The Rich Roll Podcast - The Iceman Cometh: Wim Hof On Elevating Consciousness & Amplifying Human Potential

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

Today we dive into the deep end of higher consciousness. We challenge the limits of human potential. And we explore the power of the mind to unlock superhuman capabilities. Our instrument for this week's fantastic voyage is Wim Hof — aka The Iceman.  Dropping in for his second podcast appearance — his first being RRP 231 from June 2016 — Wim is a Dutch-born world record holder, adventurer, daredevil and human guinea pig best known for his preternatural ability to withstand extreme cold. More significant is Wim's experimentation with specific and teachable breathing techniques. Rooted in the ancient yogic tradition of pranayama and canonized for a modern audience as The Wim Hof Method, Wim asserts that through such breath techniques he can turn up his internal thermostat and activate his sympathetic nervous system — abilities conventionally believed beyond conscious control. Understanding the far-fetched nature of his claims, Wim put his contentions to the test. Among his twenty world-record setting feats of otherworldly insanity, Wim has: * scaled above death zone altitude (22,000 ft) on Mount Everest shirtless adorned in nothing but shorts; * completed a full marathon above the polar circle in Finland barefoot and again shirtless and in shorts; * summited Kilimanjaro in less than 2 days, again in nothing but shorts; * swam a world record 66 meters under a meter of ice above the polar circle; * sat in an ice bath for almost two hours straight; * ran a full marathon in the Namib Desert without water; and * remained asymptomatic after a poisonous E. coli endotoxin injection certain to make any human being very ill All of this is seemingly insane. But Wim declares his feats not only replicable but entirely teachable — a curriculum that holds the potential to unlock a battery of human superpowers that extend well beyond extreme temperature tolerance to metabolic ‘reptilian brain' functions previously thought beyond conscious manipulation. Picking up where we left off in RRP 231, this conversation focuses less on Wim's feats of incredulity and more on the nature of consciousness and the primacy of its elevation. We discuss our current crisis of awareness. The importance of challenging long-held, status quo beliefs. And the warrior's path required to live fully actualized. Wild, calm, powerful and gentle all at the same time, Wim is undoubtedly one of the most compelling and unique people I have ever met — a man who will shock you out of your comfort zone and call into question the countless unnecessary limits we impose upon ourselves daily. This journey begins with the breath. It extends to service, compassion, and gratitude. And it culminates in love. Disclaimer: Never practice breathing exercises before/during any activities where a loss of consciousness may prove life threatening. The breathing methods discussed may have a profound effect and should be practiced exactly as explained and always in a safe environment. Wim strongly advises you to gradually build up your exposure to the cold. Always train without force and listen to your body carefully. If not practiced responsibly, you risk hypothermia or worse. And finally, always consult your doctor first before beginning any exercise program. Enjoy! Rich

We have become not natural, disconnected, and therefore we get all these problems. If we go back, we will be able to down-regulate what is out of balance, back into balance, in the core, and have an absolute sense of control. It is not difficult to learn to command the body top down by your thoughts and be the master over your own physiology. And with that, bringing happiness, strength and health or anything that is out of balance back into balance. That's the power of our mind.

And if you invest into happiness, strength and health, you are the commander. That is step number one. Change your paradigm. That's Wim Hof, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll.

I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome up front. Quick reminder, you still have time to contribute to my 52nd birthday charity water campaign, all designed to bring clean water to those in need. We're closing in on around $40,000 raised to date, which is incredible. Thank you. But still a ways to go to reach my $100,000 goal by year's end. So to learn more and donate, go to mycharitywater.org forward slash richroll. Whatever you feel comfortable contributing is important because every penny counts. And thank you. So today, today we're going to deep dive into the realm of higher consciousness.

We're going to challenge long-held belief systems regarding human capability. We're going to explore the incredible power of the mind and how, when properly accessed and controlled and leveraged, this thing that we have in our heads can actually control matters previously thought impossible. And our instrument for this impossible voyage is none other than the legend himself, the Iceman Wim Hof, in his second appearance on the show, his first being episode 231 back in June of 2016. And this guy is a legit, straight up,, modern-day force of nature, a guy who has really mastered the art of harnessing breath to unlock untapped reservoirs of consciousness to do what most people would imagine is unfathomable. For those unfamiliar, Wim is a Dutch-born world record holder. He is an adventurer.

