GUIDED Wim Hof Breathing Tutorial For STRESS & ANXIETY (Do This Everyday)| Lewis Howes

What's up, guys?

Lewis Howes here. And I'm so excited about this video because I wanted to revisit one of my favorite videos with a guy named Wim Hof. Now, if you don't know who Wim Hof is, he is this extreme Dutch athlete who has done unbelievable things with his body and his mind. He's broken multiple world records. One, I think was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in two days with just shorts on and shoes. He also did a half marathon on ice with no shoes. He's done, I, I think the longest swim under ice water while holding his breath and lots of other crazy stuff.

I remember hearing about him four years.

Ago as this mythical human being who just breaks limits with his mind, with his body, and most importantly, with his breathing.

But what I want to do right.

Now is actually revisit this old video, walk you through the process, and actually do the breathing to see if I can beat my record from the first time doing it with Wim four years ago. So I'm going to go into a.

Comfortable position on a couch.

I recommend you to do the same.

Thing, and I want you to follow.

Along with me during this breathing exercise. So let's go get started.

Okay.

I'm going to play the video.

And I haven't watched this video in years, so I'm not actually sure what Wim says during this. So I'm excited to see what he says then what do I remember from my trip in Poland?

And.

And then I'm going to walk through the breathing exercise for the first time in six months.

So here we go.

So we start up here with a basic breathing exercise. We also practice in the university with test subjects, people, and they show to have a control within a quarter of an hour over the immune system related to the autonomic nervous system. And of course, it also works on the energy management in the cell. Cell energy management.

So at this point, I literally just met Wim maybe five minutes before and I said, hey, throw me in the mix. Let's do a breathing exercise first before an interview.

So this was the first time I.

Met him and I had been hearing about whim as kind of like this mythical creature from another world, from friends and from the Internet for like the previous year.

So this was a kind of an intimidating moment.

You can kind of see me, I'm.

Like a little nervous and I'm excited.

To see what's going to happen. I have no clue what's going to happen. Just hearing stories about how crazy this breathing experience is. So let's keep going.

So it's learning how to get more mitochondrial activity in the cell, which in the end is performance. And you learn to control that how? By doing this before a game, a match, competition, or anything. You do this, you regain connection up till cell level, and then your mind is able to program cell. It's called NLP, etc. But we go way beyond. We show it beyond speculation because it is proven. So right now you are going, so.

He'S at this time, this is four.

Years ago, he's saying, mitochondria cell level and all these different things proven by science and research.

And I'm thinking to myself, you're speaking.

Over my head right now. But what he was speaking to was having better performance. And as an athlete during this time, I was deep in USA handball training and preparing for international competition and big matches and games. And so all I'm always looking for is the edge to improve my life, the edge to perform better as an athlete, as a business individual, and personally in my life. So in some sense, I'm intimidated by the words he's using and not understanding it. But ultimately, I'm like, if this can give me an edge, then I'm all in.

So here we go.

Right? Okay, breathe in. Take them on. You've been relaxed here. That means the storage capacity of the body for oxygen is best right now. Now breathe in fully.

So at first, he had me lay down for a few minutes while he was explaining to me the method, the science, the research. And so this is why you already see me laying down, because he wanted me to be in a relaxed state. So if you want, you can actually lay down right now and get into a relaxed state and start trying this with me, with Wim. I want you to experience the WIM HOF method with us as we do it together. And what I would recommend is I had Wim next to me the entire time, and I felt safe because I felt like I could push myself to the extreme because I have the master of right next to me guiding me. It's kind of like I didn't have to go to India to find the guru to learn meditation. He came to me in Los Angeles. So I felt comfortable to push myself as far as I wanted to. I felt like he wouldn't allow myself to hurt myself or anything. But I wanted to make a disclaimer here that if you're trying this, make sure not to push too hard. Make sure you have someone with you, because sometimes you might breathe too much. You might, you know, Feel yourself light headed, tingly. Some people have even passed out at times. So you just want to make sure that you are in a comfortable space. You can definitely do this breathing alone when you're first getting started, but you want to make sure that you don't push it.

