This Trick REDUCES STRESS, ANXIETY & BUILDS Your Immune System | Wim Hof & Lewis Howes

Use food well, and it's Madison. Use food wrong, it kills you. I mean, the food problem in the world could be solved through this, what I'm going to tell you right now.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. We have got my dear friend Wim Hof in the house. Wim, how you doing, man?

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Louis?

I'm so excited, man. You've been on the show a number of times now. For those that don't know who you are, you're a Dutch extreme athlete and you got the nickname the Iceman by breaking all these crazy records to cold exposure. And I got to go to Poland with you earlier this year before the pandemic. It was kind of the last thing that anyone really did in person. And we got to have this incredible five-day experience with you I brought 13 guys over from the US and Canada. Incredible time. We all bonded, opened up in a big way. And the thing I want to talk about first, which we mentioned before we jumped on here, is trauma and your work, the Wim Hof Method and what you do, really helps people break down the trauma so that they can open up and live a freer life. And this is something that you experienced with your previous wife, you dealt with a lot of traumatic events as an adult with your wife who passed away. How important in your mind is it in healing trauma from the past in order to set ourselves free?

Yeah, exactly. So when I lost my wife in '95, and that was because they called her schizophrenic, and a psychic disorder and mental disorder and bipolar and manic-depressed, but they could not heal her. With all the pills, all the medicines, all the injections, all the therapy, it just went downhill. And I had a family with her, but I saw the darkness growing, growing, growing, growing. I was helpless. I was helpless. I could not do anything while looking at the love of my life slipping out of my existence, of my presence, my being as a father of four children with her, meant to be all my life with her. And there she was. She kissed the children goodbye. before she jumped from eight stories down. And that was a beautiful woman, very alive, but the darkness was too big and the psychiatry could not do anything. So I was left behind and I had four children, had very little money. What do you got to do? You got to jump on the train of every day. You got to create, survive for your kids, but then the cold, cold water makes your mind still. You remember when we were in the cold water, we had kind of fun. But if you do that on your own, in freezing water, you are like silent. You don't picnic. You cannot feel your grief or other emotions than survive. Survival is what I did. And going into the water made my mind grieving mind still. That was a opportunity for my body to relax and to heal, find healing.

And.

And this I kept on doing because it worked so well. So I got a lot of energy out of it. Because once the pressure is out, you can jump around and do it all. The grief is gone, the misery is gone, the depression is gone. You feel for the first time with an absolute control within yourself. Because if you feel he's running marathons beyond the polar circle, let's test him out on the Mount Everest in shorts. Let's do this, let's do that television. Really, it's crazy. They challenge you more and more and more. But I had learned how to deal with my emotional trauma. The cold did it.

I feel like a lot of people are dealing with emotional trauma more and more right now with the pandemic and just everything that's happening. A lot more people are feeling symptoms of depression, grief, trauma, anxiety. Do you think They should start with the Wim Hof method if they're feeling that and they've never tried it, or is it too dangerous to get started if you're in a dark place?

Good question. Good question. Do I think we are doing the studies right now? One in Detroit on bipolar people, and they have success. And now one in San Francisco on depression. and the DNA. And then I gotta say, depression is getting a depression if you do this. If you do this method, which is a simple method, accessible for free, it's there. We develop a free app for that. And every month we pay a lot of money to develop better accessibility, et cetera. It's all for free. You don't need anything of me, of my company. You just go and take on the free app and you will see it is very effective against depression and inflammation. Boom. There it is.

If people expose themselves to cold or do the breathing technique, the Wim Hof breathing technique, how long until people start to experience change or how we will- Directly.

Directly.

Directly.

Instantly, within a half hour. And I say to the people in favor for, or just skip to talking, do it. Do it once. And if it doesn't work, then you can call me a liar. But you will say otherwise. because I'm sure of that.

How important is it to focus on eating healthy and having nutritious foods in your life while doing the Wim Hof breathing or cold therapy? Is it enough to do the breathing and the cold therapy and eat poorly and still be okay or do you really need to eat well also while you're doing this?