He is a daredevil. He's basically a human guinea pig, best known for this preternatural ability that he has to withstand extreme cold. And his practices, his techniques are really rooted in ancient yogic traditions of breathwork called pranayama. And he has taken these principles, this tradition, and canonized it for a modern audience, wrapped it up in a bow and calls it the Wim Hof method. And by virtue of mastering these techniques, Wim asserts that you can turn your own thermostat up and consciously activate your sympathetic nervous system by using the mind. Among his many world record-setting feats of total insanity and incredulousness. Wim has scaled above the Mount

Everest death zone, shirtless and in nothing but shorts. He ran a marathon above the polar circle in Finland, barefoot and again shirtless and in nothing but shorts. He swam 66 meters under a meter of ice above the polar circle. And he also, perhaps most amazingly, voluntarily allowed himself to be injected with a poisonous E. coli endotoxin and quite shockingly did not get sick. Now, all of this may sound very far-fetched, and yet Wim is a guy who's adamant that he is nothing special, that his feats are not only replicable, but also very teachable. A curriculum that holds the potential to unlock a wide battery of human superpowers previously thought beyond conscious manipulation. Trust me, I've got way more I want to say about this wild man force of of nature before we dig into it. But first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem.

A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at Recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the ideal level of care providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling

addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful,

and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, the Iceman. So picking up where we last left off in episode 231, this conversation intentionally focuses a little bit less on Wim's fantastical feats and quite a bit more on the nature of

consciousness. This ability we all have to access and leverage areas of the brain previously thought impossible. This ability to actually control our immune response and perhaps even our sympathetic nervous system. We discuss Wim's perspective on addressing and resolving our current crisis of awareness. We talk about our mental health epidemic, but really all told, this is a call to action. It's a call to action to help us better understand

and embrace this idea that we all contain the ability to better regulate our bodies and our minds and our spirit, that we can all access untapped reservoirs of human potential to not only elevate consciousness, but to live better, live healthier, and more fully actualized. That said, an important disclaimer, please never practice any of the breathing techniques described in this conversation without proper supervision, especially if they involve a swimming pool, a shower, or any water for that matter. Avoid doing them before or during any activities where a loss of consciousness may prove life-threatening, like operating a car. loss of consciousness may prove life-threatening, like operating a car. The breathing methods discussed may have a profound effect on you and should be practiced exactly as explained and

always in a safe environment. With that out of the way, you can watch our full conversation on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash ritual. And also, I encourage all of you to check out this great standalone instructional video that we created after the podcast that I just published of Wim walking me step-by-step through a breathing exercise. And if that video or this conversation piques your interest and you want to learn the full Wim Hof Method, he's got an awesome 10-week online video course at wimhofmethod.com forward slash e-learning forward slash fundamentals. I'll put a link in the show notes up to that. And Wim was also kind enough to provide you guys with a discount code, Rich35, capital

R-I-C-H-35, to get 35% off that course, which is amazing. And for clarity and transparency, I do not profit off this in any way. It's just a gift from Wim to you guys. And it's available now for the next seven days, or in other words, through December 2nd. This guy is wild, calm, spiritual, powerful, and gentle all at the same time. He is one of the most unique and compelling people you will ever meet. A guy with one foot firmly on the earth and the other one walking off a cliff to see if he can fly and oh fly he does. So ladies and gentlemen, inhale deeply and prepare thyself for the Iceman. Richard Kuhl, Richard Kuhl, Asher Meads, Rich Roll, and what kind of roll we play, we will find out this day. Yeah! Awesome, man. Welcome back. Rich. Starting off with a bang. How you doing, sir? Yeah, good.

Good, man. It's super nice to have you back. I think it was about two years ago when you were here first time. Yeah, exactly. So we're going to pick it up where we left off. So it is. What is going on? What is going on? What is coming? As my daughter said this morning, what's up? What is up? What is up is going down.

And what is up there is like a higher consciousness. Could we say that? I think we can. I think the true nature of ours is higher consciousness. As we call it higher consciousness, I say it's just the nature of our spirit to be everywhere in the brain in the deepest of our physiology capable to interact with our brain and command our bodies into the subconscious so much that we are able to make the subconscious conscious and to become a capable of going into the brain into

the deepest is what i've shown since the last time i did some new research not some real good research neurological research wherein they had 74 people talking about the deepest of the brain. The moral of this story now, to begin with, is if you go into the deepest, then you have passed all the layers. That means

not only 20% of our brain we can use, I say 100%. That's my moral. That's my topic today and you understand because you made this switch i didn't understand who you were really just a nice person in front of me we talk and we go into the depth like natural but i didn't know nothing about your history only my daughter uh told me this morning yeah i got have bloody respect for what you did, man. Oh, thank you, sir.

