humans are capable of. But it needs to be implemented, labeled, labeled well to be able to be understood in the current healthcare system all over the world.

Well, I found the conversation very motivationally useful and also informative at the detail level. And so I will definitely try again to implement the things that you're describing. And we'll talk again, you know, in not too long, and I'll learn some more and I'll tell you what has happened as a consequence. I'm going to try this cold immersion today.

Yeah, the condition of the rhino of your relatives? Yes. Get it on with them because you're going to relieve their anxiety into that conditioned condition of them. And that, yeah, it's gratefulness you get back. It's amazing.

Thank you very much, both of you. Thank you.

It's a pleasure. Yes, sir. It was more than a pleasure. Thank you.

You can find short videos of this conversation on the Wim Hof YouTube channel. If you appreciate listening to Wims Conversations, please leave a rating or a review on Apple Podcast. This way you can help us spread the love and reach more listeners. Oh, and don't forget to hit subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Wim Hof Podcast, a Monk Studios original.