No, food needs to be food. You know, food in our society is so much processed. There are chemicals which our physiology is not able to handle. So it takes a lot of energy for our cell biological processes to get rid of the additives of the oxidation, the numbers, the E numbers, whatever they make. they put into the food, it's not food. So first of all, let food be food. That's number one. Then two, very important in the times when we had to look for our food, we got alerted within our bodies and mind. Our eyes became bigger, we became more alert, Where is food? Hey, I gotta go. Then that's upon your mind. Your mind is being alerted through the sensation inside your body. Your body is talking to you. It says, food, food, food, food. Oh yeah, where is it? And when you do that, then you appreciate food. Then you value food. It's spiritual. It's knowing that you've got to do something for your food. Nowadays when we can go to restaurants, I mean, I don't know with the lockdown, it's artificial, but you know, you can get anything just following your mind. They think, I need breakfast, I need lunch, I need dinner, I need something in between. It's all in the mind, but people do not feel anymore when they need food. They are no longer talking to their body and the body is no longer talking to them. And then comes the problem. The alienation from yourself is the alienation into food and it doesn't give the right nutrition. So you keep on eating, obesity is a big problem, Because people just do not know what food is anymore. The connection is gone. What I say to those people: okay, let food be food. That's one. Two: feel that you need food. Feel it. Just once a day it will come naturally. Wait until this feeling of food appetite is really coming. Because what happens at the same time, simultaneous, you get a neurological revision of the body. Once you become more alert, that's a revision of the whole neurology of your body. That is spirituality at the same time. It's all, it's life. Food is life. Let life be food.

When did you fully feel like you had command over your mindset? went over your mind? Was it after years of practicing this cold therapy and healing the past? Was it pretty quickly when you started doing this? When did you feel like you have full command over your minds? And what was the thing that switched that? Or do you feel like you don't have that yet?

Yes. No, I. I got it. I got it. The thing is, in the beginning, when I was young, I was looking for the meaning of life. and I can tell you, I skip a lot of stories now, but I found it in the cold. Because the cold shows you who you are and what you are in an instant. If you go into the cold water, it's like, yeah, that's you. That's you. The life force itself here, shattered. Be in control, in peace, in power. Because this is nature talking to you. There are no words. That's being, pure being. So I found that when I was 17, going into the cold, I was floating in the cold, playing a little bit with a thin layer of ice, I felt the power inside. I knew this is it. This was something more deeper and something I was looking for through debate philosophies. Religions, traditions, languages, esoteric disciplines, karate, yoga, all those things I did, but it did not give me that feeling which the cold gave me instantly.

Wow.

Because that's it. And so from there, doing it on regular, like 25 years on my own, because I was the crazy man. for others. But I just felt good going in, coming out, I felt alive, always had plenty of energy. So when my wife died in the suicide, then I knew how to return to my inner self, to make sense again inside myself. And now more than ever at that moment, I needed it. to survive with my kids and create a new nest of warmth, of sense, of purpose.

Let's put a hypothetical scenario for a second. Let's say you're living in the heat and you don't have access to a cold shower or cold water, and you don't remember the breathing technique. Hypothetical question. You're in heat. and you're not breathing this way. I got it. What can we do with our mind?

Ah, here it comes.

What can we do with our thoughts?

Yes.

Transform anxiety, depression, overwhelm. Or do we need to be physically in our body with breath and with cold to really accelerate this?

You don't need it. Don't say nobody, because I ruined my business now. But the thing is, there is more than meets the eye. The last study I did was just by thought, just using the thought in brain scans, having cold water coming to my skin and make my skin temperature without motion, without muscle traction, without deep breathing just by thinking the skin temperature not going down. That is stress. Cold stress.

Wait, wait, wait a minute. So you had cold water come onto you and you kept the temperature warm on your body?

Yes.

So you did it. So how did you, what was your thought process?

Exactly. Now that is the answer for the person who cannot do breathing techniques and cannot go in the water.

And it's not like running in the water.

And he is lost in the desert somewhere.

Yeah, okay. So how do we do this? Can you cool?

Valley.

Can you cool yourself from heat and also warm yourself in the cold, or is it only from cold to hot?