Becoming so big in society, being swallowed by society, getting in there and then completely change the paradigm within yourself, becoming the man you are, fighting and working on the good for humanity. Well, I appreciate that. I think that our stories are very different, but if there's a similar thread, it's that people look at the things that I've done and they tend to hone in on the athletic accomplishments

in the same way people look at your world records or these feats and stunts that you've accomplished. But truly, it's a spiritual journey, my friend. Yes, it is. It's about raising your consciousness. Exactly. That's ultimately the foundation beneath all of this. Let me say something in this realm. So, two years ago we came together and we found out hey we got a common ground and depth and i was into the vedas and i was like you're a yogi

in the in the ancient tradition of yogis that's that's what you are that's this year they wanted to give me an award in India for excellence in yoga. I said, just wait a little until next year. Because when we get evidence, scientific evidence, that we are able to do much more than we think, and we make it common ground, that is excellence in yoga yoga is unity unify and bringing it and making it accessible for everybody that's a that you did what you did for example that's great but what you do for humanity right now in bringing it out that is enlightening to to the soul itself and i feel the invigorated yeah i feel the soul i. And I feel invigorated.

Yeah. I feel the soul. I think that there's a little bit of an arms race going on right now because we are suffering from a sea of confused people and a lot of momentum behind systems that are working very actively and diligently to destroy this precious planet, keep us sick and enslaved. Exactly. And so who is going to win this arms race? Yes. I call it, you know, battling and tackling the real terrorist which is to me

depression bipolar anxiety fear uh trauma ptsd all those things in the mind we have no control over the mind and we are manipulated i have to say this is the way the power system is able to manipulate and have people work for p for 2,000 times more than somebody else. It's the same soul. It doesn't make sense anymore because all this industry and all. Okay, I say stop it. And now all these epidemic proportions of mental disorders and not feeling good. How is that?

So, I did study now because I can talk like a hippie and say, hey, we got to change the world. Revolution time and all love and flower and power. You need science though. Yes. and flower and power you need science though yes and so i went a day had me tested how if i would be able to under severe stress of say cold cold is stress and it is stress on the cells biology in the brain as in the as in the body and we have no control over the stress and this stress was um thus uh within this experiment wherein they had me shoving in into a brain scan and 74 people had formally done the same experiment and they showed showed uh dressed in a perfusion vest uh where in cold water streams in uh that the skin temperature is just going down when the cold water comes in and it goes up when it is warm again skin

temperature you cannot do anything with your mind it's just going going down, it's going up, going down. This is stress, stress on our bodies, on the cells biology, and we have no way to command to stop it or to stand above it. We have none. This is our sympathetic nervous system just regulating this on our behalf. Yes. Imagine wars and traumas and PTSD and depression and all those things is because of this stress getting in our brains, deregulating our hormonal balance. And thus we lose the good feeling. And we have no way to control that. Now, 74 persons showed all the same graphics and i showed the same graphics when i did nothing but the day day three i had to show what the iceman is capable of and i really did not know what to do because yeah i don't know what to do. And then I began to think back the way I was in nature on Mount Everest.

In a wide out, in shorts. Tranquil, nice, swift, no paranoia. Under the ice, lost away. No goggles on, couldn't see anything. Where was the hole? No panic, no fear, fear no paranoia even when your retina froze yes yes and so many more of those situations i always had the confidence and i felt this connection within the body and i remembered that in det, Michigan, the morning I had to go in the brain scan

and show a different graphics when cold water is coming in and warm water is coming in and cold and warm and cold and warm, not affecting the skin temperature by command, by just thinking, is that possible? And I thought, yes, of course. I had, through intuition intuition i had this feeling hey i'm just gonna do it so went to the university they got me in the brain scan i always say you give the best you get the best and i did it i i made my skin temperature go one degree up and the cold was coming in and it did not affect my skin

temperature right like twice 35 minutes and then they looked inside by the way the cold water i felt warm really warm to you very warm and nice instead of cold with ice water coming in and i made it warm and the professor had really a hard time to put ice cubes in the in the in the pump in the reservoir to make the water cold because i was warming the water on the water just by thought i was not able to breathe deep or to contract the muscles because you see blurred visions, images on the brain scan. So, yeah, so I read about this study. There was an article on Smithsonian where they kind of described this. And as I understand it, you were in this suit where they could pump water to cover your skin. It could be cold. It could be cold.

It could be warm. And they slid you into an MRI. So they were scanning everything as they were putting this either cold or warm water into this suit and then measuring how you were reacting to this. Is that what went down? So that's what we are. And the cold represents stress on the cell's biology. And normally you have no way to deal with that stress.

