BECOMING SUPERHUMAN WITH ICE MAN - Wim Hof

To everyone who is watching this, with this group in particular, they are all about discomfort, ah, seeking discomfort. Comfort. This is not for everybody. Don't do this at home directly, like copying. Don't do it. These guys are experienced. He's able to withstand extreme cold. This guy runs to the top of Everest in his underwear. He says it's easy. Experts are How is he able to survive?

Wim Hof, or as some of you may know him, the Iceman. He might well be one of the most unique humans currently alive. For the past 20 years, he's been breaking countless endurance records, mostly around his ability to resist extreme cold temperatures. From spending nearly 2 hours submerged in ice water without his core body temperature changing to climbing past the death zone of Mount Everest barefoot wearing nothing but shorts. Or running a full marathon in the desert of Namibia without drinking water. He surpassed what anyone thought the human body was capable of over and over. Now for a while, that's what he was known for, as the Iceman, the freak of nature who breaks impossible records. But after a series of independent scientific studies, he's proven that with his specific training, we're all capable of pushing our minds and bodies way past what was thought possible.

Thank you.

And he calls it the Wim Hof Method.

How is it possible for a human being to be exposed in an ice bath for 1 hour and 44 minutes? Wim Hof is changing scientists' understanding of how the body works.

He recently shook the scientific community after injecting himself and a few of his students with the form of an infectious E. coli bacteria.

We saw less fever, he had less flu-like symptoms, and he also had lessened concentrations of inflammatory proteins in his blood.

Together they fought off the disease through breathing and meditation, both of which are major pillars of his method, leaving the world confused and us, like many others, fascinated. While Wim may seem superhuman and a total anomaly to the human race, there are now millions of people around the world practicing his method. His records and his life raises the question: what if there is a world of untapped potential in all of us just waiting to be released. An ability to tap into deeper parts of our brain to regain control and willpower over our own bodies and do things we never thought we were capable of before. And so, after meeting Wim in LA a few months ago and hearing about all his claims, we were fully intrigued by the possibility of unlocking our full potential. We felt like we had no other choice but to fly out to his training camp in Poland and experience it in person. Our goal was to understand whether Wim Hof is simply a madman with superhuman abilities or whether he has actually made a groundbreaking discovery about what the human mind is capable of. We brought a group of friends and filmmakers to help capture the process, and even though we arrived in Poland with over 3 years of experience in seeking discomfort, none of us could have expected the wild journey for answers we were about to embark on.

And it begins.

Almost. Yes.

Oh, it hasn't started yet. You don't have to wear a t-shirt, you can wear a jacket.

Well, I'm acclimating.

We haven't done like the breathing or anything.

I went on a run last night shirtless.

To acclimate.

This is good. They turned off the heaters at midnight last night, and then it progressively kept getting colder and colder. Were you guys not freezing last night?

Wow. I was freezing. Yeah, my feet are freezing. We're not in the snow yet. We're gonna be walking on snow.

So you're talking about wood being cold?

I feel like Wim would give up on us if we told him we were cold.

Zach, how are you? You're refusing to kind of show any emotion about everything that is said and everything that is happening.

I'm just patiently waiting. Just because someone's message is good doesn't mean that the messenger themself is like anything special. He said you have to fully believe in order for it to work.

And the man is here.

Yes, that's me. I'm a simple man, yet I'm going to change the world. We are made to believe that a whole lot of things, a whole lot of crap, is normal. Like war and disease and mental disorders. It's made sort of playful, like, yeah, that's life. Life can be tough bitch and all that shit. I don't believe that. Within 4 days, I will bring you guys into a state of mind more than ever you have experienced before, making you able to go in very stressful environments like a freezing cold mountain frozen over. In short, 4 hours in 4 days. It's not like a training, it's an awakening. And in this awakening, we show the world that we have so much more power already here, right now, and it needs just a couple of steps to discover.

When it comes to climbing the mountain, what kind of gear are we going to have?

Yeah, just a couple of spikes under your shoes and shorts. A little short.

