#9 Mike Posner

I heard you climbed Everest thus, and it helped, etc. But what— how was the journey?

It was simultaneously the most horrible and the most amazing thing I've done in my life. The best and the worst at the same time. The most difficult and the most beautiful at the same time. And the scariest, you know, really scary.

He holds 26 world records for achievements that for most to 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 unique 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 term 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 is 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.

On this episode, Wim's dear friend Mike Posner joins him for a recording in his greenhouse. Mike is a Grammy-nominated musician who is not only known for his music, but also for his extraordinary performance walking 25,000 1,000 miles across America and climbing Mount Everest. He tells Wim all about that journey, and they are doing a musical jam from the heart together.

Okay, podcast with Mike Posner. I call him Mike Podcast, Mike Posner, because he can be a very serious man emotionally, but also very vulnerable. So he's bloody strong, but he's also very vulnerable. An amazing, amazing spirit. I met last year in Poland together with the Brotherhood of Lewis Howes, Aubrey Marcus, Jesse Itzler, and more of these guys, great influences and all. But then in a week, the second day, it was the second day, I heard the stories of these big guys, NFL, the league, the strong guys, and talking about their sons being harassed or pestered in the school and coming to tears. And that vulnerable state of these guys, that was just too much for me. It broke me. I'm bloody strong, but real vulnerability breaks any attitude and it brings you right in there into the deep emotion. That's where I met Mike. Mike was one of them. And then meanwhile, he did so many things. I mean, I just walked from one side of America to the other side, from the West Coast to the East Coast— no, East Coast to the West Coast, man, from the Beast Coast to the Best Coast, whatever it takes. He did it. He is walking his talk. Mike Posner, great guy, and so much more. I stopped the introduction, it's just too much.

Thank you.

Just a great guy, beautiful being. We are going to talk about the soul, about being, ancestry. We're going to talk about endurance, this life, the hereafter, and the before, because the native is back together with Mike Tyson.

Thank you, man. Thanks for having me here, brother. It's good to be here and see you. Yeah, so first of all, I just want to acknowledge you. I came to Poland on Lewis's invitation, and you're right, it was this very special group of big strong men and big strong hearts as well, and I can speak for everybody there and everybody that you work with that the teachings that you shared with us touched us deeply, you know, and this is why I wanted to come back and visit you again. And what's most remarkable to me, you know, is that when I receive teachings from you, you figured a lot of this shit out on your own.

Amen, yeah! We did!

Yeah, but it didn't come like from your teacher really, though I'm sure you have had many teachers. But essentially the Wim Hof Method is something you, you figured out. And that is just so special when I think about the breath exercises that I took back with me and the cold immersion exercises that I took back with me. And I met you when I was training, just starting to train to climb Mount Everest. And these practices, the breath, you know, when I went up to base camp is 17,000 feet. I don't know the meters.

And 5,000.

Yeah. And so I'm living there for 2 months essentially, and then climbing to the summit. Uh, we were blessed to make it to the summit. At 8,800 meters. I'm using the breath technique all the time, um, and also the cold immersion to have my body acclimated, you know. So when I'm up on summit day and it's -20 degrees Fahrenheit, I don't— it doesn't feel as cold. It's still cold, but it doesn't feel as cold as it would if I had not had those techniques that you shared with us. And so I always want to thank you and acknowledge you for being up to what you're up to, man. You're so dedicated and so pure in your practice and your goal to share, to share. And that's all you care about is sharing this stuff.

Yes.

You very easily could have these same— sorry to interrupt you. You very easily could have these same talents that you have, or skills— we call them skills because you developed it, right? You could very easily just keep it and say, hey, look at me, I can stay in the ice for this long, I'm the fucking man, look. But you don't do that at all. Your goal is to share it with as many people as possible, and share it with those that will share it with others. The work has touched me personally, and I hope, you know, reverberated out to the people that I touch with my music, but also in my life. So thank you, brother.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, beautiful. And you touch through your music like 1 billion and 400 million people. Hey man, that's my goal too. I'm gonna reach billions of people within 1 year and 9 months. Because 3 months ago I started the belief in my journey. Okay, now I'm gonna, within 2 years, I'm gonna reach billions of people. I feel this. I feel I start with it and I'm gonna succeed. And with that, we will bring a knowledge ancient knowledge which actually is here right now, which is very accessible, very effective, and very powerful. Our own deep potential. How to access in our own deep potential the way nature meant it to be. Yeah. And that is to become happy, strong, and healthy, and to release us from deep trauma within ourselves. But also of our ancestry.