No, it's a, after, I'm not a runner, but I did a marathon beyond the polar circle in mid January, in shorts. I did that. And then I thought, hey man, I did it in cold. So I must be in control of the cold, which is temperature. So let's test if I'm able to take on a thermal stress of the heat, which is temperature. And half a year later, I was in the desert without drinking and I did the marathon.

No way.

In the desert?

With no water?

No water, no water. And then the beautiful thing, because there was present a doctor, physiologist who measured me completely up while I was running, et cetera. And he saw that my core body temperature in the cold remained the same and in the heat remained the same.

So when you mean core body temperature, is this inside the skin, not on the surface?

Yes, inside the liver, lungs, heart, and brain functioning was just in the right temperature.

Are you able to heat up the external skin on ice?

I tell you, in New York, in front of 300 people, a thermal imaging camera was put on my hand. And I wasn't aware if I was able to warm up my hand, They just asked me randomly, can you warm up your hands just by thinking? I said, what the heck? I just try it. I don't know. But I did it. I did it within a minute, 12 degrees up.

Oh my, what?

You went up 12 degrees. Yes, that is the power of the mind.

So what do you think about When you're in extreme heat or extreme cold to lower or higher the temperature so you're not freezing or so exhausted of heat exhaustion, what is your mind going through in that process?

That is confidence. Confidence in the power of your own mind. That connects through the power of intention and it puts its will in command in your side of your brain over your body. And this is now the new science in Detroit shown. It's called top down regulation. That's why they say transformational technique that will change mental health care. And Louis, the importance of this podcast, this interview, this coming together to explain that the gravity is Endorsed by science that we are able to regulate our mood no matter what.

How do we take command of our mind in those extreme hot, cold, anxious moments? Again, if you don't have the breathing technique, you don't have running, you don't have the therapy, what do you do in your mind then to warm something up with your hands? What are your intentions?

I tell you this.

What do you say to yourself in your mind?

It's like when you are in love, you don't think. You fly. You got enormous power to go from A to B, to the object of your love, you go, nothing can stop you. We have to learn to love life. Then nothing will stop you. We are built to overcome any obstacle in our life to realize the beauty of our mind and soul. It's there. And I found it out because I had to. I lost my wife. I lost the emotion. I lost the purpose. I lost the love of my life. I was heartbroken to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. And I learned to stand up and to find out what is not in the books. What is not what they teach us in our schools. And we got to teach our children, the new generations, how to become happy, strong and healthy. How to be in control of life. How to love life as the greatest thing that is because when you need it, you will appreciate it so much. And then you know what is God. what is presence, what is divine. You know it all. You know the purpose of life. It's not production and bridges and it's beautiful to make all these things, but man, it's time that we get even with our divinity, with the presence of what we call God. And it's for every human the same thing. It's being able to guarantee happiness, strength, and health for our children. Let's experience that beyond any doubt.

So break it down for me. When you're running in the desert or you're in the polar ice caps running or you're putting your hand on ice, do you not think then and you more feel life, feel love, is that what you're telling me, that you experience joy and that joy regulates your temperature or what is that thought process for that three minutes with your hand on the ice? Are you going to a happy place in your mind? Are you thinking about your family? What is that thing you're doing?

You know, every time where you go into a cold shower and you go into discomfort, you learn to deal with the stress mechanisms inside the brain. And when you really need them, then you know how to connect and make yourself from the inside from the outside you don't see anything. But from the inside, suddenly you become very strong because you are regulating the hormones, the adrenal axis. And the adrenal axis is able to get you in an altered consciousness and physical power. And then you are more than what we think we are. That is logical only. Only we never go into discomfort So we don't know when something happens, when the happens or when an accident happens, or something very severe or war situations. We haven't trained for that. So going into the cold, I tell everybody the cold and then the ice water, really, it brings you into a natural condition of the mind to deal with stress and pain.

How important is it then? I mean, I love that you're saying this because my entire life, I have tried to put myself under controlled pain, controlled embarrassment, controlled physical pain, not to where I hurt myself, but a controlled sense of discomfort, not feeling good. I don't like this moment, but it's painful enough because I'm going to grow past that. So that when pain comes my way, I can handle it emotionally, emotional resilience. How important is it for us to desire pain in a controlled manner on a daily basis? Or is it something we do once in a while that will help us? Should it be daily or once in a while?