And if you start to feel a little too tingly, too much lightheadedness, just.

Kind of pull back on the breathing and your body will come back to its natural state. But if you want to go extreme, make sure you have a friend or someone with you just to make sure it's all safe. So here he's just asking me to do some breathing, deep breathing. So he's getting me prepared, he's getting me grounded for breathing. We're not going all the way into it right now, but I'm gonna lay down and actually start doing this breathing with him and then go into the full exercise. And during this experience, I think I hold my breath for up to three minutes at one point, which I don't know. The last time I did that, I think I might have done it in Poland when we were together. But we'll see what I can create right now after six months of not doing it that much at all and.

See what I can do. So I'm going to lay down and I encourage you to lay down as well.

Find a comfortable place.

And the whole key is when you're getting started is to just feel completely relaxed. He's going to say fully in and fully out a lot throughout this. So just think of like fully in, breathing from the belly deep, fully out, breathing out. So that's what you want to think about. You can even feel your stomach if you want to. And don't breathe from your chest, but breathe more from your belly so you can get a full expansion. Just start slowly breathing, breathing deep and breathing fully.

As he speaks, even with the hat you can breathe in. The brain contains also oxygen. So feel that it streams into your belly, into your chest, into your head. And then you let it go like a wave and let it go, Letting go. Okay, feel it in, letting go. Feel it coming in, fully letting go and at ease. Tune in, whatever. You feel different now. You become light headed, loose in the body, tingling, anything can happen. That's only oxygen freeing itself in the depth of the body. You just breathe toward those feelings. Being light headed, loose, tingling. So we make that stronger. Thus we are de acidifying the body in the tissue makes you oxygenergize all cells in the body and then they become whop. Alkaline all within 10 minutes. And the storage capacity for oxygen in the body is more than we thought you're gonna experience. That makes you able to stay without air in the lungs in two minutes. Just keep on deeply in letting go for more than I say. First round, you sportsman. One half minute, two minutes. First round, without air in the lungs. Second round, more. Third round, even more. What's happening? We are just showing that the storage capacity for oxygen and the way we are able to influence therein is bigger than we ever use.

Okay, so what's going to happen right now is he's grounding you. He's priming you for your first of three rounds. And the WIM HOF method typically is you start it with a round and you build upon that to see how long you can hold your breath without any oxygen in your lungs. So essentially breathing it all out at the end. He's going to walk us through, he's going to demonstrate, and you're going to be guided during this process. But essentially what he's telling me, and this is what I was understanding for the first time, is like, your body can store and oxygenate more oxygen than you think, but we need to train ourselves mentally and through breathing techniques in order to do that. And when you do that, you can do extreme physical things with your body. You can defend yourself against sickness and other illnesses and other things that are attacking your immune system when you defend yourself through mindset and breathing techniques like this. He does this consistently, and he hasn't been sick in many, many years. I think he said he doesn't remember the last time he got sick because he's training his mind and his breathing to defend itself against any type of sickness that may be trying to enter his body. So the whole key of this type of training is to see how far you can go. He's saying you're going to feel lightheaded, you're going to feel tingly in your body. You're going to feel some type of potentially discomfort because it's a new type of sensation and feeling. And that's natural. And it's okay. You don't want to go overboard. You don't want to try to hold your breath where you're going to pass out. You want to make sure you're controlling this. But the whole key is to push your boundaries to what you think is possible, to push beyond what you're used to doing, to push beyond your comfort zone. And so you're going to oxygenate your body, you're going to alkaline your blood and your cells, that's what he's saying. It's going to alkaline. So you're essentially purging toxins from your body, purging the unnecessary things from your blood and developing your cells to become stronger and defending them against any type of challenges that may come your way. So let's get ready because this is going to be the first round. He's going to have you do a series of breathing to prepare yourself for this first round. So let's dive in.