A little short.

Shorts. Yeah, yeah, shorts enough to cover it all, you know.

How long is it going to take to go up? We don't know.

Oh, it depends on the mountain. A mountain in sunshine is very nice. You can stay for hours, there's nothing going on. But you will not do that when there is a wind chill of 100 km. It's like a whip on you. You don't stay picnicking while a whip is going on. You just want to go as fast as impossible, and maybe it's not even possible. The mountain is a mirror of our capacities coming up, and we got so much more within us, and the mountain will just bring it out. But before that is going to happen, we're going to prelude it with a nice splash. You better be ready. Are you ready? Do you feel ready?

Yeah, I don't know ready for what, but yeah.

Okay, that's exactly what I need. In natural expression. Let's do this! You want to ring the bells?

Ring the bells, baby!

Right off the bat, we got a feeling that Wim had no intention of treating us like a regular group. Normally, he begins by teaching his breathing and meditation techniques that allow you to cope with the extreme cold, but his most recent study has indicated that this may be possible to be achieved all through the power of the mind. So instead of training us, he thought it'd be an interesting idea for the first day to start off with a real-life trial of that study by taking us straight to cliff jumping into ice water.

He doesn't usually do this where we go in without any breath work.

Oh, he doesn't?

Specifically, we've been told if you're in water without training that temperature for 3 minutes, your body shuts down.

Yeah, I mean, all he said was to put on freaking shorts, so I'm assuming we're about to get really cold.

I'm down for the breathing and the training. I'm not down for the jumping with nothing and no training and no breathing, nothing, just full-on noobs.

All right, we are about to go for our first adventure with Wim to the waterfall. We're jumping from 6 meters up. We have never— we have not done any training.

What about frostbite?

No, no frostbite here. That is in the long time exposure into cold. Don't do it. That is the one where we jump from down into the ice water. At 0 degrees and floating. So it's colder than normal.

We're about to discover the definition of freezing your nuts off.

There, where it is flat.

There you jump.

This is fucking insane. What do we do?

I'm freaking out.

Dude, I've never jumped in cold water. Why are we doing a cliff jump?

6 meters up, freezing shallow water.

Yeah!

Holy fuck!

Good team. Good team. It's a bloody good team.

Yeah, seek discomfort.

Power. Power is with us.

As we were celebrating completing his initiation, without us realizing it, Wim was carefully watching us, and our reactions were about to completely determine how our next 3 days would pan out. I've never, like, pushed my body like that before. Like, every single voice inside your mind is just, like, screaming at you, like, are you insane?

You cannot think about nothing than surviving when you are in the You don't think about your indulging into your emotion and your broken heart and all those things. You just gotta survive. Thus you learn to control your emotions.

Today when we went to jump off the cliff, you said that the anxiety and the fear that we're facing is natural.

Yes.

What would you say your relationship with anxiety and fear is?

Today was a great day because I saw not only me having fun there at the waterfall, you know, but you all did. This ball game is going to be good, these coming 4 days. So, how I'm dealing with this anxiety? There is no anxiety. There's only power. And that power is going to be ours. It's going to be our mind. And my challenge these 4 days is to bring you to the full understanding by feeling of the power of your own mind. And send that into the world that it is there. That we knock on your heaven's door inside and that you are the master of your own brain. You are the owner of your own brain. Got that? Your own mind, your own happiness, strength, and health is yours.

Our first day in Poland came to an end without training. We went to bed hopeful that the next day would finally start preparing for the intense climb up the mountain in 3 days. But when we woke up, we were told that Wim had other plans.

Normally I don't— I go gradually into step by step, but not with this group. They are all about discomfort. Seeking discomfort is exactly what I needed. So we jumped straight into the depth, which normally I do absolutely not. It's bringing heart attacks to people because their vascular system is not right. But in this case, I could. Specifically with this group, I want to try out the last study I've shown that it is all in the mind. We are built to be happy, strong, and healthy. We got all the tools, but they are not awakened. But who is going to wake them up? That's us. This week we're going to do things I've never done because I've been a guinea pig all my life. And I changed the books. Now I'm going to do that with— yes, theory.