Right.

And so nobody believes that shit. That's why I go through science and I take on the best DNA researchers of the world. And they look and they see suddenly we are able through these practices of hormetic stress, going into the cold, going into breathing exercises that makes your adrenal axis deeply activated and then change the biochemistry and the physiology, the connection neurologically with the physiology in the depth that suddenly makes you much more capable to confront yourself with anything that has to do with inflammation and depression.

Yeah.

And that's what I want. I want to make people happy. And because that's naturally who we are, and we have the right to be happy, strong, and healthy. That's called love, powerful love. We got it.

That's right.

And we gotta bring this together, bang, to the world. Yeah, through the music, through the word, through whatever. If it is farting, I don't care, we do it.

Yeah, that's right. I have a question for you. So oftentimes when we develop a practice, it's because we need the practice. So to go into the cold and to develop these breath— this breath technique, talk to me about your demons. Because it's—

if you felt—

I'm thinking If Wim is sitting there and he feels 100% happy, well, he never would have gotten the ice. Why?

Exactly.

So what— talk to me about demons.

I got some big, huge fucking demons in my life that have visited me. I mean, the demon to have to perform in society, which is insensitive. And I was not so good in school, so I was like, yeah, your position later in society is not going to be so good. And I was dropped somewhere in a mediocre place, and I thought, where is this being nice and special in life? Where is it? It is being undersnowed by you have to have a career, you have to be good in school, you have to get money, you have to do this, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to. That really suppressed my being. So that became a demon that was suppressing me. There was one that haunted me most of my life until I met my beautiful wife and we had 4 children. And then she became depressed, manic depressed, and the terror took her. I mean, that was a demon, all right. It took her, and she took her life because she could. She kissed her kids goodbye before jumping from 8 stories down. That's a demon. So heartbroken, I was left behind with 4 kids, no money.

How old were you?

Uh, 35. 35. And no money, no career, no nothing. And the love of your life is gone. That was after a lot of hardship, of depression, decreasing mental health status. And that was another demon, and I had to deal with it. So what happens, the anxiety which a lot of people have in this world, it's like demons. They suppress our quality of life, of our being, of the expression of the soul itself. You know, unconditional love is no longer. It's being suppressed. You gotta do this, you gotta do that, and suddenly it's a cluster inside. It's a demon, and it works like that, and it takes away the quality of life, the purpose of life. It drains your energy. You feel not good. Guys like yourself, you stand up and you do something against it, but there are a lot, millions of people, young people who are right now in a spiritual pandemic, and they are facing demons and they don't know the way out. Let me tell you, when I went into the cold water, the cold water is like you are surviving, you're not thriving, you are surviving. So you are not into emotional agony at that moment. I was heartbroken after the suicide of my wife, needing to have all the energy to maintain a good life for my children, to be a good dad and a mom at the same time, to create a nest. I had to have that energy, and that— the cold water really made me able to just being relieved a moment of this mental, emotional anxiety. And that healed me. And then the cold water is amazing because it trains all the vascular system. You get a lot more energy and a lot less stress in your heart because your condition gets better. So your heartbeat gets down. That means stress is going down and your energy levels go up. Because your circulation is becoming so much better. You get so much energy that— and demons don't like too much energy. They like to sit upon you with their big asses and to swallow you in their shit. That's what they like. But if you are like fresh, lots of energy, you are like a streaming water cascade they don't like. And so I did that. And now I'm bringing this to society because I suffered from that. And then I suffered before from that, from her mental agony, agonizing descent of a mental status. And then with 4 kids and no money, because you are occupied with that all the day, every day. So it doesn't let you, it captivates you, it arrests you, me in that moment. And so there I was. And then psychiatrists, pills, therapies, all that, it didn't help. And I was left behind broken, literally, like financially and emotionally. And then I got into the water. I got into the water, I healed myself, I got so much energy, and now I'm showing in with psychiatrists in universities, Detroit, Paraguay, for example. Hey man, I can at will activate the deepest of my brain, which is the location of emotion, of cold, heat, you know, pure emotion is Cold is emotion. And if you go enough into the cold, you learn about controlling that emotion. You are just objectifying it. You are able just by thinking to control the severe impact of the cold, not to become an impact at all. Yeah, just by thought.