So you just let it go. It comes in cold and then warm, cold, warm, cold, warm. And we have no way to outbalance it or to transcend the elements working on the body. Not with the mind, but there I show to go and transcend it, transcend the impact on the body. And not only my body became warm, like really warm there in those areas, they looked up in the brain. And what they saw with the 74 people is that when stress comes in

and that's regular stress can be anything emotional stress heat cold oxidative stress through stress of daily life and all it all has an effect on our being on our physiology and normally we are not able just by thinking to make that stress go away so this is the way it works in the brain when stress comes in and the prefrontal cortex there is a a lot of activation that's your consciousness your direct here and now consciousness oh it's cold it's cold very activated insula which is activated when in deep meditation or when you feel really relaxed very inactive inactive at the moment when there is a stress going on. Now, that is what normally works in the graphics. And then they looked in my brain and they saw that the prefrontal cortex

was completely shut down and the insula was really on. Not only, so while being under stress, I was in deep meditation like the result of deep meditation is insular activation it's like euphoric and then they saw another thing and that is actually uh yeah something innate but unknown to science is the periaqueductal gray hemisphere which is part of the brain stem the deepest is between the spine ganglia and the and the brain it's where it all begins the very primitive brain is uh it's where created the opiates opioids and the cannabinoids, right?

And they, in case of stress, say depression or danger or cold or impact, then you need opioids and cannabinoids to make the unpleasant feeling and can go very extreme into pain and into feeling bad about yourself. And you don't feel the euphoria anymore at that moment we have an innate capacity to down regulate the imbalance and make it right again by the wrong feeling driven from imbalance or hormonal becoming depressed or feeling bad anxiety fear ptsd trauma anything in the brain now we found the pathway to uh to break the cycle of feeling bad and get euphoric hormones in, cannabinoids, plus a pain cycle we drop through bringing in opioids. And that is, they say, we found compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomic processes.

Autonomic is normally outside of our will. Ability to control. of the autonomic processes. Autonomic is normally outside of our will. Ability to control. And now we have found them, autonomic processes in the brain related to mood regulation. They say it's a transformational technique that will change mental health care. That's what we want.

If we go back to the beginning of our conversation, we want to be spiritual. We want to have depth. Spirituality is presence of your deeper brain within your willful control. Because everybody wants to be happy, strong, and healthy, but nobody knows. But it is innate to feel that way. But it is innate to feel that way. And we are wrongly schooled in the primary school and then the college and the universities. And now we show that everybody has an innate capacity and should not be lost on the way by cognitive,

cognitive like the surface of the brain input of information cognitive information and doing nothing with the deeper parts of the brain you know what happens 25 percent more blood flow goes to the surface of the brain chronically logically the rest is just surviving, stand by, but not developing. And there is our sense of just being. And we talk about five senses. This is the way we have learned to be. But there are three senses more, like the sixth sense, the seventh, and the eighth. What's the seventh and the eighth? The seventh is the proprioception, is the immune system.

The immune system in the depth. And we have shown that already six years ago. First time in medical history to go into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, activating the innate immune system, not only even into the bone marrow, which represents the specific immune system, the B cells, T cells, and direct answer on an intruder coming in. Could be a virus, bacteria. Yeah, this is the study that you're talking about is the one where you and a cohort of individuals were injected with E. coli endotoxin.

E. coli endotoxin, yeah. And for people that are new that didn't listen to the first time or aren't familiar with you, like explain that experiment because that bends a lot of minds. Yes, that actually is so. The seventh neurological network is the proprioception. And this is past sixth sense. We got a absolute possible innate control. just need to awaken that it is a network inside and that makes us able to activate the deepest of the immune system when it's necessary

we as mammals in nature would die if we would be like for days in a bed somewhere you know we have this innate control but because of our behavior we lost the connection and this deep connection i took on by e coli bacteria injected and i showed for the first time to have a control over the sympathetic, over the autonomic nervous system related to the immune system, which goes logically very deeper than normally considered. And in medical history thought of, this is not possible to be done by humans. But this man is a he's the Iceman. He does strange things in nature. Yeah, he is an exception that confirms the rule

and i said no everybody is able to do this this is natural and so i took this cohort of people and within four days i had them there and we were walking in the nature in shorts in freezing temperatures we danced our socks off on the top and everybody was able to be there at minus 27 centigrade which is really freezing cold far below zero and and we were dancing there i recognized these guys are ready to take on the bacteria which normally makes people very sick and they will be able to battle it within a quarter of an hour or something and four days later they were in the hospital and they did the breathing exercises and they got their focus which is a neurology is power if i'm able just by my

willful neurology, thinking, hey, I don't want to become cold. Well, cold is coming on the body, and the body becomes warm. That's dealing with stress just by thought. So that power, everybody has, but we never awoken that power, which is, by the way, network number eight, the interoception, interoceptive focus. And for the first time, they saw now in Michigan that I was doing that.