I think it is very addictive. I'm not talking sadomasochism, but I'm talking this. Right now there is a crisis in the world. with pain and painkillers. People don't know how to deal with that. That is a... and I've shown now recently in a brain scans how to tap into the pain center, which is the endocannabinoid system within our brain. It's in the brainstem, the deepest part of our brain. We don't no longer know how to deal with it. So how much pain do you have to endure to neurologically connect with the pain center in order to bring pain through activation of opioids to a controlled level? Hey man, you will feel it naturally. It's once again one of those things they should teach people, pupils, our kids, This in school controlled. It's not about pain as we know it, like negative. Pain is a signal that you do not have the right connection yet. But part of the power of the mind is learning how to alleviate our own pain. Because painful situations will come in life and you better are prepared.

You gotta be ready.

We know how.

Yeah. What would you say are three skills you wish you would have had earlier in your life growing up? And what three skills do you think everyone should learn to master to live a happier, stronger, healthier life? What skills?

Exactly that. Happiness, the skill of being happiness. And to be able to guarantee it, is the control over the hormonal system. We showed that in the university, how to tap into the endocrine system, the hormonal system. That is happiness. You know, when you are depressed, you get a lack of dopamine and serotonin deregulation. Now you are in control of that, so you bring it in balance. So there is no depression anymore. There is balance and the pressure is back on. That is happiness. You become very happy if you are able to regulate your own mood and able to face difficult situations flawlessly. You become happy and you pass it on to others. You're healing others and that comes and blesses your soul and that makes us very happy. Healing others makes us very happy. That is one. Two, the strength. The strength is the ability to generate energy and to stay in control in any situation where dealing with impact. Now, the court to me showed me how to bring up energy continuously to be able to sit for hours in ice, to sit easily for an hour in ice water and be okay with that. That is the control of the energy management inside because it needs combustive and you do that at will. It's not the body who does it, it's your will. You're the neurotransmitters of your will activating the endocannabinoid system, the adrenal axis, and then suddenly no pain, you feel euphoric and you've got all the energy. That is power. So that is energy, power, strength, that is. And then you got health. Health, the ability to tap into the immune system on all the three levels. There are three levels and two levels were thought in medical science impossible to access. And now I know how to do it. And I showed it in scientific trials, medical trials. So it is beyond speculation. If I go back to the purpose of life, which I was looking for when I was a young kid, then I would have given that kid who is so anxiously requesting, asking from the heart, what is the meaning of life? I see war, I see depression, I see cruelty, I see pollution. What is the meaning of life? It is happiness, strength, and health, and healing others. through your being healthy, strong and happy.

It's hard to heal others if you're not happy, strong and healthy.

Exactly.

You can't heal someone else when you're depressed, weak and sick.

There it is. Because in the end, you pass on, you transmit your energy. And if that energy flows, you make people flow in their energy again and then they are de-blocked. When they say they are de-blocked, then disease comes on. Being at ease or disease. And disease is being blocked. The energy doesn't run right. There is wrong chemistry going on. And people don't know how to solve it. Then if you got a sane somebody, healthy, very energetic, then he is able to touch you. and then this social distancing is really not good. Because people need to touch each other. It's neurology. It's neurology. Oxytocin comes in. Oxytocin makes the blood flow go in. And then the blood flow is nice and okay. Love is the answer.

What do you think happens to us when we distance ourselves from others?

When we distance, they had studies on mice. Mice have a 20% possibility to have breast cancer. And then.

With distancing from other mice?

No, no, no.

It's always there in general.

But if you put mice together, then it stays benign. But if you separate them and have them live on their own, it becomes like 80%.

Really?

Yes. What happens inside is that the biochemistry, it needs others. We are social beings, not for nothing. We are social beings growing from millions of years, and now they begin to artificially keep us from each other. That is not good. It's against nature. It will cause deficiencies, depression, hormonal deregulation, etc. Too much things are happening here and it's not good.