Did you— you went into the cold, was it an immediate relief, or did you have to repeat this? Obviously you're still repeating it.

No, every day, every day.

And so would it took a series of months or years for you to emerge out?

The relief is almost just, it's so direct.

Yeah, this is true, you know, I, in my own experience, it, and having not dealt with the trauma like this, But, you know, just going through life feeling some low-level depression or dissatisfaction with the mundanity of life. Yeah, so I just get in the cold water and it feels too high. It feels, uh, it feels like cheating because it, because it really makes it feel— you feel so much better so quickly. Yeah. And it's almost, it almost feels like, hey, this should be, should take more work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it literally is proven by science that going into cold water improves dopamine with 250% and noradrenaline with 540%. That means what is lacking Hormonally, when you have a depression, it's noradrenaline and dopamine. And here you got a shot without side effects. It's like a pill without side effects.

That's right, that's right.

And so that's why we cheat. We cheat because it's always so difficult. And all the psychiatrists say, oh yeah, it's so difficult. We need cognitive therapy. You need to take pills, you need to take this, and you need to take that. And a month later, You become depressed because you get a bill like shit. I mean, and it doesn't help. They are still fighting it. You go once into the cold water, and for the guys, hey, if you are depressed sometimes, then we're gonna lift you up here, right? Proven by science and proven by our lives, creativity, etc., all energy, all, it's all There, go into the cold water because you are built to be able to withstand that stress, not only to get a hormonal injection. Boom, get high on your own supply.

Yes, yeah, if you're listening or watching, it works.

Amazing. Tell me about— I heard you climbed Everest thus, and it helped, etc. But What, what, how was the journey?

Well, yeah, it'd be— I know you had been, have been there as well, so it'd be interesting to, to trade stories. But for me, it's a very complicated, uh, experience. It was simultaneously the most horrible and the most amazing thing I've done in my life. The best and the worst at the same time. The most difficult and the most beautiful at the same time. Um, and the scariest, you know, really scary. And God willing, we were able to reach the summit of Mount Everest on June 1st this year. So not too long ago. It's September 16th now. Uh, this is what, 3 months ago?

Fresh.

Yeah, fresh memory. And, uh, I finished walking across America October 18th, 2019. I took about 2 weeks off. I was pretty jacked up after that, meaning my body hurt, you know, like it hurt to just—

it hurt just more than 5,000 kilometers. It's 2,800 miles.

Yeah, 4 and 4,500 kilometers. And yeah, just when I'd stand up, you know, I felt like I was 150 years old. I'm like creaking like this. And but I, I had started to dream on that journey about Everest because I, I thought if I wanted to climb Mount Everest, it'd be really hard. I don't know anything about climbing. I've never worn crampons or anything, but I saw you climbing in Poland. Yes, you were fast.

You were ahead all the time.

Well, this was actually—

yeah, naturally.

