The One You Feed - Wim Hof on Mind Over Matter

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. Wim has set world records for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice and still holds the record for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow. He attributes these feats to the technique outlined in his book, The Wim Hof Method.In this episode, Wim and Eric talk about how we can cultivate strength, resilience, and healing within ourselves using the three techniques outlined in his method. As we approach a new year, there’s no doubt that 2021 will have its challenges, but there is so much you can do to make it a wonderful year for you on a personal level. If you’d like to start out this new year restoring some balance and putting some healthy habits in place, or if you’re tired of waiting for the right circumstances to make progress towards your goals, Eric, as a behavior coach, can help you. To book a free, no-pressure 30-minute call with Eric to see if working with him in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program is right for you, click here.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Wim Hof and I Discuss Mind Over Matter and…His book, The Wim Hof MethodHow he developed his indomitable spirit at 12 years oldWhy he chooses discomfort over comfort every dayThe role of hormetic stress in awakening our inner strengthOur innate capacity to deal with diseaseThe three components of The Wim Hof MethodHow we can engage in daily cold exposure Breathing techniques to support the immune systemThe science that supports The Wim Hof MethodWim Hof Links:wimhofmethod.comWim Hof Breathing ExercisesInstagramFacebookTwitterKettle & Fire: Bone Broth and soups carefully crafted by world-class chefs, made with the best whole ingredients and the bones of humanely raised animals delivered right to your door. Go to www.kettleandfire.com/wolf and use promo code WOLF for 20% off.SimpliSafe: Get comprehensive protection for your entire home with security cameras, alarms, sensors as well as fire, water, and carbon monoxide alerts. SimpliSafe is having a huge holiday sale! Visit simplisafe.com/wolf for a free home security camera and a 60-day risk-free trial.Pachamama: Produces extraordinary high quality, organic CBD products. Out of 248 CBD brands, they are one of four to receive the purity award from The Clean Label Project. Visit www.enjoypachamama.com and use code WOLF for 25% off.If you enjoyed this conversation with Wim Hof on Mind over Matter, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Akshay NanavatiRalph De La Rosa on the Mind as Your TeacherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is going to make 2021 different than 2020 for you? The path to creating the life you want for yourself is paved with smaller steps than you might think. In fact, the key to making impactful, lasting change is through small, doable steps, taken in an environment with the right support and know-how. In the One You Feed personal transformation program, I work one-on-one with people to build healthy habits and achieve their goals through applied behavior science. For example, Barb started working with me at a time when she knew she needed some additional support in her life. Primarily, it was the need for additional sort of support and scaffolding is a word that I use particularly during the pandemic

when my normal resources were less available and everything felt harder, compounded by my mother passing away right before the pandemic as well. There was a time when I needed extra support and less support was available due to our physical distancing and social isolation and all that. And I'm just a big believer in turning to expertise. And I needed some help and I thought that Eric could provide it. Barb's focus was on bringing mindfulness and a daily meditation practice back into her life. And we were also working on helping her address a pattern of emotional eating. Yeah, the experience was positive.

Yeah, the experience was positive. And the incremental approach to reintroducing mindfulness and to behavior change in general was almost surprisingly effective and rewarding. It was like something makes sense. But then to really do it, you're like, oh, this actually worked. Like, let's start with, I think it was like, okay, I can do that. That feels good. Okay. Let's go to five minutes, you know? And so this very incremental baby steps approach really paid off. And I was like, oh, I got this. This is great. And it was nice to have some wins. So when I say positive, that's what I mean. It was a sense of like building on wins and building a sense of maybe confidence through seeing results, not sort of like cheerleading confidence, but like, oh, if I did this for three minutes, now I can do it for five. Oh, I've been doing it now. I'm doing it for 10 minutes. All right, now, you know, and so sort of building on incremental gains was very positive for me. With the right support and the right approach, your life can radically transform for the better. That's where I can help as a behavior coach.