20. Deeply in. And let it go. And deeply. Let it go. 18. Let it go. Deeply in, let it go. 16. Let it go. 14. Deeply in. Let it go. 12. All right, let it go. Whatever you feel light headed about, loosen the body. Tingling. Breathe toward that. Intensify that it's all controlled. Yes, deeply in. 7. Don't hold back, just go with the flow. It's chemistry and you are dealing with that consciously. 5. 4, Three. Good. Two. One. Here he comes. Fully in. Letting go. And stop. No breathing. Relax. Witness. Your body is oxyenergized. You're very able to go past the conditioned reflexes. The chemistry of your body actually is better than before. There is no need for breathing because it all is based on acidity. Breathing, you are alkaline. No forcing, just being. Looking at the magic of physiology, Witnessing. Just go without whatever you feel is different. That is oxygen. One minute. Five. Without air in the lungs. It's good. Good, Louis. No force, just measuring your storage capacity. It's okay.

So at this point I hit about 125 and I normally wouldn't stop, but I want to right now just to explain what I was feeling. The first round here he had me do is very slow. After I went to Poland with him six months ago, which was four years after I first met him. We do it a lot faster. So once you get in the rhythm of things, you'll start faster and you'll feel more comfortable and confident going faster. But he wanted me to start slow. What I started to feel even going slow. If you notice this, you'll feel your hands vibrating, your body shaking. I kind of, as my eyes were closed, I kind of felt like my body was rocking back and forth. And I don't know if that's the breath, the rhythm, my heartbeat kind of guiding my back out of the couch.

Kind of moving me and guiding me.

Creating a rhythm in your body. And I felt tingling from my head. I started to sweat a little bit. I can feel the sweat. I feel my toes still. It starts to wear off as I'm talking and kind of going back into state. I can feel it wearing off. So normally I would not stop, but you'll start to feel that sensation. And it's powerful because I already feel more electric, more live. Like I got a jolt of caffeine in my body, but it's clean. It's detoxing the energy. It's making me feel more awake. It's making me feel more relaxed at the same time. It's kind of that polarizing opposite. I feel calm and relaxed and more alert and awake at the same time. So it's doing something. I can feel my. Like my legs tingly a little bit still in a good way.

Like, it's.

It's activating me. So we'll see where I pick up right here. And we'll go right into the next round. I just brought it in. So I'm going to breathe continually.

Squeeze a little to the head because it's nice. That's oxygen in the brain. Feels good. Natural hormones released dopamines, serotonins. It's all good. 10 seconds. Okay, you can let go that one. 41st round. Now you know what it is all about. Pullie in, letting go. You are the alchemist. You are doing it right now. Don't hold back. Just go into the depth. Tune with your body. Follow your feeling. Okay? 20, 19. Don't hold back. Go with the flow. He's doing good. He's surfing on the waves of his brain. Brain waves. It has been shown that we are in the brain right now. Like gamma theta delta. It's all there. He's deeply into his brain now and into every cell of the body, into the DNA, regulating the chemistry. 40, 13, 12, 11. And calm down. Launching. We did it with NASA equipment, by the way, the brain waves. So we are launching now. Not to the moon, but inside. Into the infinite cell, the infinity of the cell. We are going past the conditioning very related to conditioned breathing.

Now we go past.

Amen. Okay, last one. Fully in and letting go. Just let it go and stop. Relax. Your mind is with whatever you feel. These tones in the brain, the feeling in your hands, feet, body, it's all oxygen. It has been toned up. I can see it will be able to stay like three minutes without any lungs. Body is very alkaline right now. You could test that with the ph strips papers before and after. See? Big difference. Not small difference. Big difference. From yellow to blue. Anybody can do it. Just be there in the flow of the oxygen roaming through your body, Making the cell alkaline. And the tissue as well. People do this before a match. They become alkaline. What do you need with performance being alkaline, not acidic? Yeah.

