These 3 BREATHING SECRETS Will Completely TRANSFORM Your Health! | Wim Hof & Lewis Howes
Wim Hof shares breathing techniques that affect your nervous system and stress response. The method involves controlled hyperventilation followed by breath holds, which can reduce anxiety and boost immunity. Hof claims his approach lets people access parts of their physiology they thought were automatic.
Chapters
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. 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 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 itself. 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 to do no less.
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, letting go. Yes, breathe in fully and letting go. And breathe in fully, letting go. So belly chest, 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 hat and then you let it go like a wave.
And let it go.
Let it go. Okay, feeling it in, letting go. Feel it coming in, fully letting go. And at ease, tune in. Whatever you feel different now, you become lightheaded, losing 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. And so we make that stronger, thus we are D, acidifying the body in the tissue that makes you oxidize all cells in the body. And then they become, whoop, alkaline, oh, 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. 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 used. Okay, you get it in. We get a countdown now from 20. Deeply in. And let it go. And deeply in. Let it go, 18. Let it go, deeply in, let it go, 16. Deeply in. Let it go. 40. Let it go. 12. All ends. Let it go. Whatever you feel lightheaded about, loosen the body tingling, breathe toward that, intensify that, it's all controlled. Yes, deeply in, seven, get them on. Don't hold back, just go with the flow, it's chemistry and you are dealing with that consciously.
Five.
Four, three, good. Two, one. Here he comes. Julian. Letting go and stop. No breathing anymore. Relax, witness. Your body is oxegenized, you are 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 with that whatever you feel is different. That is oxygen. One minute five, without air in the lungs. It's good. Feeling good, Louis? No force. You're just measuring your storage capacity. It's okay. 125. One and a half fast, still without air in the lungs. And he is okay. No force. Whenever you... Okay, and now fully in. and hold and squeeze a little to the head because it's nice. That's oxygen in the brain. Feels good. Natural hormones released. Dopamines, serotonin. It's all good. 10 seconds. Okay, you can let go. You're at 140 first round. Now you know what it is all about. Julian letting go. You are the alchemist. You are doing it right now. Don't hold back, just go into the depths. Tune with your body. Follow your feelings. Okay, 20, 19. Don't all bad 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. 10. 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. Come on.
Okay.
Last one. Pull it in and let it 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. It will be able to stay like three minutes without air in the 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. If people do this before a match they become alkaline. What do you need with performance? Being alkaline, not acidic. Yeah. It is simple and it is effective. And then it is your mind. Your mind is programming the cell. First we bring about the right chemistry in the cell and then we program it.
How?
With our mind. It has been shown in the university without Moving, so motionless, to create more, 300% more cell activity, metabolic activity. Just a mind. That's programmed.
We can do a whole lot more.
It's doing well. Go with the flow. Relax. 40 past. 45. Write here. It's past three minutes, it's gonna be there soon. This could be a breakthrough for any person, you know, actors with a lot of stress in Hollywood. If they do this, they're gonna fly. You pass the three, three-six, full in and squeeze to the hat. Have a nice time. as long as you feel okay and let it go. Or as you feel. The purpose of this is to bring the body in a very very alkaline state, which is the right chemistry, up till the tissue. That's the deepest of the physiology. Until recently it was not known that this was possible. Now they saw it in university studies. We got it. this is just one basic technique. We are doing investigations on more of these techniques. This is with this one you got it. It's cool. Relax. We have proven the point already 3.6 seconds, 3 minutes, 6 seconds. If we would go on now probably 4-3:30, 3:45 maybe 4 minutes. Even in performance is much but in experience is even better. Hey, he likes to go long. It's nice to fly, man. Unbelievable.
Holy cow.
Yes, sir. That's a holy cow, all right.
Right on, man.
Amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one of the basic techniques.
Oh, that's just basic.
Yes.
Well imagine what the advanced is.
Holy cow.
Wow.
That was three minutes.
Yeah, passed. Really? Yeah, yeah. 3.6.
Oh my gosh. That's a long time for me.
Yeah, that's good. That's my presence, man. My magical presence.
Wow.
I just don't let the mind interfere. So it's not blocking.
It didn't feel. It felt a lot quicker. Like there was. Wow. I'm still, like.
Yeah.
Heightened sense of my voice seems really loud. It's like everything is, like, it's crazy. Well, at first I was like, man, it feels like it was hard to hold, and then I kind of went to the state of peace and, like, Dan. I was like, oh, maybe it's on, like, a minute. Then he said, like, two minutes. I was like, really? I was like, man, it's going by faster.
Yeah.
And I thought 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.
Wow.
The first one was like.
Really stressful.
In the body was like, I felt myself sweating, like everywhere.
Yeah.
And the third one, it was like, I wasn't sweating as much. It just felt like it was easier and easier. I could push harder and harder and relax deeper and deeper. I think that first cycle, my whole body is like rejecting it or something. And so it's starting to sweat everywhere.
Yeah, blockages.
Yeah.
It's like, it's like rejecting it. And then I felt much cooler the second two times through. We did three times, right?
Yeah, three times.
Yeah, and then the last one went.
Up 140-220- and 306.
And then the last time, did you say squeeze your hands? Is that what you're saying? Squeeze?
Yeah, squeeze the hands.
Squeeze the head. Yeah, I said hands. Yeah, so I was squeezing.
You're gonna get oxygen in the head.
It's funny, the last time I saw like an image.
Yeah.
Nice.
The first time I saw an image in my mind.
That's DMT. yeah, it was like diamond tail Tryptamine. Natural. Yeah.
It was originally like.
Like.
Like a tree branch. It was 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. Wow!
I was calling.
It was like, it was like, it was opening, like screaming, and it was like, it's turning into like a phoenix, it was unbelievable. I was like, is this supposed to happen or what?
It's amazing. Yeah, whatever is in your mind, you go into the dream state.
Wow.
You know, the dream state was the deepest.
Yeah.
And there are rapid eye movement level state. Yeah. 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.
Wow.
Blocking.
Wow.
And that's DMT4 and the deepest of the brain. And we now found the access into it.
For those that don't know your story, why did you get into the ice and breathing training in the first place? Is this from like two years old you're always in the cold or?
Yes, actually if you go back way back I was born traumatically. I was one of the twins, identical twins.
Wow.
And they never knew there was another one. And I came almost too late, like blue, purple, in the cold of a hole.