To book a free, no pressure, 30 minute call with me to see if the program is right for you, go to ericzimmer.coach application. As a bonus, if we decide that we're a good fit to work together, if you sign up before January 31st, I will include two additional coaching sessions at no additional cost to you. The new year is a busy time and my coaching spots fill up fast. So if you're interested, don't wait to look into the program to see if it's right for you. That's ericzimmer.coach application. And I hope to talk with you soon. Now it's time to awaken to our true power, the way we're born. And that is with the ability to control our brain, not 16%, but 100%.

And we have shown in brain scans how to do that. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and

creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limit

edition sign jason bobblehead the really no really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Wim Hof, a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. Wim has set world records for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice and still holds the record for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow. He attributes these feats to the technique outlined in his book, The Wim Hof Method. Hi Wim, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

It is a pleasure to have you on. We're going to discuss your book called The Wim Hof Method, Activate Your Full Human Potential, but we will do that in a moment after we start like we always do. We'll start with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. The one you feed is gonna grow. That is amazing. That is amazing. So right now, I'm doing research

with the top researchers on the DNA, how to tap into our gene expressions, into that, what fundamentally makes us being alive, being healthy, being happy, being strong. That's what we all want. We all want love. That's number one. But because of our genetical past, the genetics, and of the circumstances in the world, like survival and having to work every day, getting into distress. We feed without intention into the bad wolf. We all want a good wolf. We all want him. We all are friends from our childhood with the wolf of love,

given and feed it by our mother, our father, our family. We all want it. But then we are also influenced by the genetical past and our circumstances right here, right now. And there are some mysterious forces in the world which are feeding into the bat wolf, which are not feeding necessarily into the happiness, into the strength and the health of the people, but into greed, into money-making schemes, into power. into power and that has no sensitivity because if you love others you equal the power you equal the energy you equal the money you divide it and you share so the bat-wolf is not necessarily a thing within us it's more the reality where we live in and our genetical past. And there I've been looking to it because when I was 12 years, I got into that. I got into that, hey, what I see in the world, the abuse, the wars, the cruelty to animals, the way the people treat each other, that is not good. And I'm not gonna submit my life to that reality. I'm gonna do something

against it. So it was the bad wolf that woke up the good wolf, consciously. Consciously, I began to work on it. And now, 48 years later, no, 50 years later, I am changing the science. As a dropout of school, I'm changing science. I went into nature. I had the hardships of life. I lost my first wife in a suicide, which was also not elected by choice. It overcame. It's a terror, but nobody could do something against it. Then I said to myself again, I will go on until I win of depression, of disease, of helplessness, and feel the freedom and power within us. And once we have a way to tap into our potential, we are able to choose happiness, strength, health.

And nobody will not do that. Nobody will not choose that if he has only the control over his mind and body. And I'm into that. So that's my answer to this parable is yes, they are both there. But the good old wolf is gone away. And this time we do it consciously. And we bring on the love and we make it accessible like this podcast does to many more people, showing them through the signs, starting out with a choice inside. Who do you want to win? The good or the bad wolf? The love or the hatreds?

Who do you want to win? If you take on that consciously, you are going to win. The love is going to win. And that's the way I see it. I love it. That is a great way for us to start off. And I love that idea that the bad wolf woke the good wolf up and inspired him. The bad wolf inspires the good wolf. Nobody's quite put it that way before. And I love that idea because I've been thinking about this a lot lately because a lot of people are looking out at the world and we're seeing so much bad and that's all that we are focused on.

And I just think it's so important to say, well, what does the bad tell me about what I value? I see these things as bad. Why? Oh, because it tells me that I value love. I value goodness. I value justice. I value fairness. So then how do I bring more of that into the world? Exactly. And because of this, me telling long time ago already, because I got acquainted by finding answers in feeling, not in books, but in nature. Yeah. I went into the cold. I sacrificed so much of my body and my mind to go and endure cold that I overcame the bad wolf, the cold. I overcame the cold within myself, bringing heat while being in the cold, while being in the cold, feeling comfortable, being able to bring love and understanding and deep connection within myself while being in this stressful negativity, the freezing cold. And the freezing cold taught me.

It taught me it's my teacher, like the bad wolf is my teacher. If you overcome the cold, you overcome stress. If you overcome stress, then you overcome what is caused by the bad wolf. He wants to stress you. It stresses you. And you have to teach by it, to be taught by it, and not flee from it. You have to go to it. You got the power from your good wolf to overcome the bad wolf.