If I would have continued going without stopping, I know I've been able to go another probably 30 seconds, but right now I can. I feel like my body is trembling of the cells. I may not be showing it, but I feel like my vibration everywhere is trembling. I don't know if you can see the sweat, but I'm feeling sweat on my forehead. I almost feel like a ringing. A little bit of a ringing sensation in my ears right now, but it feels like I'm on a cloud floating at this point. It feels like everything is tingling. My hands. It's kind of hard to move my hands right now because I feel tingling sensation and it's just vibrating throughout everything in my body. So I'm feeling the effects of deep, rhythmic breathing. And now I'm starting to hear a little bit better now because I'm taking more time and I'm not hearing the ringing anymore. There's still tingling as I straighten my arms out. So normally I wouldn't be stopping, but I wanted to kind of reflect on this sensation. So what we're going to do is we're going to pick it up in round three. But you should. You should start to see things in your mind's eye. If you're doing it and pushing it a little bit, you should start to feel your entire body vibrating and trembling. It's almost a place of a sense of peace when you hold your breath and you breathe all the way out, get all the oxygen out of your lungs. It's almost like you want to put your mind into a peaceful place and go somewhere and really relax your mind. Relax the muscles in your face because you're going to feel things moving, but relax it all and try to relax, because the more tense you clench, you're not gonna be able to hold it as long. So I'm gonna go for the third round right now. And what you know, I've been commentating, I've been stopping. I've been getting back into a. An awakened state. So typically, you want to do three rounds without stopping. You want to keep the rhythm going, you want to keep building on the previous success. So it's really hard to stop and recreate this. But I'm gonna see what I can do in the third round right now and see how far we can go.

Sa. It, Sam.

So at this point now, I didn't hit three minutes, but I'm extremely tingly I'm seeing different colors, different sensations. I'm hearing some humming noise through my. Through my ears. I'm sweating. You can probably see sweat pit marks right here. My toes are tingling. My hands are vibrating. Now I can start to hear myself actually better in my ears as the humming goes away. So I'm starting to feel the sensation come back. So what I want to do is actually hear what Wim talks about as I finish my third round and see what he says.

Hey, he likes to go on. It's nice to fly, man. Holy cow. Yes, sir. That's a holy cow. All right.

Amazing.

Yeah, yeah. Good.

So good.

Yeah. This is one of the basic techniques.

Oh, that's just the basic.

Yes.

Well, imagine what the advanced is. Holy cow.

Wow.

So at this point, I'm waking back up.

I'm saying, you know, this is the basic stuff. And I said, I wonder what the advance would feel like? And the advance was essentially me taking a group of 13 influencers and friends to Poland earlier this year. I mean, we're jumping in, you know, frozen rivers. We're submerging ourselves for 10 minutes, breathing in ice tubs up to our neck. We're climbing a mountain for four hours without clothes on. Someone was wearing a speedo. I mean, some crazy stuff we did in the snow and the cold. And that was the advanced stuff. This going through the Wim Hof app. And I highly recommend. We'll show you an image here of the Wim Hof app where you can go through a guided breathing exercise like what Wim demonstrated with me. And I was listening to part of that app as well as I was going through this to experience it, to be with Wim, to guide you. And he gives you lots of disclaimers on there to make sure that you stop. You pause if you're feeling too lightheaded. So you got to make sure you're very aware of your body and the sensations you're feeling. Even right now, as I sit here, my arms are vibrating. I can feel like it's almost like electricity is in my forearms right now. When I place it on my knees.

I feel like it vibrating in electricity. I can hear myself a little bit better now, but if I lift my arms, I. I'm feeling it vibrating, a tingling sensation.

And Wim talks about, this is the. You know, it's alkalizing your body, it's getting rid of the toxins, things like that, which reminds me of how powerful this is. I haven't been as consistent over the last six months since that advanced session with him. But it reminds me, this is something I should be doing every day, even if it's one or two rounds. And you don't have to push yourself to try to go three minutes every time, but just to push yourself to clean your body to get rid of the negative thoughts.

And with so much of the world.