Way.
That's where I came. And my mother was very religious, like naive, religious, strong as a woman, very strong. She made this invocation and she told me later, oh, God, let this child live because they were to go to cut her open to get the baby out. And she was in fear about that. She was being pushed from the recovery room to the operation room. And in the hall, just before entering the rubber doors of the operation room, she just got me out with the words, oh God, let this child live. I will make him a missionary. Area! The missionary! So I got a mission, but at that moment I was a fish in nothing, like purple. With that invocation, A mother has power.
Wow.
And naive or not, she can change the world. She can make it hard, like a tattoo on your soul. And that's what happened. I was always different than my identical twin brother.
He's still alive?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And he's alive, but he's not able to do what I do. Because I do what I do because I had different experiences. coming there from Nate imprinted my soul, imprinted my type, my character, it was there, boom, and always being different than him, but 100% genetically the same. So then they did all the studies on us and then they saw, yeah, it's a genetically the same, but he's not able to do what he has them, and that's because of the training.
Wow.
So if he did the training, would he be able to do it?
Yes.
And he's doing it now, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Gotcha.
And he's healing a lot of people now.
Yeah.
And, yeah, it's happening. And everybody who is doing this is able to pass it on and get the same results we scientifically have achieved.
Amazing.
The autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, the immune system, and the deepest part of the brain are now accessible at will. for anybody who does this properly.
And when did you start getting into this? Was this some teen years or?
I think, you know, this is like a subcurrent within, when I was 12, I was reading on psychology and Buddhism, and I was always a little bit strange looking for things out there.
Right.
And wherever I go to get my hands upon, I was into And when I was 17, I already read so many books, so many religions, traditions, cultures, esoteric disciplines, yoga, karate, anything I could do, you know, I had done. And there I found the cold water.
Really?
In a morning, Sunday morning, thin layer on the ice, on the water. and looking around, I just undressed myself, went in and I knew from the.
Inside this is it.
Wow.
It connects you and this is what.
You can't think about anything else.
Exactly.
You have to think about that moment.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
And.
But it matched my birth trauma. And this is what I later figured out. I was born in the cold of the whole almost suffocated. too long in there suffocate you, you get less oxygen. So the first thing you do when you go into the cold water is you begin to breathe deep. What do you do when you get born?
Take a deep breath.
You come with the inhale, you go with the exhale.
That's it.
So the call does the same. The call brings you right there. Like rebirthing. And I felt, you know, beyond or deeper than thinking, you feel, oh, this is it. I felt power. I felt this connection which I had experienced at my birth. And at that time I was absolutely not aware of anything. But now I was aware that I had touched on something I was always looking for. And that made me feel so.
What were you looking for?
That trauma to get a hold on that what was imprinted inside. And that made me, the other day, come back.
And do it again.
Four months later, I was able to stay. And this is not for nobody. this is me for five to seven minutes under the water.
Holding the breath.
Holding the breath after 25 of these deep breaths. Because that all worked and it was great. You feel a great stillness while doing it. It's like in the fetus position, I'm under the water just on my own and nobody around. Just for my own, the trees were there, no leaves, but you know, it was my little place, nobody could see it. And there I always trained, every day, every winter. And at a certain moment I began to separate the breathing and I brought it home.
And then I saw all the lights.
And all the chakras and oh, whatever they call it in all these books, I saw it. And this time not because of reading, but because of doing it. And experiencing.
Being in it.
And that, yes.
And didn't you have an experience later in your life with where someone died in your life and you came back.
Oh, yes, that my wife in when I was 35 with whom I had four children and still have. and I work with them. You saw just two of them.
They're great.
She jumped from an age story down because of mental disorder. Really? So severe.
I mean, like here.
Just kissing the kids goodbye first. Love was there, but the terror was also there. and she decided to jump and go. That can be life, that can be terror of life, in life. And a lot of people are suffering in this world. I at that moment was earning very little, having four children, I was in the mountains at that present moment because they're making money through through mountaineering and being a mountain guide and all. My kids were with the family in Spain, Basque country, and she did that.
Wow.
And that had, of course, such a great impact. It broke not only my heart. I was just shocked. You're shocked. You cannot think about it. You cannot. You don't know what happened, but you have four children. So you take care of the children and you go on. But deeply you are broken. Now there I began very consciously going into the cold water. Because at that moment from there on I had to deal with my own terror in my mind, my own worries, my own broken heart and at all influences your thinking brain every day. Every day. The cold makes you mind still.
Yeah.
You cannot picnic. You cannot think about your words or about your mortgage or anything. You just.
You can't breathe. You have to focus.
Yeah. And so you are surviving. And surviving is the same part as the emotion, the Deep emotion. So that was the only way to still. the influence, the emotion, creating all these bubbles in my head of the. And that's so my children made me survive. The cold healed me. And now.
How long did it take until you started to heal?
Oh, that took, I don't know, five to ten years.
Really? To heal the process?
Yeah.
To get it consciously to my mind. I think it It took me like a month to get a hold of this anxiety inside, something like that. And then from there I just kept on doing it, of course. And I loved it as I did it before, but now it had its absolute therapeutic power.
Had a purpose too, yeah.
Now look at this, Louis. Now we are, this happened in '95.
Wow.
It's 2018. It's like 23 years ago. And now I'm a dropout from school. But now I'm teaching the professors and the doctors in all the world that we have an ability to tap into the deepest part of the brain and solve all the matters related to mental disorders and having no control.
Wow.
And there is no pill, no medicine involved. It's your own awareness, your own power. And then you get into the cold and the breathing, and we skip the breathing and the cold at a certain moment. We get in our innate control by our mind the way the establishment doesn't like it, but the way we should have to confront ourselves with any stressor happening in the world to take care of our beloveds.
Yeah, well, the establishment doesn't like it because it's not making them money if you sell out.
That is the disease. That is the big disease, though, withholding. And I think making money, very nice. Great. But I don't want pills, I don't want medicine, I want happiness, strength and health. If you are happy, How much money do you need? You see? How much cars do you need? How much of this? If you are happy, you are happy. So if you are able to regulate your own mood and we found the compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomous processes in the brain related to emotion itself, I want it out there. I want professors and doctors Prove me wrong, guys, because we got it approved already in the science, but now we are with the establishment. So the establishment is there, it's very nice. You can make bridges and big buildings and all that and shoot people to the moon. Let's begin and start guaranteeing happiness, strength and health, because it's there.