You talked about willpower of the mind for a second a little bit ago. It seems like a lot of people in general have a weak willpower. There's a piece of candy, they eat the candy, there's a distraction. They take the phone to distraction, they binge watch TV, they do the thing that doesn't support their life and improving, doesn't support them in their relationship, their health, their happiness. We get distracted easily in general. How do we create more willpower of the mind? With all the distractions we have going on, how do we create more willpower?

I tell them, Use your phone, eat all you want, drink all you want, etc. But go into the cold shower. Because you need to will, you need to exercise your will before you go into the cold shower. And when you go into the cold shower and take on the stress and control it, then suddenly you feel so much more energy. You don't need the compensation anymore. You don't need that bar, Snickers bar, and the beer and the telephone and all this. You don't need it because you feel good. We fundamentally do not feel well enough to not seek compensation. So when you go into a cold shower, you learn to handle AntuMind, but also create a lot more energy through exercising the vascular system. the cardiovascular system. It's not for nothing that the cardiovascular related diseases is still killer number one in the Western world. And that is of not going into stress, not going into cold, wearing clothes all the time. So the system inside the physiology weakens. It's logical. And then you have to compensate for that loss. and you don't know how, I tell you, the cold exercising is able to invigorate our energy processes so much we just feel great. I always say get high on your own supply.

Get high on life.

Yeah. High on life.

Yeah. Why do you think we get so addicted to other substances, whether it be you know, things we eat, things we smoke, addicted to watching things, addicted to whatever. Why do we become addicted to things to make us feel good? Why can't we just feel good without those addictions?

Because our minds in our society, which is based on money and selling, is being bombarded through advertising. If you take this beer, you are in heaven. If you take this smoke, you are so great with yourself. If you have six cars, then that's better than five cars. You are the master. And if you have ten houses, then why do you live, man? We are built to be unconditionally okay. We have to go back to the core. We over-abstracted our systemized money-making ways of living and we are actually not dependent on them. And I say all the technology, all the system, it's all great because it's part of the creative power of the mind. But let's not forget that we actually do not need it to the amount which is now happening and get back and then you become even wealthier. Because then you are not overwhelmed, you're not sucked out there, you are yourself and enjoying everything so much more.

Yeah, I love this. You mentioned that you're an identical twin, right?

Yes.

What does being an identical twin do to your identity, Wim Hof's identity? And have you ever felt like you didn't have your own individual life growing up because you're an identical twin?

I'm quite different of my identical twin and that's because of my lifestyle. Yeah, man, that's... He is a truck driver, international truck driver. I can't do what he is doing because he's sitting for like eight hours a day. Now he's doing cold swimming and everything.

That's great.

He's doing it now. and he feels great with it. But I thought, man, it's like Zen, what you are doing. You're just sitting, handling that big wheel, and there, there you go, through the countries of Europe, and you're venturing, you go from A to B, you are for days gone from home, from your children and your wife, you are just a saltire, On your own, a hermit on the road. That's what you do. I think I respect you, man, but I am too flamboyant. I want to change all the time. I want to make music. I want to talk. I want to be with my ridiculously cute little son and with my wife and with everybody and in my garden. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I'm curious. So you never felt, you always felt like you had your own identity, your own life. You never felt like you guys were sharing a life or anything, right?

Man, you guys, since we were born, that's besides the nine months we were together completely in the same fluids. And since we were born, we slept always together until 17 years.

No way.

We slept with the arms over each other.

In the same bed.

In the same bed. You slept in the same bed with.

Your brother for 17 years.

17 years, man. This was like we lived in the womb for 17 years and nine months. That was. And then when we got into girlfriends, then it became, hey, let's split. We got to split, man.

The girls were never in the bed with you.

No, no, not together.

What was that like? What was that like after the 17th year of always being next to someone, laying next to someone, your brother, your identical twin, and then separating? What did that do to your identity?

It was really very natural, very natural. We were beginning to have a mind of our own and develop on our own and yes, I think the magic of being so intimately together, it's absolutely beyond any sex or any things or thoughts of that nature. We always slept together, we sang together. It was magic.

That's beautiful.

It was just magic. Yeah, it was beautiful.

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if.