Here's the plan. There is no plan. We do whatever Wim decides. We were supposed to have— do something up here, but apparently we're gonna go downstairs and figure out what his plan is.

If he tells you to jump in the water, you jump in the water. If he tells you to sleep, you sleep. If he wants to slap you in the face, you get slapped in the face. That's what a master does.

Wim told me to do that.

Wim said it, dude. Wim fucking said it. I woke up at half past, uh, 3. And since then I've been thinking, oh shit, this is gonna go a complete different way. We don't want another Vice documentary. We want something new. Right now I'm preparing a 10-minute ice bath for you guys. 10 minutes, all of you, set your mind. The latest study showed we are able to tap into the deepest part of the brain just at Will. We will show, and with that you, how to handle the brain, how to handle the mind. Set your mind. Your mind will make your body able and survive from a 10-minute ice bath. As a treat, we come back up here and we have a great festival in the sauna, and then you get food. Okay, what about breath? Breath?

Yeah, Wim Hof Method, baby.

Tomorrow we got to do breathing. We make it a shortcut because you guys all from going out of comfort into the discomfort, there is the comfort. I will show you what is comfort. Perfect, we're ready. Let's go, ice bath baby, let's go. Tom is stoked, look at him.

I wish you could replay his face the whole time.

We were supposed to learn the breathing techniques to cope with with the cold today, but he decided to skip that step and just throw it straight in the cold and see if we can just, with the power of our mind, adapt to it. What does that mean, man? I was freezing when I had my toes in the snow. How am I supposed to sit in the freaking ice bath? You know, 10 minutes is a very long time.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I had no idea.

It's a very long time in ice water.

The Wim Hof method involves breathing, and that's a big part of it. And the fact that we're surpassing that and just trying to go straight to the mindset— I've never done like a full ice bath without the breath. If you've never done ice baths, you're not supposed to do more than 3 minutes, or even 2 to start, and we're doing 10.

The whole point of us being here is to learn, and I feel like we're just being thrown into shit and being like, the power of your mind.

Just shut up and do it. When your house is on fire, you run fast. You don't need to think, you go because adrenaline is there. So it's like the house is on fire. It's not on fire, but you are on fire. Follow me in this and it's going to happen. Begin to doubt and something else is going to happen. So is there something physically I do or something mentally that I need to do to like Center my mind? Just follow the breath.

Okay.

Here you are. The only thing is don't interfere what the body is able to do with what the body is able to do. Adaptation. Meditation is dynamic. It's real. It's a deeper part of the brain having a sufficient blood flow. Now they studied mindfulness, research, and they saw that within 10 minutes what we do, people even after years of training in mindfulness are not able to get into. Now put the signs out of there and get back to your sense. You are the one in command over yourself. You got that? Yeah.

3 minutes is hypothermia, right?

Yeah.

And we're doing 10 minutes without training.

Let's go. Okay.

In Alaska, we were in the water for probably 30 second. And I had never in my wildest dreams thought that I could stay in cold water for 3— more than like 2 minutes. This is testing every assumption I've ever made about myself in the cold. I hate the cold. And in a way, there's like a method to his madness, you know? At first I was, I was mad at him. I was like, why aren't you training us? And then the other part of me, after a while of thinking about it, was like, shit just happens in life and you have no control over it. And there's no training. You just have to like react. The house is on fire, what are you gonna do? Survive. Actually surviving is something that we never do. You never have to survive, you know? Yeah, you have to survive.

You will literally get hypothermia. Like, if you lose control over your body, you will literally just collapse.

I'm already freezing.

You go down, put your hands here. Tight on your thighs. Long exhalation. And let the body do what the body is able to do. Don't interfere. Let it go. You got it? Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

He's just talking to Thomas. Let Thomas say it.

Yes!

Let's do it! Let's do it, baby! Let's go! Great! Fuck!

Put it in!

Fuck!