Boom.
Yeah.
There, your work and my work Collide positively.
Absolutely, man. Can we do a three-minute breathing exercise? Yeah, yeah, sure. Together where you just can guide me and tell me what to do. And if someone's watching and if they only have three minutes a day to do some type of breathing exercise or a mindfulness exercise.
You could do it in four minutes.
Four minutes, okay.
You got a push-up exercise. This is what we do. and the push-up exercise vacuums the oxygen out of you. But first we're going to oxidize, we're going to alkalize the muscle tissue. And thus, when the muscle tissue is alkalized, it is the right chemical environment for the neuro performance, neurotransmitter to keep on going. Just to show it to yourself. Besides of that you get deeply into the autonomic nervous system within four minutes.
Let's do it.
Can we try it?
Yes.
Let's do it.
I'm going to ask you to do push-ups.
Okay.
Without air in the lungs.
Without air in the lungs.
Yes.
Yes.
And that is because before we are going to alkalize the blood and that goes into the muscle tissue and that.
Will.
Will create the right chemical environment for the neurotransmitter performance to keep on going. And what's the matter? I'm not breathing, got no air in my self and I keep on going. What is that? That is the alchemist. Well, that's you. Within four minutes thus you get so fast in your biochemistry and you hold your breath, which is consciousness, And thus the consciousness goes into the nervous system, into the depth, thought of by science, it's not possible. It's the atomic nervous system within four minutes. I think you have four minutes every day. And you know what?
You're gonna feel great.
Very nice.
So what do I do first? Do we breathe first? Do we do push-ups first? Do we...? No.
You know how many push-ups you normally do. Okay, keep that there and now that is your baseline.
Okay.
And now we're gonna do more push-ups without breathing. Is that possible? Hey, be the alchemist. He's gonna show and you're gonna feel. Okay. Relax. Relax body is able to to store up oxygen. Four minutes. Four minutes.
Recite or stand for this. Does it matter?
Oh, if you stand, you know, you can go directly into push up as you wish, as you feel.
Relax.
Okay, there you are. Pull in and let it go.
Pull in, let it go. Pull in, let it go. Get him up. Pull in. Let it go.
Keep on going. Pulley it.
Let it go. Pulley it. Let it go.
Pulley it.
Have one thing in mind. You give the best, you get the best.
There we are. Pulley it.
Lightheadedness, losing the body, tingling, whatever you feel, make it stronger. Breathe in. to it. Okay, 90-18. We are energizing the body, alkalizing the body. Muscle tissue is becoming alkaline. Go good. 40. Go good. Go good.
Go!
Ten! Nine!
Hey!
There you go! One thing in your mind. Give it all, you get it all. Be a mean machine. You are the alchemist. Four!
Three!
Two!
One.
Here comes the last one.
Put your hands.
Let it go. Stop. And go.
No breathing.
Let's go. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, go. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. 17, 18, 19, no enduro locks. 20, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Whenever you feel the urge to breathe, you can take a minute and keep on going. 35, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Seven, eight, nine, okay, 15, right off.
Oh man.
Well done. This is the way you get deeply into the autonomic nervous system and re-regulate the adrenal axis. It's all happening because he was not breathing and he became vacuumed within. Suddenly you gotta survive. What a thing we never do. and it's good for you. You feel, hey, you tell what you feel. Easy does it, easy does it. Well done, well done, well done, well done.
Oh man, I wish I didn't do chest this morning, but I did a full like chest.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
But it feels good, yeah. Yeah, I was feeling like tingly and lightheaded. Doing a breathing. Yeah, but then I felt like I had a lot of energy. when I was. Yeah. When I breathed all the way out, I was pushing. I felt like I had a lot of energy.
That's him.
That's him.
That's him. That's the alkalinity in the muscle tissue. And the performance neurotransmitter acetylcholine is able to go. And normally when it becomes sore, acetylcholine is not able to go anymore. And this could be altered for football or anything.
Sure. Do you recommend people do that four minute exercise every day?
Yes. Yes.
Where they do four minutes.
Everybody has four minutes, no excuse.
Should they do the exercise with push-ups or just the breathing by itself?
No, no.
With push-ups a lot better. Because you get the shit out of your system.
Really?
Yeah, I'm like sweating. Intoxifying it, yeah.
And you are, the adrenal axis is on. and that resets the body.
Yeah.
And that means you get into this natural biochemical state.
It's like a high.
Right on.
Yes.
Nice go.
Need to recover. Have you seen through the research and the science people applying this new way of breathing, or I guess old way of breathing? that people are able to do things like cure asthma or other respiratory problems through a healthier breathing technique. Have you seen this?
So, I've talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of these people, people who had had asthma for 50 years, who have been on bronchodilators, oral steroids. If you stay on oral steroids for too long, it starts impacting your bones, which is why increased risks of osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, I mean, it worsening asthma, it's bad news. And again, this is no, no controversy about this. But what do you do? You can't get off this stuff because then you'll die of an asthma attack. So this story was written about in the New York Times about how someone, he was a violin maker in Vermont, just started breathing in this different way, breathing within his metabolic needs instead of over breathing. Asthmatics over breathe all the time. They breathe through their mouth. he was able to get rid of oral steroids that he'd been on for decades. And he was going from 20 pumps of a bronchodilator to, I think, two a day. And I read this in the New York Times. So this is not a sketchy journal. And I said, what is going on here? So I spent months and months talking to the top researchers in this field. And a lot of people think that asthma, oh, I inherited it. There's nothing. It's an incurable disease. I can't do anything about it. I have to stay on these drugs. that is not true. If you look at the scientific literature and if you look at these people who have done NIH studies into asthma and breathing and what a huge impact it's going to have, I want to be perfectly clear. I am not a doctor. I'm not a breathing therapist. Okay? I'm not saying go ditch your bronchodilators. No, I'm saying that you should. If you have asthma, it would be worth your time to explore how breathing can help benefit you, how it can help blunt the symptoms, but don't do anything per this advice. I just put that big label on there.
Of course. And what would you say are some best practices from your research when our nasal passages are congested? How do we, we can't breathe through your nose for five days for whatever reason. What's the strategy there? Have you heard anyone share that?