The bad wolf is not even necessarily a bad wolf. It's a teacher. And the teacher is merciless. The teacher is righteous. It shows you how to be and who and what you are. Not what you think, but what you are for real. And that reality you can overcome. That reality exists in all the world. We see it happening every day. But do you see and feel what is happening within you and overcoming it?

Because every day you have the chance to overcome it. I wake up every day. I'm going to win. I'm a winner, man. I'm going to feel great. I'm going to send so much love to the world, to my trees, to the garden, to everybody who passes by. And how?

I'm doing science. I'm doing science right now to show beyond speculation that we have a connection within, at will, able to control and to make happen that what we thought of was not possible. Because the bad move, the teachers say, yeah, it's not possible. It's not possible. Only this is possible. You have to learn about this. No, that's the illusion.

And the illusion and us is a battle to be overcome. Let the power of illusion being overcome by the clarity of your being. And that is feeling, that feeling of love, that is freed of thoughts and doubts, that is self-confident, that stands like a rock, that radiates like the sun. That is the way I stand up every day, rise out of my bed. Now, question about you when you were younger. You're obviously very fired up. You're full of life. You're going to win. Did you always have that indomitable spirit, or did you develop that as part of your method? Did you always have this sort of natural fire?

No, I did not have that always, but when I decided to take on the bat wolf, to do the teaching, to do the thing that is being taught within me, my life's lessons, my shit. When that came to me and knocked on my door saying, what are you going to do? Are you going to follow me like a sheep? Or are you the good wolf that is able to overcome the bad wolf. And I said, hey man, I'm leading the flock inside myself. I am the leader. I am the shepherd. I take care. I make sure protection is there.

And I wander through the fields of life. I will make the change happening. And it began when I was 12 years. And from there, something starts from within at first it is little but it becomes stronger neurologically it becomes stronger and then it is able to be connected with your will and then you are able to decide what is happening every day with the contemporary energies, the way it influences upon you. And then I found the cold. The cold became the bad wolf, the negativity, the freezing cold. Instead of comfort, I chose discomfort. I chose to battle the wolf through intuition and instinct directly.

I face to face and I found this is the way, the doorway to my inner power to be controlled at will. And this is like 44 years ago. And this is like 44 years ago. And now I tell you I'm changing the science fundamentally through every research I am doing. I'm a dropout of school, but I know how the wolf, the bad wolf, causes disease, causes depression. Instead of us being able at will to cause happiness, strength, and health to happen every day. I found it. I tamed the bad wolf. Now I got two good wolves. It's a pack. It's a pack of wolves. And we bring injustice to its knees because they are fears. Within one man, we are able to make the change happening because the bad move, the bad hemisphere, the bad things that are happening

right now, they should be stopped. Somebody needs to break the chain and that's what we do. Somebody needs to break the chain, and that's what we do. Okay, I want to get into the Wim Hof Method, what it actually is, in a moment. But before I do that, I want to set the stage. You've set some of it for us. But in essence, a big part of your work is about using stress, stressors on our system to make us stronger. I was actually watching a little bit of a webinar that you participated in with Alyssa Epple out of University of California. She's been on our show before. And the webinar was about using the right amount of stress.

Hormetic stress. Hormetic stress to help us grow. So your method, and you say early in your book, you say that in the absence of environmental stress, the things we have built to make our lives easier have actually made us weaker. But what if we could reawaken the dormant physiological processes that made our ancestors so strong. So your method at its heart is about bringing stressors into our lives, being less comfortable so that we awaken this indomitable strength and resilience that you're talking about. Yes, absolutely. The difference between us and our ancestors is that we have a lot more neurology going inside of our skull, the head, the brain. It's a lot more now. That is because the human brain has evolved.

It's logical. And we make iPhones. And 50 years ago, the capacity of the iPhone now is like 10 times more in capacity than the Apollo project altogether. The commando center, the Houston, the Cape Canaveral, the rocket itself, the people communicating from space to each other, that now is 10 times more in our iPhones. Our iPhones is the fruit of our mind. And it reflects what is going on in our mind, at least 10 times more in neurology than what happened in the prehistorics in the brain of our ancestors. But then, that's great. That's technology. I think, wow, technology, amazing, a miracle of the human mind, amazing.