They call it the interoceptive focus and top down, which normally they never had seen that. And I tell, but this is natural. Everybody has it. It is only through our schooling systems and the way we have our behavior that we do no longer understand of the existence of deeper mechanisms, possibly within our control. It's gone. But going back to the experiment on the E. coli, they all went into the hospital. They did their breathing, use their neurology their focus and within a quarter of an hour 100 of these guys after 16 000 and more 134 people who done the same experiment and all became sick then suddenly 12 people randomly chosen of the 18 I trained in four days,

they were exposed to the bacteria, injected, and within a quarter of an hour, all had control. And with that, we showed that the specific immune system, innate immune system, autonomic nervous system, can be controlled in contrary of what was written in medical history. That means the inflammation in the body, they effectively suppressed. And inflammation is the cause of any disease. Network number seven.

Well, a couple observations here. I mean, the first thing is, the first remarkable thing is that you train these people for just four days, right? Yes. With your techniques. And that's all that was required for them to combat this endotoxin and fend it off. Yes. That we have the ability, the power, the acumen to manipulate and control our immune response, which is something that I think conventional wisdom would say is something that is regulated outside of conscious awareness or control. So that's a mind blower. that you could cause or instigate your body to release its own opioids,

endogenous opioids and cannabinoids to, what, combat the pain response? Or what exactly is that doing? The pain and the feeling. So, euphoric feelings come from cannabinoids. Me coming from Amsterdam, you know. Yeah, you like that. It's a cannabinoid. I don't even know that I knew that we had endogenous cannabinoids within our body.

It's a whole system, endocannabinoid system. It regulates a whole lot of organs within us. All the, say, the cardiopulmonary area and the gastrointestinal area and bladder. So that's the whole torso. And we are able to regulate whatever is out of balance therein. And therefore, we have the opioids. And there is a crisis on opioids right now. Hey, man, we got them ourselves.

So no crisis anymore. Just for that, I'm here just to say that. And we got them ourselves. So no crisis anymore. Just for that, I'm here just to say that, and we got the proof, so done. Right. All right, so next podcast. We did it. We're over. Yeah. You've made some pretty bold claims when it comes to the body's ability to combat disease,

everything from MS to arthritis to diabetes, clinical depression, anxiety, bipolar, and even cancer. And I think a lot of people, when they hear, especially when they hear... About cancer, I had to be very... Yeah, like, if you say cancer... Very diligent and very careful. But now it has been proven that there is an absolute relationship between the immune system and cancer. And now I can say we in the immune system are very able to activate the deepest of the immune system. And now it has been proven in scientific papers that that they have a direct

relationship so if you are able to activate the immune system in the depth that absolutely has a positive effect on on the cancer cells on the dna on the cell division. We are right now, we just came from Baltimore, fundraising, and one of the top researchers in the world, Alyssa Epel, professor in San Francisco, she is leading a new study which we do on the DNA. And when the DNA becomes intranquil or wrong, and telomeres are being affected, then cell division, the wrong one, cancer, can happen.

Now, they see that what we do is after 12 years, this is what they say, after 12 years of DNA research, and we know by microscopes the way they look like, the DNA and the telomeres and everything but we never knew how to get there and to influence it at will and now we got them so they are into the study it's been endorsed by the John W Brick Foundation Mental Health Care brick foundation mental health care and uh 1.2 million i think in san francisco on this method yeah i saw a tweet that you just put out the other day so you just basically somebody's donating 1.2 million dollars to this yeah because it's credible because what we show is that we are able to beat inflammation we are inflammation is the cause for deregulation in the body anyway.

And one of the deregulations is cancer. And I don't say directly now we got a cure for cancer. No, but we got more than probable cause to make these studies and endorse it and show that nature has the answer. And we have to look inside of our own inner nature the neurology of the awareness and our breathing we have become not natural disconnected and therefore we get all these problems if we go back we will be able after millions of years of development of our physiology, to down-regulate what is out of balance back into balance in the core and have a sense, absolute sense of control. I think what's super interesting about you is that what you're preaching and teaching and the impact that you're having, these are very simple techniques.