So some people, their noses are so messed up, they need surgical interventions. Absolutely. But for the majority of us, including me, I was a perfect candidate for surgery, right? Broken this nose about four times, basketball, surfing, like, I'm a complete mess, but I wanted to see what my body could do. And I was able to restore so much of that damage through breathing to open up these passageways. So a nice trick, if you are congested, is to exhale and you hold your breath and you hold your nostrils and you move your head back and forth, you move your head up and down until you feel a significant need to breathe. Then you calmly exhale through your nose and inhale again and then wait about 45 seconds to a minute and do that same thing over again. So what you're doing is you are increasing that magical molecule, carbon dioxide, which is a vasodilator, which helps to open your nose. So, there's a lot of YouTube tutorials on this and it's free.
Right.
So, first, close your nose, then exhale, or exhale, then close your nose.
You can exhale, then close your nose.
Get all the air out of first, then close your nose, go up and down, side to side. Then exhale more or then inhale.
You can inhale through your nose from that.
Then inhale through your nose.
If it's still congested, just be very calm about this. Don't just calmly inhale and try that again. Patrick McKeown, who's been doing this stuff for 20 years, has a lot of free tutorials on YouTube.
He seems pretty fascinating with his research. Yeah.
This guy is someone who had severe asthma. severe health problems, was getting no help from anyone, figured out how to breathe, now has zero symptoms of asthma and is teaching thousands of asthmatics what he did. He was a business guy, right? He had no intention of doing this in his life, took a hard left turn into this world. So he's scientific, he's a great practitioner, he healed himself through it. So it's worth listening to him.
For those who struggle with extreme anxiety or panic attacks, it seems like more and more people are dealing with anxiety and panic attacks. What's the easiest way to calm down using breathing that you've discovered?
Slow your breathing down. So there was a study about 10 years ago, NIH study by Alicia Merrett down at Southern Methodist University. She went to Harvard and Stanford, and she gathered a bunch of different people who were suffering from panic. and she just had them slow down their breathing and increase their CO2 levels. I know I keep saying CO2, but this is the stuff, people. And something like 96% of these people a year after the study concluded said they were much improved or very much improved. The majority of them stopped having panic attacks because what happens when we're panicked? Okay, I'm sitting here with you. Oh, I feel claustrophobic. the more you breathe like that, the more you're going to exacerbate and hasten that attack. So when you feel it coming on, you don't stop and take a deep breath. You stop and take a slow and light breath into your lungs, right? And control your body and control your breathing. And this is such a profound effect on people. and again, that study, it was published in top scientific journal, it's available for everyone. I find it so bizarre and I should mention that my father-in-law is a pulmonologist, my brother-in-law is an ER doc. I'm a huge fan of Western medicine, but it's so bizarre that people with panic, people with asthma, no one's looking at how they're breathing, right? They're given these pills and powders and put on their way and The science is very clear on this stuff. It can have a really profound effect.
Does the mind or thoughts when we're in a panic or stressed or fight or flight moment, does the mind or thoughts influence the breathing or does the breathing influence the mind?
Great question. It goes both ways. So what you're thinking is going to influence how you're breathing. But the wonderful thing is sometimes you can't take control of those thoughts, right? you get nervous, you can't turn that off, but you can take control of your breathing. And 80% of the messages are coming from the body to the brain, not to the brain, not from the brain to the body. So just by allowing yourself, think whatever you want to think, but slow down your breathing to the way that you would be breathing when you're calm and you will start shooting calming messages into your brain.
Interesting.
Take control of those states. and this is something that Huberman has been studying for years down at Stanford, right, with the phrenic nerve and the way that the diaphragm moves, how that diaphragm moves is gonna affect the signals that your brain is gonna get and is gonna affect how you're gonna be processing things.
How the diaphragm moves.
So, the diaphragm is this amazing muscle that sits underneath the lungs. The lungs don't inflate and deflate themselves, right? They need something to do it. So, we have this crazy muscle. It looks like a parachute or an umbrella that when we breathe in, that diaphragm goes down. And when we breathe out, that diaphragm goes up. So this rhythmic motion of this diaphragm, the diaphragm works as a pump. Some researchers have said the heart is a secondary pump. The diaphragm is the main pump. So when you're, when your diaphragm is going like this, It is sending panic signals to your brain. This is like, you know, red alert. Things are bad. But if your diaphragm is going like this, this is sending calming signals, right?
So it's almost like you could be stressed out in your mind, but the moments or moments you start to slow your breathing, it's going to send signal back to your mind that everything's better. You don't need to stress as much. So you, if you can control your body, you'll control your mind.
So guess what Navy SEALs do before they go in for some black ops mission, really intense stuff, they start breathing in a box pattern. Four in, hold four, exhale four, hold four, four in, hold four, imagine a box. If you look at what's happening there, you're in for four, but you are holding or exhaling for three quarters of the time. So the longer you hold and the longer you exhale, the more you're going to be eliciting that parasympathetic that calming response. So these guys aren't going to sleep, right? They're trying to focus themselves to be the biggest badasses on the planet, right? To go take care of business in an efficient way. They can't have their brains just all over the place.
What?
What are you saying? Panic. They can't panic. They're dead. So this is a technique that anyone can use. I mean, the vast majority of us aren't going to be in that. to scenario, but we can breathe the way that they breathe and that so many other people do to focus our thoughts, to take, take advantage of our breathing, to take over certain states, anxiety or anger.
Can you explain why the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart?
So the diaphragm again is this huge pump. It's almost like the heart is a sump pump, right? It's just doing all the other work, just the additional work. But the diaphragm is enormous. and as you're breathing in and out, it is pumping blood. Okay? It is helping to pump blood, but it does something else. A lot of people view breathing as just a biochemical act, right? Getting oxygen in, getting CO2 out. It is a biomechanical act. So when the diaphragm goes down, it also softly massages the organs, which helps us leach out more lymph fluid. So it is the pump. for lymph fluid. So, everything in the body should be moving. You can think about it like a pond gets scummy, right? And a lot of stuff starts growing it because it's still water. That's not what happens with a river. And our bodies want to act like a river. Things are static for too long, does not like that. That's where problems occur.
What's better for the body and your health? Chest breathing, or lower belly breathing? Where is the diaphragm sitting? Is it in between the two? Is it a mixture of both?