So I had the— I had— I gave myself the permission to dream about Everest only having done my walk across America. Because I knew if I wanted to do that, it'd be so hard. But I said, look, I'm doing something hard now. This is what I do, hard things. And I had this inkling, you know, that I could do it. So I dove into the Pacific Ocean after my walk, 6 months and 3 days, and I felt no accomplishment only possibility. Like, felt like the first day of my life. And so again, I was messed up a little bit, this body didn't feel good, but 2 weeks later I started training for Everest. I climbed my first mountain. My friend Colin O'Brady took me up Mount Hood, and then it was on. Uh, he introduced me to my coach, Dr. John. Who became my coach. And I'm all in. So John, he let me move basically down the street from him. I moved there to train, and we worked together for a year and a half straight. I met you 2 months into that process. So when we climbed the mountain together in Poland with our shirts off and shorts in midwinter, in mid— in January, I was about 2 months into my training. And I thought, hey, you want to climb Everest, you know, spend some time with Wim Hof, probably not a bad idea, you know. So I met you and we did what we did there. And then I kept working with John a whole another year to next January and then more till April. And I got to Mount Everest. By the time I got to Mount Everest, John and I, in that year and a half, we climbed 72 mountains together.

So 72 mountains.

And I said to him at the beginning, no mountain high enough, no valley deep enough, no mountain high.

So that's nice. So a good song. I said to John, did you make a song about Mount Everest or John or the training Or there's 72 mountains.

Maybe not yet, but it's probably in there.

Yeah, I mean, I can tell.

Come out yet.

72 mountains.

And I said to John, I said, I don't want to go unless I belong there, okay? You know, you hear these stories about people, they show up and they're not prepared. I have no interest in this at all. When I go there, I want to be ready to climb Mount Everest. If not, I'm not going. So he got me ready, you know. And when we got there, the, the training made it possible, but it didn't make it easy at all. And just being at 17,000 feet feels, uh, bad, to put it frankly. Yeah, it feels bad, you know. And I felt basically you have, you know, 10% of your normal energy. That's what you have there just by being there, because there's no oxygen. I know, I know, you know. So, and the higher up you go the worse it gets, and is a real mental challenge for me. Uh, I met— I was friendly with a guy who was an experienced climber. He was a guide. He was going for his 10th summit, and he went up before we did with his client and something happened. He get frostbite on all his fingers.

Whoa, frostbite!

And the same day, uh, my coach didn't feel well and he fainted in base camp.

Whoa.

And he hit— smashed his face on a rock. He's bleeding. And I'm sitting there in base camp going, what, what the hell am I doing here?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, these guys are they're better than me and they're getting hurt, you know. I went back to my initial assessment of the risk.

Yes.

Which was, yeah, there's 1% of people that go— yeah, die. But I've done the training, so am I comfortable with the risk? Has anything changed? No, these, these are still the same. It's just I'm seeing it up close now, you know. It's all stuff I knew going in. And plus, this is really important and may sound wacky to people, but integrity is important to me. What's that mean? Integrity is you stay true to your word. I said I'm gonna do this, so I'm gonna do it. For no other reason than I do what I say, say what I do, period. Big or small, you know. And we kept going up. We got to, uh, Camp 2 on our summit push. This is after having been there almost 2 months. Very marginal weather, so we just were patient. We waited. We get to Camp 2 and it was snowing very hard. So one thing about high mountains, or any mountains, is when it snows a lot, you don't go on very steep things because that's when avalanches happen. At Mount Everest, in base camp, you become desensitized to the noise of avalanches. You're there and you hear these big rumbles. And you look and there's some like movement of snow very far away. It's giant, but it looks small because it's so far. So this night on our summit push, we're at Camp 2 and we're waiting because it snowed. And we go to sleep in quotation marks because just to get sleeping there. Yeah, to give people idea of the lack of oxygen, you know, at When you sleep, the breath rate slows a little bit. And for me, every time I close my eyes at Camp 2, my body just go, you know, naturally. I'm not even awake, but it's going, hey, there's not enough oxygen here, buddy. Yeah, you know, so this is, you know, and, uh, I'm laying there in the tent you know, I guess pretending to sleep. And I hear— I hear avalanche. And I think, okay, it's another avalanche, no problem. I hear many of these every day. A few seconds pass, and then the tent begins to rumble and shake with the wind. And then, you know, pretty violently. The tent is shaking.

Yeah, yeah.

Then the tent breaks open, snow starts piling, blowing in, and I woke up John, my coach. I said, John, avalanche! And in this moment, I was sure that that was the end of my life.

Whoa.

I'm sure.

Whoa.