Yes. And we're going to get into what they are specifically in a minute. But essentially, it's a call to return to our natural state. Yes. To live more primal lives, to be more connected to nature, to connect with the breath and to what it means to, you know, truly, historically live in the world in the most ancient sense of what it means to be human. And that message is butting up against the intellectualization of science. And I think it's difficult to digest for, you know, somebody who's in the medical profession, who's like, listen, you know, this guy's out here

ranting and raving. And yeah, he's some kind of crazy outlier, but let's stick to the microscope because here's what we have and we're developing these drugs and this is truly the path forward. So these are two very different approaches, one that resides very much in the mind

and yours, which is based on experience and things like the heart and love and spiritual connection, which are ephemeral concepts that a lot of people have a hard time, you know, sort of wrapping their heads around and embracing. So this is another one of the arms races that we're experiencing at the moment exactly exactly and uh i say we have to get back to the say the tribe feeling but people who are lonely for example their white blood cells get deteriorated um and people who are like a tribe, the family, the structure, it's perfectly outbalanced through nature through millions of years. We got disconnected within the family.

And now all the world is connected. We are one tribe now. You know, the tribe before had no hospitals, had no pharmacies, had no industrialization or whatever. They could cope with any impact. Therefore, we had the elders and elders are the storytellers. They know about the experience. What do we do with the elders?

We put them in elder homes, apathically looking at the television screen and nothing else so uh that's what they found out also in pennsylvania rosito when there was a cardiovascular epidemic going on in america in the 20s except for that region why was was that? Finally, they came to know because granddad lives with taking care of the grandchildren and the people, they meet each other in the street and they talk to each other and they wish each other well and touch each other, oxytocin. And if the love gets into the body into the biochemistry then the good things happen neurologically igniting the right hormones in the body this the way we were built and what do we do now we became individual we tense up the elbow work hey, I'm better than you. I go faster. I want more. And going into six cars is better than five cars.

And all that nonsense is going. And I say what we are unconditionally already present within us is the ability to become happy, strong, and healthy. And when we are able to bring back that natural knowledge with science, you don't need two cars because you're already happy with your family and the way nature meant it to be. And there you really become powerful. Now it is time to use our neurology, our consciousness, to tap into the deepest part of that part of the brain, which we lost connection with. And we got it. I can tell you, we got it. We're going to tackle this real terrorist of ours, which is the same for everybody,

depression, bad feelings, anxiety, fear, PTSD, trauma, bipolar, anything you can come up with, we found a way to tackle that with euphoric hormones and pain-killing hormones. It's all there. And we got them inside and we are built to be able to use it any time. And with that, we get away from this fear-based thinking to control, but otherwise I don't have the things to compensate my bad feeling or my insecurity, my fear-based thinking. It's gone. And you live with everybody and you wish well to everybody, non-santimental, because your energy is right. It emanates from the core instead of from the brain.

That's very threatening to the matrix. Yes. You know, I mean, it is an inside job. It requires you to look within. And that's very challenging to almost everybody who has grown up in our modern Western industrialized society, where from day one, we're born and bred to chase the gold chain and achieve and succeed and all these things that you just said. And that implicit within that promise is, of course, happiness. And most people are chasing that to their deathbed, never quite achieving that which they seek the most, which is a sense of fulfillment and purpose, contentment, connection,

all of these things. All of the market forces, the economic systems, the social systems in which we are reared and, and, and habitate today are pushing us away from these very things that ultimately going back all the way to the wisdom of the ancients, uh, are the true holders of, of, of, of this promise of contentment. And if we can find a way to have the wherewithal to invest in that interior journey and engage with our interior selves in that way, we can unlock this universe of potential that we all are walking around with.

Exactly, the power of the mind, I call it. We are not built to, why should we have 100% brain when we only are able to control 20 percent doesn't make sense the sense is the 20 percent is because most of the blood flow is always on the surface because of our thinking ways the neurological pathways we have learned to develop, yes. So I've now found a way to get into the deepest of the brain, and with that, unlocking the possible power of the mind to become just happy, strong, and healthy. Not a circus act.

I'm not into, look at me, what I can do, blah, blah. No, I just discover what innately we are capacitated with everybody and there is the unconditional love or yes the unconditional love composed by the guarantee to activate anything that makes you happy strong and healthy happiness is hormones or four hormones the strength is the metabolic processes in the in the cell and we have proven that that we are able to create more atp and that doesn't matter how it works strength is there is energy and we are able to guarantee flow therein we showed that and then the last one is the health is the going into the deepest layers of the immune system it's all there it was always there and it is connected to the brain

and now we found the pathways and and it's up for awakening and with that comes the the beginnings of the power of the mind for everybody. And there is the spiritual journey. Because it is without thoughts. It's feelings. It's deep. It's like drugs. But then your own.