Here's what I've come to terms with. Without training, without any of this, the only thing we can rely on is our own mind. If we can accomplish this, something that I legitimately think is impossible right now, then we should be able to push our minds beyond anything else in regular life.

We are strong! What do you get? Fuck! This is Spartan! Your brain knows what to do! Get up, Simon! Let's go! Let's do it! Warm-up selection. Enjoy it, guys. Enjoy it, guys. Warm-up selection. You can do this, Simon. You come out fully alive. Long exhalation. You got it. Long exhalation.

My hands feel numb.

Get them on your thighs tight. Feel the palms of your hands. They are warm. This is the way you learn how to deal with how to Most press.

My hands feel like they're shivering.

Let it go, you are thinking. You got this. You got this. Think of your palms. Think of the heat in your palms. I'm with you, Thomas. Afraid of my hands. Enough. 5 minutes in. Halfway through, baby. Halfway through. We're halfway.

You can do this.

Halfway.

The worst is over.

Yeah, the worst is over.

Thomas, you got this! You got this, baby! It's getting hotter, it's getting hotter! Let's go together! You have to go, bro.

Oh my God, this—

how do you feel? Don't stop breathing. Hey guys, good show, eh? 10 minutes, like no preparation, just the power of of the mind, dealing with stress, severe stress.

I have never ever seen Thomas like in that much, that much pain and that much discomfort. Like the vein on his, on the side of his neck was just popping. I've never seen like that suffering on a human's face. Yeah, I'm so proud of Thomas. You just feel so alive, like all your primal instincts just kick in to save you.

I could do this again.

I'm the Egyptian Iceman. Not born for this weather, but fuck it, survive anything.

I can't feel my hands, I can't feel my feet.

Is it a myth that if you stay a minute and a half to 2 minutes in freezing water like that, you would just get hypothermia?

There are people who could collapse because their vascular system is not right. Okay, you're not in good condition, but I prepared you and you Walking well now. Yeah, you feel good.

Amazing.

10 minutes, no preparation, just the power of the mind.

This is so painful.

Things around the core are opening up. Oh, so your extremities— the blood from your extremities and from your arms, your legs— are now mixing in with your warm core block, you know, like you feel the cold blood going through your body.

It feels— this feels cold.

It's coming back.

Like, I did not shiver for a second in the cold water, but here you're like, my entire body is just going—

you got to do it. You fucking made it! Wow!

In the water, I was picturing like headlines being like, YouTuber loses his hands in Poland. I don't know, I was like so scared for a lot of it. Like I legitimately thought I was gonna get out and no longer have control of my hands. Dude, when I get out, I couldn't move them. I was looking at my hands and they couldn't— I couldn't fold them in. They were stuck here. I've never experienced that before.

Are you proud of yourself though?

Yeah, definitely. I legitimately was convinced I would get out. There's several moments where I was like, all right, I'm standing up now.

And what made you stay in?

Probably you guys, like, looking around, being like, if you guys can do it, I can do it too.

What do you think of Thomas? He sucked. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's it. That's the— Thomas was great. He had an issue. But look how he got with his focus through his trauma, through his issue. And you got an issue, you think, looking at this? Hey man, you follow Thomas.

During this wildly unpredictable day, Wim put us in the ice water 5 times longer than what he ever usually does with fully trained groups. And by the end of it, we were promised that the following morning, Wim was finally going to introduce us to his famous breathing technique to help us cope with a cold. It's too early for this. Let's have some coffee.

Fuck.

Right now we're about to do, finally, the breathing. He's going to be leading the team for about 45 minutes.

And 45 minutes.

Okay, are you relaxed? Yes. Just move your body a little, shake it, you know, just get the shit out. I'm here, I'm here, I wake up, I'm gonna do my best. And everybody is going to possibly do 3 minutes without air in the lungs. So think and feel as if you fill up your belly through your mouth or nose, doesn't matter. Fully in, then the chest, and then into your head, and then you let it go. Belly, chest, head, letting go. Belly, chest, head. Letting go. Belly, chest, head. Letting go. Pulling in like the sea waves on the shore. And letting go. Letting go. This is round number 1. If you feel lightheaded, loosen the body, tingling, it's all alright. Breathe into it. Intensify whatever you feel. Intensify. And 3, fully in.