He woke up. He put his hand on my arm and he said, it's going to be all right. And sure enough, 15 seconds or so passed and it stopped. Now what happened was there was an avalanche, but it actually stopped before it hit us. But it's so big that it moves all of this air. Yeah, like an explosion. And so what we felt was the wind blast from that avalanche that was nearby, but thank God didn't hit us. Okay, so again I'm thinking, what am I doing here? You know, I'm at Camp 2. I can go down whenever I want.

Yeah.

But I said, you know, this— I gave my word. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna keep going. We woke up the next day and we have to go up the Lhotse face, and we're walking by the camp next to us. It's destroyed, you know, like this is 200 yards, 200 meters away, you know. Could have been really bad. And thank God no one was in that camp. They had already gone up. But if they were there, you know, yeah, it would have been bad. So we kept going up We went to Camp 3. At Camp 3, I started using supplemental oxygen, and then I got to Camp 4 the next day. Still, like, you're not really sleeping, you know. It's 10, 11 hours. You get to Camp 4 and you have about 5 hours to rest before you're gonna start getting ready to go to the summit.

Yeah.

And in these 5 hours I, I closed my eyes, I put some headphones on, I put on my friend Pete Kuzma's music. Pete Kuzma made an album called The Shavasana Files. Yeah, for anyone who wants to do some— like, I love doing Wim Hof breathing with Pete Kuzma, The Shavasana Files. These two together are like— this music is the best. And I did some breathing. I felt like I had an almost full-blown psychedelic trip at Camp 4. With my eyes closed, doing some of the breathing and Pete Kuzma, Shabbat in the Files. I'm like, I don't even know quite how to put words to it, but some deep spiritual experience there something reminding me it doesn't matter if you make it to the summit or not. That would be cool, but life is beautiful just being alive, you know. Something like this was the message of that experience.

Amazing.

And then it's 6 PM, okay, we got to start packing at 8:30 PM because it takes about 2 hours to get all your things together. We went. And so imagine you start at 8 PM the night before, climbing through the night. It's snowing pretty hard and windy at the beginning of that day, but as we went, the weather calmed down. And there's a place called the Balcony, which is a natural resting point. And there were about 40 climbers going that day. And I said, let's take a break at the balcony, but a very short one, and let's pass everybody. So this is what we did. We passed through. There's about 4 climbers still ahead of us, but we ended up passing them as well. And when I say we, it's me, Coach Dr. John, and with two local guides, Dawa Dorje Sherpa and Dawa Chiring Sherpa. These are like my brothers, you know. And so we as a group, we climbed on, and this part was like a dream, you know. I started to get to a point where I was just one with the experience, and the thinking mind started to get quieter and quieter. And we're climbing through the night. The sun begins to rise. We're on the Hillary Step, and there's no one in front of us. You know, you always hear these stories, these big lines at Everest, blah blah blah. No, not for us. We were first that day. And it's not a contest, you know, people leave at different times, not a race, but It was beautiful to have no one in front of us. And at about 4:35 AM, Dawa cheering, he reached the summit before me. And I reached— I caught up to him and he looked me in the eyes and he hugged me. And I'll never forget this moment because I was there because of him. Not in a— in— I don't say this in a I'm trying to be nice kind of way. No, no, this guy, this guy is like helping carry my stuff. He's got my backup oxygen. He's strong, you know. And if it's not for him, I don't get to be there. And so I hug him 2 steps away from the summit. And I'm not overcome. Just like when I finished the walk, I didn't feel accomplished, I felt possibility. When I finished Everest, in this moment, two steps away from the summit, I didn't feel proud, I felt humble and grateful to him. I'm here because of my guys. And so I, I never forget that moment. I hugged him, and then I take my final 2 steps, and then I, I fell on my knees and I, I wept. Everything I'd put in for those 18 months, all the pain, all the fear, the avalanche, the people dying, you know, they're also like people going up before us and not coming down. It's real. It's a real dangerous thing. And that fear, all of the beauty and the love of my mom, who didn't want me to go but still supported me and helped me pack my bags, you know, this all came out. Everything I put in came out. And it's just— one of the most beautiful moments of, of my life. And it was a real privilege to go. And then I sat in this moment of beauty and self-realization and realized I need to get the fuck down, and my day is not even halfway over. Yeah, because I need to get down to Camp 2. Yeah, not Camp 4. You don't want to sleep at Camp 4, it's too high and your body starts to deteriorate. So 8 hours up but 9, 10 hours down. And I start to come down, okay, but now all these people that I passed on the way up, I have to pass them again and there's only one rope here. So I have to get off the rope, get around them, and I start to feel how really tired I am. I'm really, really tired.