So we got this t-shirt. Get high on your own supply. Yeah. And it's kind of nice. But first, let us clean up the place and get into learning people to control and outbalance their depression, bipolar, anxiety, fear that it is no longer needed because 20% will become 100% control in the brain. So let's talk about what that protocol is. How do we begin this process of engaging the mind in a new way? Yes. So I came up with these things because I didn't find it in notebooks. So I went into nature.

And in nature, you have no words't it's not written when i'm in a whiteout but i feel suddenly instead of thought of a paranoid because an anxiety and fear because there's a whiteout i'm in my shorts and it's less than half the oxygen present and nobody's around and i can't see anything but white eyes and rocks and there i am for hours then feeling that you are not in anxiety but okay you feel confident nice and surprisingly you're looking at yourself, hey, it's okay. This power is part of the power of the mind, which is able, through intuition, orientation, deeper than our normal senses, the sixth sense,

sixth sense, not the sick sense, the sick sense. I got you. It's almost sick in this society because there is no confidence. Confidence is part of the sixth sense i gotcha it's almost sick in the society because there is no confidence confidence part of the sixth sense it's a confidence comes when you have control within your own brain past the normal sense oracle perception you got images and feelings sixth sense is able to go into the future because it has no time space perception it is different but it is there and you learned when it's simply there not because your logic says so no that because it is there and you trust it then you feel confident and it makes the right calculations and this is what happened there i felt confident i began to walk and my orientation gps anything it is great working

even in a wide out three hours later i arrived in an advanced base camp and was received by Tibetans. And they must have seen a crazy pilgrim, a white man coming out of a whiteout. But they gave me tea and butter. So where and when was this? 2007 on Everest. Oh, this is your Everest. Okay, yeah. Yes, part of the Everest.

I got you. Okay. Okay, yeah. Yes, part of the Everest. I got you. Okay. So, yeah, that's when you made it all the way up to the death zone with basically just in shorts. Yes. No shirt, right?

And then you had a foot injury or something like that that prevented you from going all the way to the top. The thing is, I learned to get into different consciousness altogether by going into nature. Because it wasn't in the books what I tried to find. I want to find the soul. I want to find enlightenment. And the world is proven to be a place where it is not and where they ignore the soul's presence. It's all about profits and power and tension and stress

and dominating and exploiting and polluting. That is what is going on. This big monster, I think, we are like dragon slayers. We go for the right tools and then go ahead. We go past our fear and turn the wheel and make effective tools and bring it out to the world that there is light in the world that there is a soul in the world and that we have a capacity to get rid of this manipulative control and to find a absolute a the deepest sense of control over ourselves because we own, really, our own brain.

We are the owners of our happiness, strength, and health. Dave Asprey asked me in his podcast, Wim, what is enlightenment? And please tell it what somebody else do. And he said it in one sentence. I said, just be happy, strong, and healthy, and the rest is bullshit. And please tell it in what somebody else do and he say you don't want said it I said just be happy strong and healthy and the rest is bullshit the soul it's time for the soul to be here and

guaranteed and as I say past any politics and bollocks and power and this and culture and tradition and religion the mother and back that is the same as in new york they just want to guarantee for their children happiness strength and health and now because nobody was listening everybody indulging into religion and differences instead of the the equal side of our all we just want to love our kids wasn't it so that's what we want and that's what we need to stand up and say go through science no speculation anymore the time had you had to speculate and to show your differences with all the respect it only kills it gives a bad quality of life no health

a depression and people earning irrational amounts of money and the other one not i see people homeless here and i think hey man it's still on so until it is not solved that the unconditional love which everybody should owe, like owning their own mind, we have to keep on, Rich, and stand up. Because fuck the past. and made our genetical way of thinking through epigenetics becomes genetics. And now we are stuck in the marsh and we got to solve it. Yes, that's what we do. We stand up and we say no to war, no to disease, no to depression. We say yes to happiness, strength, and health. And we prove it through science.

