Wim HofInstructor and teacher, Wim Hof Method

Wim Hof Podcast | Russell Brand & The Power Of Cold Water

13 Jun 2021 · 2 min

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2:01

In this monologue, Russell Brand argues that health is optimized when we eat foods that are locally grown and seasonally appropriate, mirroring the conditions our bodies evolved for. He extends this principle to bodily activity, asserting that the human body needs regular movement and challenge. Recalling a cold‑water plunge he took years earlier, Brand describes the surprising physical response—a distinct “hoo, hoo” sound—signaling a latent capacity he had never accessed before. He suggests that modern culture, through media, diet, and routine, confines us to narrow mental tracks, suppressing untapped neurological, psychological, and spiritual territories. By exposing the body to cold and controlled breathing (practices popularized by Wim Hof), these hidden pathways can be activated, leading to new self‑perceptions and the possibility of shedding outdated identities.

Chapters

We'd probably be healthier if we ate foods that were available and grew in the place that we're in at the time that we're in it, in the correct season, rather than eating something made in a laboratory or grown under lights or whatever it is. I think the same is true with the way we treat the body. Try to replicate what this, what this body evolved to do. It needs to move, it needs to do something, and that's what I feel like when I first spoke to Wim Hof, are what I— I remembered a time that I jumped into cold water, like, you know, maybe 5 years earlier, just to sort of see what it was like. I was curious about it. And when I jumped into the cold water, I heard myself go, "Hoo, hoo!" I thought, "Oh my God, I've never heard that noise come out of myself before." You know, like, there's this stuff in me that I'm never using. There's this, I'm never using it. Like my body's capable of it, but I'm not doing it. And like, so, you know, I think if you don't explore those territories, which could be mapped as neurological, which could be mapped as psychological or spiritual, it doesn't matter how you map them. It matters that you know there are these terrains that are not being utilized within you because the cultural experience Culture means guide, manipulate, maneuver. Like, it will have a mirror in your mind if you watch certain TV shows, if you watch certain news, if you eat certain food. It will have a mirror in the pathways through your mind. You're living on a few little tracks in a few little grooves, and when you feel the cold or you feel the breath, it breaks out into new dendrite spikes, new experiences, new realms, and suddenly you think, well, who was I anyway? What am I? My memory? My appetite? My impulse? My preferences? My likes and dislikes? Can I just let that die and just put like, "Whoa, it's dead. I'm not that anymore. That guy's dead."