Yeah.

And that was actually the scariest part for me, you know, and my toes going down.

Yeah.

And my toes were really cold.

Wim, it's a power also of your mind. When you go up, you go with the power of the mind, like you got a goal in your head.

Yeah.

And then the neurology of your, of the mental power is with you. And then when you go down, you think it's done. You release that power and then you feel the pain.

Yes, you feel tired. That's right.

And all. And so how to maintain that? If you talk about these accomplishments, not accomplishments, about these possibilities you did, like crossing America on foot and going up Mount Everest, it sounds like you are into a journey of the soul. You want to find the depth of yourself and you see, hey, there is only more. There is more than meets the eye. And I'm just— it's not the summit. The summit is somewhere else. It's inside of us. But where is it? This is what we should be schooled in, I think, in primary school, like how to be happy, strong, and healthy. What is the soul all about? And not us going on a journey, which is a great one. It takes bravery to go from your conditioning and then walk all the way from one side of America to the other. I mean, that's almost crazy. I think it's crazy good, but it's amazing. But hey, why do we need to do all these great feet to find the possibilities of our mind and body. Well, it was there always. What has become our, say, a cluster in our mind, the way we are schooled, we are full of, as you said in the beginning, like a demon, like something that is suppressing our soul. And that, and we just want to fight that. So we do great feats because we, bravery, it is, no, I want to know what is my soul.

Yeah, well, this is, I'll skip forward because I agree wholeheartedly. For me, I did great feats to find out I didn't need to do great feats.

Whoa.

So fast forwarding, thanks to God, we got down. And the most dangerous part of Everest on the, on the south side is the Khumbu Icefall. It's the lowest part. So imagine we finish, we get down to Camp 2, go to sleep. We have to get up again at 3 and go through this dangerous part. You think you're done, you're not. Fast forward, we made it through. No problems. My toes were numb for about 1 month after. Not numb, tingly, you know, like when you sit on your foot for too long. Yeah, like this, 1 month. But 100% okay now. Uh, when I returned to the United States, and I told you a little bit about this yesterday, I had booked time for myself to spend in solitude. So I went to this Buddhist center, and I like this center because they have what they call solo retreats. What's a solo retreat? It's a little cabin, you know, no running water, there's a little outhouse, no electricity, no phone, and obviously just alone. Well, what's special about that? Nothing. It's like camping. But what's, uh, powerful about this experience for me is there's no one else there. You are alone. They leave you there alone. And I signed up this time to be there 21 days. And so they drive me up in the truck and they say, have a nice 3 weeks, we'll see you in 3 weeks. And I'm just alone with myself with no goal. Usually in my life, I am being productive, whether it's for my music or for my walk or for my climb. I'm working towards something, da da da. So I sit down, you know, in this little cabin, and I close my eyes to meditate, and my mind says, you need to exercise, you need to run up the hill 10 times. Oh no, no, no, quiet down. We're not doing— we're not being productive. We're just being. So then I sit another couple minutes and my mind says, somebody that was here before left some spices. You need to put them in alphabetical order. They're not organized. It's just like making up shit all the time for me to do. So I'm thinking, what percentage of these goals, big or small, are just there because I can't sit here with myself. There's this philosopher, Blaise Pascal. I don't know anything about him, but he had a good quote. He said, all of humankind's problems come from the fact that a man cannot sit quietly in a room alone. So this was my practice, to sit quietly in a room alone with no goal, not working towards anything, and I came to a place— is exactly what you were saying. You don't have to fucking climb on Everest. You don't have to walk across America. In fact, the setting of a goal puts peace or presence into the future. Well, we know for sure that you can't find presence in the future by definition, right? Presence can only be here and now.