As we're finally starting to learn the method, I think it might be a good time to explain what it consists of. There's 3 main components: breathing, meditation, and gradual cold exposure. And its main objective is to awaken the deeper parts of the brain that Wim claims we've lost control over. First, Wim's meditation technique differs from traditional practices by preparing the mind and body to stay strong and calm during situations of stress when the fight-or-flight response is activated. He then gradually takes people through cold exposure. Countless independent studies have shown that cold exposure boosts the immune system and decreases inflammation in the body, which is also why pro athletes use it all the time for recovery, but Wim believes the cold can do so much more. And lastly, his breathing technique is designed to take deep inhales and gentler exhales in order to take in more air than we're letting out. This allows your body to function at a higher level than normal and can get you to hold your breath for 3 to 4 minutes. This process can in some cases cause a wide variety of physical and emotional responses.

It's all right, all right, it's okay, okay, okay, all good, okay, okay, breathe in, come, come, come. Come on. Okay, okay, relax, relax. All okay, all okay. Breathe.

Good.

And relax. It's deep enough. And 3, fully in, letting go. 2, fully in, letting go. 1, fully in, letting go.

What the fuck?

Do you remember anything? Relax, guys, relax. It's all right. The blood has been outclassed. All good. At some point I was just completely out of my body.

I feel amazing. I've never been able to like hold my breath longer than like 45 seconds, so holding it for 3 minutes was like trippy. It felt like 10 seconds, like you lose track of time. Like I'm holding my breath and then he's like, good, that's 3 minutes. I was like, whoa, that felt for like 20 seconds.

When you were holding the breath for like 3 minutes, I saw his hand was like, like a little bit like that, so I just started to film him and suddenly he was like— his eyes were like rolled up and I thought he had like a seizure.

That was scary as fuck.

Finally I came back and then look at Andreas and Andreas was like, what the fuck just happened?

As we thought we were finally going through the full Wim Hof method, he decided fully flip the script again and skip the rest of the training and go straight to the mountain.

Today, shut the fuck up and let's climb this mountain. It's about doing. Leave the mountain alone with your pathetic thoughts. Over. Done. And now we go up the mountain and do it. Body already knows what it is going up against.

It is so cold outside. And it's snowing, and we're about to climb this mountain. Hopefully we'll make it to the top. So Wim decided to completely reverse the, the whole setup for us. So he started with showing us the power of our minds and then training us. But even with all of that, he still decided to skip day 3 of training, which is usually more breathwork and like kind of ice baths and take us straight up the mountain.

They've never done this with a group before, ever, in all the groups they've had here for training. It's the first time he's done it like this, and it's like we're the guinea pigs for it.

I mean, the only thing we can rely on is ourselves at this point, like, and each other, right? Like, it's just— this is on like the verge of being reckless. I mean, it is pretty much reckless, and I think he even acknowledges it, but I guess we'll see, uh, where recklessness can take us.

Climb the mountain already here! Microspikes, baby! Let's fucking go! Hey man, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, and let us go! Pep talks! So that's what we do. Yeah, let's go. Hey, pep talk is over, man. We are just gonna do it. So here it is, and you guys know what to do. Yeah, what is it? One step, another one, another one, and then we reach the top. This is it, it's happening, bro.

Fuck!

Now or never. Thomas's fuck is the funniest. Go big or go home, dude.

Nobody's is even skiing. That's how fucking cold and snowy it is.

Stop thinking it's cold.

It's hot.

It's hot. It's hot.

How does this make any fucking sense? Somebody tell me, please.

No, it doesn't. None of it does. We picked a day where it's the worst weather conditions possible.

No shit, dude. My mom, she's gonna watch this and she's gonna kill me. Fuckin' kill me.

Oh, no way! This is the ideal guy of the group. Let's do this! You always have to speak up.