We should use it well. What happened is the blood flow in the human brain is 25% more than in the rest of the brain, than in the mammalian brain, the limbic system, and the reptilian brain, the brainstem. And thus, it's more on a stand by those parts of the brain. That part of the brain, the healing happens. That part of the brain, danger is being confronted with through adrenaline, through dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, cannabinoids, opioids. cannabinoids, opioids. Now we have a society with an opioid crisis, with depression, with autoimmune diseases, with cancer, and we don't know what to do with it. While we have all the answers and the capacity to battle that, only if we bring the blood flow into the limbic system, into the brainstem. And I'm showing that in science.

In 2014, I showed in science, together with a group of people, being taught in four days how to defy a bacteria injected, to defy a bacteria injected, which was not being able to be shown by people to be done in university hospital settings in research, injected with a bacteria, all the 16,000 people became sick with the same experimental model. They began with me. I did not become sick. experimental model. They began with me. I did not become sick. And then I said, yeah, I'm not special, neither special. I will show you. Give me a group of people. And then I showed a group of people within a couple of days being able to defy the bacteria injected. The bacteria, the virus, only came when we began to flock together, when sanity was not good. When we alienated from nature is when all these diseases, plagues, pandemics, etc., they all came. And we alienated while going into cities and all from our natural harmonious interaction with nature,

with the wind, with the rain, with the cold, with the heat, with the danger. Then the blood flow went more into trading, thinking, overthinking. And then those areas of the brain built up a deficit. They were more on standby than flourishing, than developing neurologically. So right now, what I'm showing is technology, great. Human brain, marvelous. It's miraculous what is achieved. But stand still where we came from.

Stand still where we came from because it's all inside our brain, in our reptilian brain, into the feeling of the limbic system, which is feeling, pure feeling, emotion. And then the brainstem is survival. When you are sick, the brainstem is able, because I'm showing this in science, is able to interact on the bacteria, on inflammation. Inflammation is the cause and

effect of any disease. And we have great mechanisms inside our brain connected to the immune cells, to invigorate the immune cells to do the right thing when it needs to happen. But because it is on standby, 25% less blood flow because of our human brain swallowing up all the blood flow, the neurology, the neurological traffic is in thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, and not into survival. This danger is gone. We live in comfort zone behavior. Thus, we got alienated and done. When something is on the standstill, it is like water on the standstill.

Bacteria are able to grow. Viruses are able to grow. Viruses are able to grow. Bacillus, depressions, inflammation is able to grow. It's all logic. Let me tell you, we have all the innate capacity to deal with whatever disease there is going on. And this sounds all great, and that's why I go to science. going on. And this sounds all great. And that's why I go to science. And then with Elissa E. Pell,

who is a professor into the DNA, into the genes, we go to the building blocks of life. And we show that through hormetic, stressful exercising, which everybody is able to do, we are able to bring back our innate capacities to our conscious will. There we are. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian kranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk a little bit about the method itself because the method itself is very simple. What you're describing is very profound, right? I found something in a paper that was written recently that said, our results provide compelling evidence for the primacy of the

brain, the central nervous system, rather than the body in mediating the Iceman, that's you, responses to cold exposure. They suggest the compelling possibility that the Wim Hof method might allow practitioners to develop higher levels of control over key components of the autonomic system with implications for lifestyle interventions that might ameliorate multiple clinical syndromes. So it's very profound, right? But let's talk about the method itself. It consists of three main things. One is exposure to cold. The other is conscious breathing. And then the last is the power of the mind. So I thought what we could do with our remaining time is just walk through those three elements somewhat quickly,

give people a basic idea of them. So let's first talk about cold exposure. Maybe tell us about how you discovered cold exposure, and then more practically for those of us who are not going to be submersing ourselves under frozen lakes, what do we do? Where do we start with this? Yeah, I say always a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away. And even the doctor is doing it. Because now it has been shown that the cold is very effective in training the vascular system, the cardiovascular system. And the cardiovascular system contains millions of little muscles. It's about 70,000 miles long in each and every one of us. But we are always dressed in clothes.