Yes, yes.

So this is right, and this is what your work and your life is about. You know, you get into the cold water, it's like shortcut to be here. It's hard to feel depressed because depressed is the mind being caught in the past. It's hard to feel anxious because The anxiety is the mind going forward into the future. Well, the sensation of the experience here is so powerful that that whole thinking thing quiets down, and then we can just be here with one another. And presence is the deepest gift we can give to one another. You know, this is why we are all drawn to you, why I like being with you, because you look in my eye right now, you aren't somewhere else, your mind's in the same place as your body, and that's a real gift to me. That's listening, but deep listening. And some people, I believe, can go their whole lives without being listened to in this way, you know. And so this is your gift that you share with us all, you know, and I thank you for that. My life, I want to be about that, you know. There's nothing more important than that, you know. There is nothing more important than being present with one another, and we can do do so through many mediums, whether it's our work, our podcast here now, or listening to our beloved, our music in our case. But I just want to thank you again because this is a reminder for me, you know, this is what's really important. It's not checking these boxes off.

Yeah, I saw that yesterday evening when we were singing, but just with the family, the intrinsic value and power of the family, which is not being discussed, is being together.

Yeah.

That should be enough. Unconditional being together. It's a thing where you don't need too many words. You breathe together, you be together, and that happiness, not to being chased, as you say, to anxiety through being in the future with goals in the future, or trauma, depressed, being entangled in the past, to be here and now. That's what my woman needed before she got depressed. She got caught up. She was a wholehearted, very expressive being in the moment. She talked, very talkative, always just there. And that was being taken. By what? By a a constellation of energies made up in a society that is actually polluting the planet, exploiting the planet, and making people— you got to do this, you got to do this, you have to do this, you have to do that. And all that gets into our minds, and then we block our just being. We block it, and we don't know about that anymore. Let me tell you that Through the cold, I've learned just let it go, because the beauty of your body and your power inside is much more than you can think of. When I see people going into the cold the first time, they have great difficulty. No, learn to let go. The power to adapt to power inside being able to be released to oppose a power outside coming in is the amount of you, your control of your mind. And the control of your mind is learning to let go. Like not to give a shit. Only good shit. Being. Just being. We forgot about this. This is what the— it doesn't go with background, it doesn't go with religion, with career, position, money, or whatsoever. It's there and it's beautiful. And you, if you learn to witness therein, then you learn to control the wavering of the mind. The person who is in complete control of the mind is the one who knows how to let go.

Yeah.

And then it comes. It's like a deer. It's like we said yesterday, it's more subtle than thoughts and thinner than air.

I love that.

It is. It's like a deer. If you are full of anxiety, the deer, it feels, it doesn't come. It only comes when you let go Then this beautiful power, it comes. It's a subtle power. It's thinner than air. It's your soul. And that's why we are here to express that, to become conscious of that, and to live that together. Because it's the same for everybody. And now we are searching on top of— this is what the It's an old saying of the old Upanishads, old scriptures. And they say the wise people came together and they said, what do we do about the soul? Because people make a mess out of it. Just put it in the highest of mountains. No, people crawl up, they find the thing and they bring it down. They put it in a museum. And there it is to be exhibitionists. There it is. No, then in the deepest of seas. No, people make crafts. They go inside the sea. They will find it. And they bring it back to some other museum. And just to look at it. Oh, what we found there. Then behind the furthest of planets. No, people make crafts, spacecrafts they make, and then they go and they find it, they bring it back, and they make it a util part of a warfare kind of mechanism just to shoot other people out of the sky, something like that. That's what they do with the soul. So everybody shut up because there was no way to find a location for where to put the soul. And then one guy stood up and he said, I know where to put it. Put it in men themselves. It's where they never look. And that's where we look here and now. It's there.

Yeah.