Being in a place of anxiety and suffering and overwhelm and stress, and constantly allowing our thoughts to dictate our words and our words to dictate the direction of our life, something like this is extremely valuable and important for you as a tool.

This is a tool that you can.

Just take out of your tool belt at any time and say, let me do this for 15 minutes. If I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed, let me do this. I highly recommend it. Let's watch the rest of this and see what he says.

I just don't let the mind interfere so it's not blocked.

It didn't feel. It felt a lot quicker. Like there was.

And here's the thing I say right here, you know, I felt a lot quicker. You kind of lose track of time. You lose track of how long it is until you feel like you can't breathe and you need to take that breath. Then it feels like, ah, you know, I want to take a breath. But when you get into that state where your whole body is vibrating, where, you know, I'm still feeling the tingling sensation, when everything is vibrating and you are relaxing your mind because you need to relax in order to go longer with your breath hold.

So if you're clenching your face, you're.

Thinking about something else, it's the more relaxed you get. And actually was visualizing my heartbeat slowing down. So as he said, slow your heartbeat down. I'm visualizing like slower beat and I'm just focusing on these different things in my body. And that's what I think is cool.

Time perception is being left in the brain.

I was like. I thought he just said like a few words, but it was like a minute went by.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Yeah.

Life is crazy, man. I'm crazy about life.

It's funny, the last time I saw like an image.

Yeah, nice.

I saw an image in my mind.

That. That. That's dmt.

Yeah.

It was like diamond tail trip to mine. Not true.

Yeah, it was originally like, like, like a tree branch. It was like, like a tree, like spreading out.

Like it was like a bunch of like.

I can't explain the type of tree.

But it was nice.

And then it turned into an eye.

Wow.

Like almost like an eagle Eye man, he is tripping. And then it turned into like a phoenix, like flying.

It was like it was opening, like screaming.

Yeah. So right here I was talking about the third. And this is common for a lot of people that do this consistently. You'll start to see images in your mind. And I was, you know, this is the first time I really pushed my breath to any extreme. I had done meditation in India and became a meditation instructor through facilitation training. But it wasn't deep, intense breathing like this, with this type of rhythm and cycle. So it was the first time I really pushed my brain, I guess, in my breath and my oxygen cells to expand that much. And I was seeing images in my mind. So some crazy things can happen depending on how far you go.

You go into the dream state. You know, the dream state is the deepest. Yeah. There are a rapid eye movement level state that's in your deepest of sleep and you have no control. Now you control it. You learn to tap in.

Yeah.

And the functionality of it is to release whatever is inside, blocking.

So often we're blocked with our thoughts, with our body, with just our way of being every day from traumas of the past, from traumas of the morning of yesterday, of conversations, of frustrations, of people we want to clear with that we're resentful of all these different blockages in our body and our mind. And this is again, a tool to clear the blockages. And that's what he's talking about there. And I remember after we left Poland, we did this for five days with cold therapy, with mindset training, with breathing training, and just shared circle experiences. When you create that type of experience for yourself, it allows you to heal, allows you to release, it allows you to move forward and ultimately become your best self. And that's what we're all trying to do, is provide you tools on how to improve your life and become a better human being. How to let go of the past from holding you back so you can move forward with who you are with more power, more conviction and more freedom in your life. That's what this is all about. One of the things that I love about Whim is, is he is unapologetically himself. And that's why I love having him on the show. And that level of freedom allows him to take on life with full power, with full conviction and action towards his dreams in serving humanity with his tools, his method. I hope you guys enjoyed this recap video. I've interviewed him a few times since then. Again, I went to Poland and did some advanced training with him and we'll have him on back many more times. But if you haven't watched the previous previous interviews or the other types of videos I've done with wim, make sure to check them out. We'll have them linked below. Make sure to subscribe to this video and to this channel. Like this video below. If you enjoyed it, share it with some friends and leave a comment on what you enjoyed most about this video.

And if you want to learn more about how to master your mind, check out this next video right here.

Trains the brain to become consciously under your at will, under your control.