We are de-stimulating all the tonus of those little muscles, primitive muscles, around the arteries, the veins, and the capillaries. 70,000 miles, millions of little muscles. If you take a cold shower, then those little muscles are stimulated. Then they help the blood flow a lot better through the system to reach the cells. With that, nutrients, vitamins, and oxygen, the vital energy gets better to our cells. We get a lot more energy. That is just because of the cold shower. And then the heart rate goes down with 20 to 30 beats a minute because all those little muscles help the blood flow. So the pumping is a lot less. That means stress is out of the body. Accelerated heart rate is equal to stress. It's dangerous and it shows because a killer number one in our society is still cardiovascular-related diseases.

And it is not only about the death rate of that annually, but it's also about the quality of life. Because a lot of people live in a lot of stress and less energy. Now, if you take the cold shower, you bring the vascular system to its natural condition. And then you get a lot more energy out of it and a lot less stress. I say a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away. And when I began to do this, when I was 17, 44 years ago, I felt attracted after being debating, I felt attracted after being debating, philosophizing, getting into esoteric disciplines and philosophies and religions and all. The chatterbox was really on, trying to find the meaning of life. And then one day I saw the cold water.

Thin layer of ice. I went in just by feeling, God feeling. And I felt the meaning of life. The meaning of life is deep connection within ourselves. And it's there. It's not out there in religious books. It's not out there in big travels and all. It's right here, right now.

Take a damn good old cold shower and you will find life instantly and then because doing that going into the cold gave me such a rush inside like like natural drugs. I found out after doing it regularly that I could make a change of my chemistry, of my strength inside the cold, icy cold water, which is not talking. It is an experience that talks to you. Then you feel, hey, if I breathe deep, Then you feel, hey, if I breathe deep, then I'm making myself stronger against the aggressive impact of the stressful, cold, icy, cold water. And that's what I did. I began to into deep breathing. And we became shallow breathers all in the world.

While the breathing, deep breathing, is able to change the deep chemistry of ours, our biochemistry, the adrenaline. And then I began to separate that deep breathing and doing it at home. And then I saw all the beautiful things in my mind. I could stay for minutes without breathing. And now I'm teaching that how to trick the brainstem, how to trick the limbic system, how to alter your mood, how to activate your immune system just by breathing. Part of the quantum physics now show that we are able to go from matter into antimatter and back. That's entanglement.

and back. That's entanglement. We can do that with our mind, but it's future science. Okay. I got into the breathing and that breathing showed in 2014 breathing techniques, being able to defy bacteria. That means activate the immune system, which is the topic right now, how to suppress the innate immune system, the overactive immune system. COVID, a virus, does that. We showed how to bring it down, and it should be investigated better because we got the scientific evidence for that. They should take that on. It's not me. It's science. There's no speculation about it. We are able to bring down the damaging factor of COVID-19 or any other virus and bacteria. We showed that in 2014 scientific papers in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science, Scientific papers in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science.

The best of papers and in nature. So it's there. It's not mine anymore. It's in the university books. It changed fundamentally what we are able through just breathing techniques. We are able to tap into the autonomic nervous system. Thought of, impossible. Now it's possible. It's there. We did it. We did our own work. We did the science. We are just showing it to the people. And through this, it gets out.

I want to go back to cold showers for a second. Then I want to come back and hit the breathing a little bit. So cold showers, I've been taking like a 30 second cold shower at the end of my showers for years now. And I am not quite superhuman yet. So is my issue, I need to be doing it longer, build up to longer and longer times? Is that really where the power comes from? And what point do you want to get to? How long? And then my other question is, it seems like in a lot of parts of the U.S., particularly in the summer months, the cold shower isn't that cold. It seems like the groundwater gets kind of, I mean, it's not warm, but it's not icy. Yeah, yeah. And so it is not icy here as well in the summer.