So, a lot of us are chest breathing throughout the day. And when we chest breathe, this is associated with a sympathetic or fight or flight response. What happens when you get scared? But instead, people are doing this all day. So, when you breathe like that, a sympathetic response, it's amazing. This is what has kept our species alive. It focuses us, it shifts blood from less important organs to the heart and the skeletal muscles so we can like fight or we can run. But it's meant only to be in that state for short amounts of time. So if we stay in the sympathetic chest breathing state for too long, we are cutting off other organs and a bunch of problems. can happen in those organs because of that. I won't go down the laundry list, just trust me on this. So to answer your question, you want to breathe lightly, fluidly, and deeply. This does not mean you have to just go for it every breath and push out your stomach. It means you should be breathing through your nose. Nasal breathings are deeper, okay? These go to the lower lobes. At the bottom of the lungs is where we have the largest perfusion of blood. So that's where oxygen exchange can happen much more efficiently. So light, slow and deep, that's how we should be breathing.
And less.
Ordinarily you would say breathe in line with your metabolic needs, but I'm saying for the vast majority, less is, that's your metabolic needs.
Gotcha. And is it true that our lungs get smaller as we age? And if so, can breathing practices prevent this? from allowing us to have more expansive lungs.
So what happens from ages around 30 to 50, you're gonna lose about 15 to 16% of your lung capacity.
Oh man, that sucks.
After 50, it just goes down very, very quickly.
That sucks.
The problem, well, there's good news behind this. I'm gonna depress you, then I'm gonna inspire you back to it. So the problem is, our ribs get a lot less flexible, our intercostals get less flexible. But what's great about this is you can reverse that damage. Guess what yoga does? I'm gonna have you reach your arm like this, breathe into this lung, and be flexible, and now breathe into this lung. So yoga is essentially just allowing us not only to maintain our lung capacity, but increase it. I've worked with free divers who have doubled their lung capacity.
So doubled.
Average adult male, six liters. This guy had 12 liters. So I think he had, he was abnormally large. I won't say quite doubled, maybe 40, you know, it's 70% larger. So it's not uncommon to increase your lung capacity 30% by, by including these exercises. by breathing properly. And especially when we get older, this is so important. We don't want to go down that entropy, right? And we at least want to sustain it if we can increase it.
Great.
What's the benefit to increasing our lung capacity?
It's the same benefit of having a larger gas tank in a car, right? So if you're driving cross country, do you want to stop and fill up every hour or do you want to stop and fill up every Six hours. Right. So, by having larger lungs allows you to take fewer breaths and to get more oxygen with those breaths. It's about being efficient. So, when we're breathing slower and when we're breathing deeply into our lungs at our metabolic need, our heart can work so much more softly. We aren't overworking it. When we're breathing twice the amount into our chest, Just feel your heart rate when you do that. The heart hates this. Why do you want to overwork your heart? It should just be doing what it needs to do, not compensating for your bad habits. And that's what this larger lung capacity, this softer lower breathing allows you to do.
Is there anything that you've learned and that doctors or scientists are saying is essential for us as human beings to practice that you Don't practice. For instance, I know sugar is horrible. I know it's the root of all evil in the body and developing cancers and all these things. But I love sugar. You know, I'm better at it. The more I know how horrible it is for me, I'm better at balancing that. But I still love to eat sugar, you know? Is there anything that you're like, these things I should never do, but I still do it because it's just a bad habit.
Well, you're talking to a guy who just had a big old chunk of chocolate before I.
Good thing you don't have it. Good thing you're not with me right now, because. I'd be sharing that with you.
I'm with you on that. You know, it's, I think it's a little ironic in a lot of wellness circles, people are so stressed out about doing the right thing all the time that they're miserable. To me, the point of wellness is to live a happier and longer life. So why do you want to spend all your time beating yourself up for eating a piece of chocolate or drinking a beer, you know? so I think in moderation is key. These breathing practices like Wim Hof Method, Sudarshan Kriya, they've been found to be so effective for people with autoimmune problems, asthma, anxiety, depression, but just breathing those slow and easy breaths, there are so many benefits to that. And psychologists and psychiatrists have used this for people with anxiety and depression. as well. So, having said that, as long as you have this foundation of healthy breathing, just like with diet, as long as you have a foundation where you're eating a lot of vegetables, right? You're not eating a lot of highly processed carbs or not too much sugar, you can have a piece of cake, you can drink a beer, you can have a glass of wine. That's all fine. The same thing with breathing. If you're laughing really hard and you're breathing out of your mouth, who would tell you that's a bad thing, right? I'm talking about the habits, habitual breathing, the 90% of the day, even 80% of the day. If you adhere to healthy habits there, it's gonna have a downstream positive effect on your health. And the science, the studies, the data has really shown us that.
I was just trying to practice this as I was listening to you. Is there a way to communicate and speak, but also breathe through your nose? Like while you're having a long speech for an hour on stage, Do we practice breathing through the nose or out of the nose while you're speaking? I'm not even sure. Is that possible?
There is, but it's so awkward. And, I'll tell you what I mean by that. When I was talking to these breathing therapists, some of these people on the phone, I thought like they had some problems with their brain because they would say this very fluid sentence and they would keep talking and they're still talking, they're still talking. Then they would go silent and go, and now I'm gonna talk some more and talk some more.
So, it's not natural, yeah.
If I did that on a radio interview or with you, it would be a freaking disaster. So, as you can see, I'm breathing through my mouth, right? I'm trying to breathe through my nose when I'm listening, but these aren't healthy breathing habits, but I'm aware of it so that when I'm off this call, I can go and close my mouth and breathe through my nose. the rest of the time. So, to answer your question, there is a proper way of doing this, but good luck with your friends if you- yeah, right.
Unless you're all breathing experts and you're part of the same language.
And, I've talked to circles of- the conversations are really trippy.
It's like, come on.
It's like someone gave you nitrous oxide. I knew a nitrous oxide was going to come back into that.
So, that's hilarious. Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. I read a quote somewhere, you probably know the quote, the real quote. Something about if you master your breath, you have the strength of ten tigers or something like that. Is that the quote? Have you heard that before?
I'm not sure, but that sounds like.
Dow quote, that's like, learn to master your breath, you have the strength of ten tigers.
It's true.
Crazy, right?
It's real.
Why is breathing so important in our, not in, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs here, but in our existence, yes, in our lives.
I mean, you know, and I've been fortunate to be exposed to a couple different forms of breathing. And of course, you know, when you're in the ocean or in the water, breath is ever important.
Yeah, yeah.