And now, because that is a lot of bullshit A lot of philosophy, hippie-whippy and all that. That's why I go through science. I go through science. I found it in the cold. The cold is merciless but righteous. It just makes you being. Ah, wow. Suddenly, by learning to let go, I found the greatest power inside to oppose a very aggressive impact of this force called icy water. To stay 1 hour in icy water and being at ease, what is that? That is the control of the mind. That is not interfering with your body's capacity given by nature. Our soul is the source of it. Let it be. Let it be between people. That's the way I took it on. The unlimited power of the mind that is coming to you. But nobody believes that, of course. Only this dramatic emotional event had to happen to me to awaken me into the depth and to be healing myself into the depth consciously. Then I brought it to the psychiatry and I said, hey, In psychiatry, we are able to deal with depression or any mental disorder. We are able to bring consciousness, conscious control within ourselves, being able to tackle whatever biochemically went wrong through the stress of daily life, of emotions, divorce, death, name it, that affects our mind and we are not in control because we don't know how to let go. I learned it. And now by going there to that place which is able to emotionally heal or to take away the stress caused by whatever situation came, making the mental— mentally disordered, you bring order, you bring life, you bring love, you bring purpose because you know you are built to be so by God-given talents given by birth, Mother Nature. So there we are and we are searching. He went to Mount Everest, he went walking through all America, makes beautiful— I want to hear your music here right now too. His voice is amazing. His emotional— he is able to express his emotionality through his voice. He said, everybody's got a talent, but you got to pick them up. And now we are teaching psychiatry, hey man, we can take care of your depression, of your darkness, of your demons, because we are here with techniques that makes you able to control your brain into the deepest. And here we are here with podcast to not show off. Hey, I did 26 world records and I'm Elvis Presley. You know, look at that. No, we are all special when we only learn to let go of that what is not ours. I'm sorry, I'm I'm preaching again.

It's okay. It's beautiful.

But the thing is, it is beautiful. So I'm going to sing one song and then you sing one song.

Sure.

Okay. Hey, man, the gospel is being expressed. They are preachers. No, we are no preachers. We are just very determined in our quest. Let's just sing. Just want to spread my wings, fly away, getting it all, finding the words in my heart.

I'm finding Más aún, quisiera andar en la Sierra Nevada sin zapatos andando, y su cerebro se limitara por ahí, me voy.

Do you remember your way getting along, finding what's in the heart and finding your song? And with my friends, I go forever together to see the soul. It's nature's call, it's time to be timeless and old. 'Cause I wanna see my friends, my loves, my band all right. And I'm gonna go through the signs and bring the sense to where they lie. Hey, hey, do you remember?

Yeah, keep going, keep going. Say, yeah, I believe this to be the truth. And I pray it doesn't bore you. Feeling all right. Oh yeah, look at my light. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I believe this to be the truth, and I pray it doesn't bore you. I don't believe life happens to you, I believe life happens for you. I don't believe in dwelling on the shit you never had. I believe I'm a good kid trying to convince the world I'm bad. I believe the prophets speak softly.

Shh.

But what does that say about me? What's that say about us? Just a couple of angels caught in the radius of a tour bus. Plus, I believe that angels sometimes wear tattoos. I believe people get addicted to shit food and bad Bad news. We've been searching. We've been searching. Sometimes, sometimes too far. The first step to becoming perfect is realizing that you already are. Yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great going, right, brother? So, uh, just to end off, thank you so much for having me here, sharing your heart with me, with us. And for those listening, just to add another anecdote, just an anecdote on top of all the stacks of science that you have, I certainly know what it feels like to wake up in the morning and not want to get up. You know, like another one of these. Just completely uninspired and depressed, this kind of thing. And in those bouts, those seasons of my life, I've always found that the breath and the cold, since I've learned it, have been able to cut through. And not— and sometimes it's not always in those sessions I feel relief. Sometimes the feeling comes back and I have to do it again tomorrow. Okay. But this is a sailboat, this is a lifeline, a lifeboat rather, that you can have in your life. So get cold, do the breathing, and let's love one another. Okay, love you, brother.

We take a hike! We did it!

You can find short videos of this conversation on the Wim Hof YouTube channel.

Channel.

If you appreciate listening to Wim's 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.