That's right, you have to speak up. What the fuck are we doing? It's minus fuckin' 3 or 4 Celsius climbing a frickin' mountain in Poland. We could be in Hawaii right now, you know?

Could be in Hawaii.

Fuck it. Can we cross anyone right now coming up or down? They think we're freaking lunatics. It's just like 8 people shirtless walking up this freezing mountain.

I mean, maybe we should take that advice and just stop. Oh, nope. Okay, okay.

Just focus on like one step at a time. That's the only thing that works for me right now. I think about the fucking 2 hours ahead of us, makes me very sad.

Fourth of the way there. Starting to feel it on my back mostly, but just trying to focus on the breathing and just follow Wim's footsteps. Keeps you distracted just thinking of your breath.

This is like slow pain, whereas the ice bath was instant shock. And so if you keep your calm, I think you can make it up.

Did a good job, did a good job. I feel great. Good. My element, nature, inner natures. It's the power of the moment coming to you, and then suddenly the bare body is able to to do so much more. The ice part was sharp, just like a punch. Of course, this is getting colder and colder, and because we're climbing up a mountain as well, We're getting more tired, a little bit more altitude.

Oh, do you feel that? That feels good. That's a whip straight to the chest.

Ah, this fresh snow, it's not helping the situation though. It's the fingers, they're like blocks.

Ah, so fucking wind!

We just got to the point where the wind is really starting to catch up and the snow hitting it hard.

It's so cold. Look at these trees, this is so crazy. Let's go, Max! Oh my God. It's very deep, Wim! Wim, it's getting too deep!

We're about 1,900 meters in elevation, which is almost like—

it's over—

it's 5,800 feet. And at this point, the snow— at this point, snow goes up all the way here, so it's almost impossible. I can't feel my lips anymore, I can't feel my hands. But other than that, the internals are still warm. Thomas is gone. Thomas just wants to fucking run down there, and I second that.

Let's go! A few hundred meters from the mountain summit, We got stuck. The snow levels were getting up to our waist, and making the call to continue the trek to the top became extremely unsafe amidst the intensifying weather conditions.

We should be sensible about this. Together with the wind chill, it is more than -20, and it is impossible to go up. The snow is going to be here. We did it! We bloody did it!

Hell yeah! Continuing past this point would have put us in real danger, but in our eyes and in Wim's eyes, we did it. It took us a silent climb down of reflection and a day of warming back up to fully understand the purpose of all the pain.

Crazy like a monkey!

Crazy like a What we began to realize is that Wim's objective this entire week hadn't been to teach us his method, but instead to show us that even without it, the human mind is capable of so much more than we ever thought possible. That we were capable of so much more than we thought possible. And that no matter what challenge we're going through in our lives, we should never lose hope and underestimate our ability to shine and find the strength within us to succeed. We spent the morning after the climb doing a group reflection with Wim, and he decided to end our trip where it all began.

I wanted to complete, make it full circle, and so now I want to end this ritualistic.

Basically, he wants us to take these torches, light them up, and walk back to that waterfall that you guys, that everybody jumped off the first day.

Normally I go and do not exceed no longer than 2 minutes in ice water immersion. You guys did 5 times. You guys jumped directly from 7 meters down. Even gainers I saw. Hey, what was going on here? Because you have 3 years of working together, or even more, always going into discomfort. That means you have gone out of the normal way of thinking, and that made you for me perfect to be my guinea pigs for new research pioneering, because we gotta revolutionize something in this world and show that we are made of much more than we think. And for that, we have to dive into the depth. Yeah, and for that You got fear right now because this is normal. This is nature. This is for the guys who venture, who pioneer, who go past their fear and their controlled way of thinking. They go past and show new ways, new directions, and that was the aim of these last 4 days. You guys did bloody great. To unlock your potential. We have given ourselves fully the last 4 days to show new directions past fear. Past fear, there is a lot more coming to us. You are the new generation. You are the youth. You got to change this world. Now unlock your own power of your own mind because it's so beautiful. What's new?