Because you're, you know, your relationship with grounding. But, you know, lately I've been kind of studying under this guy Wim Hof who does all this breath training. But the thing that you realize is that your spirit or your soul is connected to your breath. And that when you, you know, like when a baby takes its first breath is when it the spirit comes into the body, just like when the breath stops, so does the spirit leave. So if you really want to get into like a kind of a little bit, you know, deeper conversation, it's a connection to your soul or your spirit. It's a, you have a, and then it's, you know, obviously mandatory for life. Exactly. Breath is the way we get oxygen, oxygen is essential for living. So it's all about breathing at the end. And then, and then we know through, you know, cardio vascular activities and any kind of exertion, it's all about breathing. I mean, breathing is, is your fuel. That's your energy, that's your power when you're not, you know, eating food and digesting and drinking water. But, you know, oxygen is the, is the thing that ultimately fires every cell in your body.
So that's your, you know, so if you've been practicing breathing strategies or techniques or working on your breath for since you've been surfing and swimming the ocean for your whole life, have you been doing that or is it more in the last year you said you started to dive in and really practice it now?
Well, it's been the last year or last year or so that I've really focused on isolation of the breath. I've been exposed to some yoga breathing and some types of yoga breathing over the years, but I haven't been so disciplined and consistent with it like I have been the last year and a half or two. And so, you know, that's, but I indirectly have been doing it anyway.
Sure.
Because first of all, when you swim.
You have to when you're swimming.
Swimming is a breathing rhythm. Being in the water, you always have to hold your breath. So you have a relationship with your breath if you do any kind of diving or free diving. I mean, you already have established a A deeper relationship than normal people.
Yeah, yeah.
Because normally people aren't, they don't even think about breathing. They're not even, you know, they're not even conscious.
If you want to become a better swimmer or better in the water, whatever sport you're doing, you have to master your breath at some level.
Absolutely.
So you're getting better just by practicing it.
Yeah, it's a byproduct of you doing it without even being conscious of it. and then when you do some heavy circuits or other types of intense training, you know what the breath is all about. I mean, usually the breath is what dictates the failure. At a certain point when you're out of breath and you're behind, you look at any endurance athlete or any fighter, as soon as they start mouth breathing, everybody will say, oh, they're finished.
Their body can't.
They're done. Yeah, they're done. They're gonna say they're done.
So, what have you learned about yourself in the last two years after essentially 40 years of breathing strategies and mastering your breath now into actually diving into these new strategies? What's opened up for you? What's been available for your body, your mind, your relationships, your health, your businesses when mastering this new way of breathing?
I think it just, I think it definitely brings a certain amount of control over your system that you didn't have. You have a sensitivity to-- you- have.
More control now in these last two years than you did for 40 prior years studying this?
For sure.
Wow.
Just because of the sequencing of breathing and the way the body reacts to it. And, you know, when you get into-- it's like any any form of training, you know, you, you, when you put stress on the system, then the system adapts. That's just, that's how our system, that's how it works. I mean, evolution is because there's stress on a situation. So there's a, there's an adaptation and then we evolve and, and, and, you know, so by, but when you start stressing the body through the breathing, then it adapts and becomes more efficient and you start to get control of you. you find that you can breathe yourself into real calmness. You can find you can use the energy to bring your energy up and make you more aggressive or more powerful. You can control your lactic acid threshold. It seems somewhat boundless.
It's crazy. I'll just reiterate what happened for those that obviously they weren't here. There's probably 10 of us outside. I walked in, you guys were already doing the breathing. And then we took us outside on your pool deck. We started breathing in within about 45 seconds, I thought I was going to pass out. You're like, okay, you're going to breathe in a certain way and I'll have you demonstrate this for a second. You're going to breathe in a certain way and you don't want to hyperventilate, but close to it. And I remember my whole body was like tingling. We're laying on our backs and my whole body tongue was tingling. I was like, I might pass out if I push this. Yeah. Because I was dizzy, I was lightheaded. I was like, it's early morning here. Like, where am I? Up in Malibu. For sure. And it was intense. And we did it for, I was like, yeah, okay, maybe this is like a 10-15 minute thing. Warm up for the real workout.
Yeah.
We did an over an hour, I felt like, for sure. A breathing. For sure. It was one of the most intense things I've ever done, one of the most intense workouts.
And I've played, you know, high level sports in three different sports. Absolutely.
It was insane.
But that's, I guess that's really the point. The point is, is that you can, you know, you can just be not moving and put the system through an intensity that is more intense than moving all the parts. And, and, and I think that's, again, part of the mastery of it. Like, when, you know, you know, because we, you know, we're so trained in, to believe that, that that working out is something that you know, you bang iron and you run and you bang and you and it's all this hammering and then we have to feel sore and feel like someone punched you to feel like that was a good workout. Oh yeah, me too. You know, can you walk? I can't walk, I can't walk either. You know, it's like that and we consider that to be good training. When you can go into a situation where you're almost sedentary, you're laying there, you know, and then and then maybe we make you do a couple push-ups and then you just go to a whole 'nother place. You know, it just, it kind of shines a light on really what is training and what is working out and what is being in shape and what is, you know, all of that that we, that we have, you know, we try to box up, we try to package and say, well, this is it. And we have a pretty good, you know, mindset about what we think it is. All of a sudden something like that comes along and you're like, well actually we don't know what it is, but they really feed each other. Those systems are all, you know, they're all feeding each other. Your body doesn't really know the difference. If you could implement strict breathing, it doesn't know the difference between that and you running and forcing your body to breathe hard. At the end, your body's like, okay, well I need oxygen for whatever reason it is. either because I don't have it or because I'm burning it off, but at the end, it needs it, it needs it, doesn't need to know why. And so then you have to get it. How do I get it? I got to do it through the breathing. And so you can, if you're disciplined, I mean, we learned, because we were doing these altitude mask trainings, so we.
Have these special masks.
But they weren't not the restriction mask, but an actual mask that simulates altitude. And you put these resistors on it, and it's a process that they developed for Russian fighter jet pilots. Before they had pressurized cabins, they'd send these guys up and they'd fly up to 15,000 feet and all of a sudden they'd just burrow in and they're like, well, what's wrong? Well, they're not acclimated to the altitude. So how do we acclimate them? How do we acclimate thousands of them in a short period of time? And so they developed this mask system with these restrictors. And what you do is you wear an oximeter that tells your, tells you where your blood levels are. So you can see where the blood level is and you're supposed to get your blood level down to like 70% oxygen and you stay there for three minutes and then you come back out. It takes three minutes to get there and you do that six times and then you do that once a day and then within a couple months you.