Absolutely not. as well in the summer. Absolutely not. And I did that for, say, 30 years, just because I had no money to buy ice cubes all the time. So I just did, when the winter was coming, slowly but surely, the temperature of the water goes down to freezing temperatures. That move is enough to be followed

and have a great cardiovascular fitness workout every year. This is what I learned once I had to do a world record in September. And that was preceded by the months August, July, June, and May, which is not freezing at all. It's very hot and very warm. which is not freezing at all. It's very hot and very warm. So I was concerned, can I do that world record without any training possible? And I found out in September in front of television

and millions of people I did that, it was a great record because I used the power of my mind, which I had learned over the years being in these stressful situations. You learn to deal with the stress neurologically because you consciously go to the cold water every day in the winter. You develop neurology that is connected to the stress mechanisms inside the brain. It's only logic. And then in the summer, you are able to do something which you only do in the winter. No, you are confronted by the stress and you make use of the neurological connection with your stress mechanisms learned by going into the cult before.

It was a great record. It was flawlessly done. It was amazing. I was so flabbergasted myself. This is the way I found out what is the power of the mind. Then it only started. And then with the psychiatrists, professors in Detroit, in Michigan, in brain scans, I showed cold water coming to my skin. And just because I was thinking I don't want my skin temperature going down, the stress mechanisms then made an answer and the cold water was not making my skin temperature going down. The moral of it all is, it's not only

about the cold, it is about connecting with the stress mechanisms to deal with stress in any shape. That's the way we are naturally built. And now we are able with our neurology, modern neurology insight, to make the connections with the deep brainstem, with the limbic system from the side of the developed human brain. We forgot about these parts and now we can go back and I found the way. And this is a way to successfully battle depression and inflammation. It's amazing and amazingly simple. I appreciate what you just said there, which was basically if you train during the winter months, you'll retain that capability in the months where the shower's not as cold. How long would somebody who's doing this want to get up to as an average daily cold shower? Two minutes, three minutes? Do you have a recommendation? You go naturally. You begin

with 30 seconds and then naturally you build up the condition of your vascular system. That means that you feel without force that you are able to go longer. And then if you are able to go for two, three minutes, then you are ready for anything. Okay, wonderful. Now let's talk about breathing, because breathing sounds like it should be pretty complicated if we're going to make these amazing things happen, but your breathing is not complicated. Describe what the breathing protocol is in the Wim Hof Method. First of all, very simple and very strong, effective and very accessible. So that's for the person who thinks, ah, but I cannot do it.

Anybody can do this. Anybody. You can start right now or after this podcast when you see fit, just do this. And we have a free app on our website, which will guide you and provide you with everything you need to know to get it done. Excellent. We'll put links in the show notes to that. Good. Then the following, deep breathing. What is deep breathing? Use your belly, use your chest, because the lungs are connected to the belly muscles and the chest, the diaphragm.

And you feel belly up, fully the chest and letting go. Fully in, letting go. So it doesn't have to be slow. It just has to be deep. Yes, deep. Because you're not taking a long, slow breath. You're taking a relatively quick deep breath there yes Jeff and if you want to take it slow it's all all right the thing is do 30 times there is no real protocol but go deep take your full lungs in and then let it go fully in letting go not fully out but fully in and then you let go fully in letting go fully in letting go and that we do 30 times, 40 times. You feel tingling. You can feel lightheadedness.

It's all all right. It's all described in the free app. And then the last one, you do fully in. You let go. And you stop. You stop after the exhalation. Amazing. Amazing how long you can stay without breathing and without force after the exhalation. Number one, one minute or one and a half minute without air in the lungs. I mean with little air in the lungs after the letting go stop

retention one minute one a half minute now that is because we alkalized the body we blew off the carbon dioxide that what makes us acidic, is being blown off. Then the alkalinity rises, pH rises. Then you are able, after the exhalation, with a little bit of air in your lungs, stop. You are able to stay one, one and a half minute, easy, without force, without breathing.

Now, your pH is just right on, nice, great, but your oxygen after a minute goes dramatically down in the system while you not feel any urge to breathe. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden and together on the Really No Really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse

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It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And then the brainstem, the danger of survival, suddenly is fully on. The adrenal axis activated and you feel kind of high. It's an amazing way to trick the deepest part of your brain to awaken, to activated robustly then the circus begins then the lights begin and it's great you feel light you feel high on your own supply and you are dealing with the brainstem with the limbic system with the reptilian the survival and then when you feel the urge to breathe again you take

a breath fully in you hold it and you squeeze to your head five seconds to bring the cerebrospinal fluid to the head and that means that there's a lot of oxygen coming in, a lot of alkalinity with the cerebrospinal fluid goes into the deepest part of the brain. Then it becomes more alive, and it connects all to your will. And it's amazing. It's so simple, and it's sensational when you experience it by yourself. That's why I always say feeling is understanding.