Can build up to it and you.
Can go to 20,000 feet and you're like, no problem.
You're fine.
But you realize that we can implement that same thing just by controlling your breathing and by restricting it and you don't even need you don't even need this thing, but it takes the discipline and it takes the time.
Yeah, it took, you know, we had.
An hour of it.
It was like, yeah, yeah. The interesting thing was I was doing it and I realized that I wasn't focused on anything else in my life. I wasn't, you know, it came up in a couple moments. I was like, oh, what about that thing that I stressed about yesterday and about this relationship issue I have and about my business? But then it was like, you're going through so much in your body, you have to be in the moment present of your breath that you can't stress about something else, which was so valid. I was like, wow, I just did an hour of meditation, essentially.
Meditation. And it's actually, and that's the whole thing with, you know, when a lot of Wim Hof's training, the Iceman's training has to do with, and this is, you know, because I've been exposed to different forms of meditation, this is a mechanical meditation system.
Yeah.
Where you can actually implement process to meditate, not an ethereal process. Not something where you have to kind of, you know, where you get to a swami and he tells you to go to this thing and you know, and from my scientific practical mindset where I come from, it doesn't work. I can't get there. It's like, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's great. But when tell me, breathe this many times. Exhale, hold, you know, breathe again. Exhale, hold. You're going to see this mentality. You're going to feel this madly.
Yeah.
That's, I'm coming from, you know, I'm coming from math. I'm coming from practical, like, you know, this does that, that does this, you know, I need that. I can't be, it can't be too ethereal for me. Some people actually excel in the ethereal, but I, I don't, I'm not, that's not the way my mind, you need to be in your body more. -That's right. -Yeah. And this is a way to that it's allowed me to do some meditation that first of all, I didn't know it was possible. And I'm like, wow. That's what they're talking about when the guy, you know, I probably experienced some things that it takes somebody, you know, 10 or 15 years or more to from being taught by a guy in Tibet to even get near.
-You'Re getting into it in three to six months by practicing it and being in your body. Not just being in your head.
Well, the presence, like you said, all of a sudden you're in a spot where you aren't thinking about any, there's nothing else. You can't. You can't.
It won't allow you.
There were a couple moments I think.
When we were just relaxing for like 10 seconds. You'll drift for a second. And then you're like, okay, here's the breathing exercise. So if you can, let's maybe do like 15 to 20 seconds of what someone could practice at home in a safe environment. Yeah. Because you were pushing us pretty hard. Yeah. And maybe you weren't, but for me as a newbie, I was like, oh.
This is the real deal. Yeah, well you need to go into it slowly. I mean, you know, you can go online and get a course from Wim. Like, he has an incredible online program. You know, basically the foundation of it really has to do with a, I call it a circle breath. And I don't even, you know, I'm an amateur, but I know that that, that, you know, I look at it as a circle breath in the sense of that the in and the out are similar.
Yeah.
And then it's really, it's a rhythm and it's almost like hyperventilation, but not that because hyperventilation takes a lot of energy and you're short breathing.
So what does hyperventilation look like?
Hyperventilation is more like like that where you start to, where you'll get, you were not really getting, you're kind of, you you can get a CO2 buildup, which happens, which makes you all, you know, I mean, you can pass out doing any kind of breathing, you know, or lack thereof.
Yeah.
But this breathing is more like.
Like.
If you think about pumping something up, like how you pump a raft up or how you, or you blow a balloon up, you know, you blow a balloon up, like.
Right.
So in that kind of a rhythm and it really is about oxygenation, right? It's about getting oxygen into the system in a very efficient way and full saturation. And then from there, and you'll get, you know, you'll have all these, you know, sensations. Like you said, you feel your body tingle. You'll have weird things on your lips or ears.
I was getting lightheaded. I thought I was gonna pass out.
But those are totally normal, normal things.
What'S the purpose of oxygen oxygenating your body? What's that purpose?
What's that do for the body once it's complete? Well, I mean, ultimately, it definitely will allow you to work harder, you know, so that if you implement, like, like, for example, you can do, you know, when in WIM's program, you do these push-ups and you do them just with normal breathing, and then he has you sit there, and then you oxygenate your system and you exhale and hold your breath and do push-ups and you more push-ups on an exhale breath hold than you did while you were breathing.
Breathing. So you could do more push-ups completely letting go and then holding it, not taking a breath in and pushing, you can do more push-ups than if you were breathing. Yes. How is that even possible? Because women need the oxygen.
They do, but the fact is that you've saturated your system with a volume of oxygen that you normally don't get. get when you just normal breathe and do an activity. And that's really what it's about, right? It's about you understanding that the oxygen that you store in your system is greater than the one you're getting. And to get more because also you have to remember it takes energy to breathe. So when you add an activity with breathing, then now it takes energy just to do the breathing. and because our breathing isn't very efficient, we're not absorbing enough when you compound that with the amount of energy it takes to do the activity. Right. So yeah, the breathing energy, the energy it takes to do the activity, and then you're behind. And that's why you, I mean, ultimately the muscles don't fail because they're failing.
They'Re just not getting the oxygen they need. I mean, we were like, those of.
Us who had shirts on, you know, were dripping in sweat. Absolutely. Just breathing. Absolutely. And it's not even that hot out right now. I know, I know. It's all, it's counterintuitive. You look at you're like, oh yeah, and again, you know, to have the discipline to be able to do it and implement an hour of breathing and realize that you're really getting an incredible workout, you know, it's, that's part of, that's part of the process. I think that's part of it, is to teach you that, that, and, you know, at a certain point, you know, you either have to be exposed to people that are doing it or you have to be at maturity level to handle it because you know our normal mindset, you know we just gotta grind away at stuff and it's because that's actually an easier way to approach things. It's easier just to go, I'm gonna get on my bike and I'm gonna ride for you know two hours or I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna grab this weight and I'm just gonna bang this weight or I'm gonna sprint back and forth across this field. It's another thing to go, okay I'm.
Gonna go lay down, it's more discipline.
Than do what we did.
Exactly.
Which is the irony of it, right? It almost takes more discipline to do nothing than it does to do something. But that's the irony.
But that's kind of the irony of the story. It's interesting because I was so grateful that you were facilitating it for us because it was my first time.
I don't know if there were other guys first time there. Yeah, a couple of the couple of guys.
I think they've made done it once or something. Yeah, yeah. And it was interesting because I was just so I was like, you know, did we, you made it so comfortable for us.
Yeah.
At least for me. You're like, you know, it's okay, you don't have to do the same pace as everyone else. If you need to breathe, you can take a break. For sure. And I really appreciated how you were facilitating that, you know, you become like a master of teaching it.
Through doing it yourself, it sounds like. Well, but also that's a approach that I think that I've already always had. I think that that's a little bit how I work in my, and it's not something that people perceive of me because of what I do. They think they're gonna come and get hammered. and that's not the way I approach things. Have you read Natural Born Heroes?
Not yet.
So, Natural Born Heroes is a phenomenal book, but there's a big, for me it was biblical because it was like the philosophies of some of the guys in the book, like the guys that are like fitness natural, that were all about training in nature, but they were also all about no competition. They were against competition because they felt like that it really was a restriction of elevation of everybody's individual thing. And because of my kind of lack of because of my approach to competition that I always feel like, you know, that a lot of our evolution gets held back because we protect information because it's really about I'm going to try to beat you. So if I know something that I think I can beat you with, I won't tell you because then you'd have it too and I wouldn't be able to beat you. But if my objective is to make you be as good as you can be and I'm gonna try to be as good as I can be, I will be like, you can't believe this, try this. And so that's more how I approach things and I think because of especially like in big wave riding when we've gone out and done the things we've done, that it has to do with the fact that we've done it with camaraderie. We've done it with community. And really the evolution of man, if you looked at why man survived was because of that, that that was the way we behaved. And it was only when we became so populated and so dense did we create competition was more out of entertainment. That really competition was designed for entertainment. That's why we have competition. And at the end fighting and all these things that we have, they're not real fighting because real fighting doesn't last very long and it's very brutal. And it would be It would never be, you wouldn't watch it on TV and it wouldn't be something that you wouldn't just do it unless you were planning on actually killing a person.
Yeah.
And there's also this thing about the, you know, that everybody being able to do it, like true arts, true fighting or true activities are meant that a child should be able to do it and an old person should be able to do it to make it something that really is for the species.
Yeah.
So again, these are all kind of deep ingrained ways of approaching it. But that's how I always, I never approach it like, Hey, I'm going to hammer you. Now, if people come with the attitude like, Hey, I can do this, then I might subject them to something. But that will be only because that's what they're asking for. If somebody comes to me with in confidence like, Hey, I'm going to give myself to you. Take care of me. I'm always going to do that. Because I think that, I mean, it has to do with how I grew up and where we are in dealing with heavy situations. The situations are heavy enough. I don't need to, we don't need to do anything. I don't need to go and see how long you can hold your breath. Because what's that gonna do? That doesn't do anything. And the bottom line is that you can destroy anybody. I don't care who you are. I can stack more weights. I can make you hold your breath longer. I mean, it's like the stretch is deeper. breath holdings, everything can always be, you know, you can always create something that's undoable.
Yeah.
It's more about creating something that's doable and how high far can we push that? How, how, you know, and again, individually push your barrier, you know, and it's interesting because it's, that's total Wim Hof philosophy. That's total, that's total, you know, natural born heroes philosophy. Like I see it and you start to see it, you know, and in a way, that's that Tough Mudders philosophy, that Spartan Race philosophy. I mean, these are all about getting the collective through. And ultimately, that really is the most primal system because that's how we made it. Because without each other in our evolution, what match are we against, you know, all the things in the world. We're no match.
It's kind of like together. Yeah, it's kind of like, Nobody wins unless we all win.
That's right. Nobody survives unless we all survive. And so in a way, I mean, it doesn't mean I don't like healthy competition and the fun of a little paddleboard race or some boxing match or something. My competition concept really used to be more like, or should I say, is more related to like, okay, you want to compete with me and you think you're you're courageous, well then we'll go to a big cliff and we'll just keep going up until one of us doesn't jump and whoever jumps higher is the winner.
It's because I always thought that that.
Was a real defined... Through courage. Courage. Yeah, wow. For me, I go, that's... For me, I go, you want to really talk about, you know, you want true competition, we have competition with courage. And I think that's part of the process that brought me to riding giant waves, that I thought, well, if I ride the biggest waves in the world and I bigger ways than anybody else has ever ridden. And most of the ways I ride, no one wants to ride.
That kind of puts me in a unique position.
Yeah.
That's your own. That puts me like, you know, and, and, I mean, it's the, I always.
Love the term, the victory through attrition.
Through attrition.
What's that?
What do you mean? The last guy standing. That at the end, you don't even need to be any good.
Right.
If you're the last guy and everybody else is laid out. Sure. You know, in the 300, when there's.
Only one guy standing. Yeah, right.
You'Re the winner.
It's interesting. And through that approach, you can give all your secrets away. You can give all the information away. It's still who's got the most courage.
That's right.
So you can just be as good as me technically. All the information you need. But are you willing to go above and beyond?
That's right. Me. That's right. And then it becomes a skill thing.
Yeah.
So then you add skill to that, too. So that as an added element of. Because you know what? There's always some crazy guy who'll do anything stupid, too.
So then.
But then will they survive? So then, which. Again, that's part of the board. But again, it's part about the survival thing where like, yeah, the guy might be able to go higher, but if you go up to a cliff and.
Then the guy jumps higher than you.
And he dies, he doesn't win. He doesn't win. And you still are, you're still, you went higher, right? So again, it has to do with, it has to do with, you have to still have, you can't have the element of who's the craziest because there's, because you got a skill. Yeah. You got to have, there has to be, and you also have to have understanding. you have to have experience to know where the line is, where the, or your line is.
Yeah.
Where your line is.
Right.
Because you always have somebody that's willing to be a little bit reckless or crazier. But then can they do that? Can they come back? I mean, just saying you're in and you're out.
All right. I would have punched someone who told.
Me to exercise if I had the strength to punch someone who told me to exercise. So I understand what it can be like. to be in a physical state of depression or grief, where every cell in your motor system is saying, don't move, making it impossible to even get to put one foot in front of the other.
More from Lewis
Secret Service Agent: Your Neutral Face Is Making People Distrust You (Here's How to Fix It)