So a couple of rounds and you will find out you will do it one and a half minutes, two minutes, two and a half minutes, three minutes without air in the lung. Can you imagine? That is directly hormetic stress in the deepest. If there is any stress, the strongest, it is the breath. If we cannot breathe anymore, it is the strongest. And our reptilian brain now has been activated through manipulating the biochemistry. And with that, the survival of our being that is breathing in and breathing out, and we are able to alter the biochemistry consciously with the human brain, then stop it because the pH levels are just right,

and then hold it in a position where no animal does this because they don't know how to do it because they have no human brain. That's only us. And we are able to stop this reptilian mode of survival. We are able to trigger it through the breathing by stopping it, changing the biochemistry and manipulating it. And then suddenly the limbic system and the brainstem are going to start beginning at our will. And when do you need it? When you have inflammation. When do you need it? When you have depression. And we are then able to bring in the healing powers of those areas, the cannabinoids, the dopamines, the serotonins, the adrenaline,

the opioids, they are all there. And it's amazing how simple it is. And this should be told to the general public because nobody is stupid, but we are stupefied. general public, because nobody is stupid, but we are stupefied. And now it's time to awaken to our true power the way we're born with. And that is with the ability to control our brain, not 16%, but 100%. And we have shown this in brain scans, how to do that. We have shown in Germany, We have shown this in brain scans how to do that. We have shown in Germany in brain scans how to activate consciously 100% of the neural activity in the brain.

And this is all new, of course, and quite incredible. But this is more logical than having a lump of meat that is our brain with 84% without our control. So it's time that we wake up to our deeper potential and learn to deal with inflammation, depression, be happy, be strong, and be healthy and pass it on to our kids and to ourselves. Excellent. So I have a quick question about, in essence, we're saying by triggering this response in the limbic and brainstem, that we wake those parts of the brain up and we bring them back online. My question is, one of the things that we know that people who deal with a lot of emotional stress, anxiety, right, is that their limbic system seems to be over activated. So describe me the difference between what you're doing and what

we would consider a psychological stressor. Why is one we work with and it enlivens us and the other causes us problems? Yeah, yeah. This is the innate immune system at work. Depression in general creates overactivity in our brain. That's inflammation. That is the innate immune system. And in 2014, we have shown how to quiet, to suppress the innate immune system, to suppress the overactive immune system,

which is the cause of depression, which is the cause of rheumatoid arthritis, of Crohn's disease, of all the autoimmune diseases. That is when stress deregulates our immune system. Then the immune system doesn't know what is going on and begins to give us fever, overactivity. And we did not know how to bring that down. That was the general paradigm in science, medical science. We cannot, because it's part of the autonomic nervous system, we cannot bring that down. And that in 2014, we clearly have shown to bring down that overactivity that causes the innate immune system, the cytokine storm, the inflammation, how to bring it down in a quarter of an hour, all of them. After 16,000 people who could not,

all of them. After 16,000 people who could not, suddenly 12 people, 100% score. Boom. There it is. And that sounds incredible, but it is incredible what we have in our potential. And it's incredible how accessible it is. And it's incredible how simple it is. And it's incredible how powerful it is, our potential. And this is what I want to bring to the people, the self-confidence back in people that they are able to regulate their own mood and their own disease, making it at ease again. Excellent. Well, Wim, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really enjoyed reading your book. I really enjoyed this conversation and I am looking forward to increasing my cold showers from my standard 30 seconds a day to three minutes over time. It's good. It's good. It's really good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate your time. Right on, Eric. Great time. Good work. You're doing great work.

Thank you. Bring it on. Bring it on. Keep on bringing it on. It's great. We need storytellers. The story of life is beautiful, and we bring it on together. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single

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