And that makes us men. Yeah, that's powerful. We're in strange times right now. We are connected in ways that we never have been historically, but that connection is digital. It's temporal. It's not real. Meanwhile, we're more divided than ever, certainly politically, we have retreated to our respective silos and tribes, and we love to shoot arrows at each other and signal to our respective tribe members that we're a member in good standing. Well, spending a lot of energy distinguishing ourselves from the other, from them, from the bad guy, whoever that is. And this is reaching peak levels that I've never seen in my lifetime. And this call to return to our natural state,

this idea that the mother in New York and the mother in Baghdad are truly one. How do we return back to that understanding and that connection that can truly unify us and supersede and heal this divide that we're seeing right now that is perhaps our biggest disease? Yes, heart disease, America's number one killer, obesity rates through the roof, depression, the world's number one disability, PTSD, diabetes, cancer, all of these things are killing people at an alarming rate while we're blindly decimating the planet and with our hands not on the steering wheel here. This is a crisis of epic species ending proportions. We can't fuck around here.

Yes. And we're running out of time. So the call to return to this primal state of breath, of connection with each other and with nature, as simple and as basic as that sounds, it's still very threatening to the person who is very much a consumer in this society and programmed to behave in a certain way. You're asking them to do some very simple things, but it's interpreted as almost a threat or a challenge to a way of life that is so distinct from everything that they know and have been taught. from everything that they know and have been taught.

Yes, if you learn a monkey to be a lion for all the time, it doesn't behave like a monkey anymore. We have lost from our true nature. And with that, with the capacities of our true nature, which is there to learn to have a control over the full brain. I mean, 100%. Because it's the mind, it's the seed of the spirit of the soul. And the soul is the purpose. And we think it is just something randomly chosen by religion, the Catholics and the

Protestants and the Islamic and the Zaratustras or whatever. All this is just a difference, is a time-space ego, which doesn't have the real ability or capacity to go into the deeper part of the brain and experience the unifying principle experience, which everybody has. Spirituality is equal to everybody. It has no label. Only the differences where we came from, the time-space perception and ego related to that,

those are the first baby steps we learn how to conquer the power of the mind. And then from there there we learn from time space perception to go into timelessness and everything the the soul's presence the soul now is confined is imprisoned and what it shows is disease and in all kinds of ways both mental and physical it's because it's not there and it only shows hey that's why you get sick and you can't cover it up with pills and medicines and kill the messengers all the time not go to the core how far because the power and money goes that way and and that's why it's prolonged and keeping on and because people are ignorant they lost hope and the people if you really give them the the alternative through say science

then they are able to reactivate that deep sense of hope within them now this society you come in and you say yeah you to be the best in the world. You've got to position yourself, become this and that. Those are asymptomatic tools you get because everybody's in fear. And nobody knows that if you learn to control the power of the mind, you don't need fear because the beautiful mind is very able to go past the time and space, what is happening in the future, resolving things from the past. That's why we are here. And there is this soul, this inexplicable soul presence.

That's why we are alive. And we get to know it and to be that flower and then share it with everybody and that's where we go so here i am talking about it and saying okay what what is the real way okay i showed as the first one now again in the brain scans like seven years ago i it, the autonomic nervous system, innate immune system, endocrine system, hormonal system, all can be very deeply influenced. In four days, with these guys up the mountain, we danced our socks off while being in extremes of nature because they had the power of the mind present like it is innately there for everybody. present like it is innately there for everybody but we always are in this fear way comfort zone behavior confined the way we have learned and this is the way we need to be no get out get into your true nature and you don't need only hope over there you feel the power of your own mind, being able to deal with anything that is out there. Thus, absence of fear is a logical thing happening there. that they have had, glimpses of the beyond or a sense of expanded consciousness and awareness

and connection and unity. But for the most part, they will say these experiences are few and far between and they're fleeting. The more you practice meditation, the more you can drop in with greater facility and it becomes easier just like anything that you practice but this is a lifetime commitment and you're here saying in four days i can do i can basically now within an hour like yeah within an hour okay within an hour now give me an hour man what is it

like i know the we talked about this last time but the cold exposure and these feats that you've done, those are the things that create the clickbait titles, and that's what people want to talk about and what they're interested in. But my impression, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that this is much more about the breath work and the way that the breath and these meditative practices that you teach are portals or ways of garnering control over these traditionally thought uncontrollable aspects of our awareness and our lizard brain. Yes, it is absolutely rich. Good resume. Nice. It's like a diving board.

I can use it. All right, we'll dive in now. I made some assault, man. Go on your next rant monologue. Yes. I'm here to receive. Right on, right on. So the thing is, mindfulness, for example, and seasoned practitioners of mindfulness have been studied very well.

A lot of research has been done, like hundreds and hundreds of papers. And it all shows that they are able to tap in a deeper part of the brain, which is learning how to decrease blood flow in the surface and get it deeper. And thus, they become activated, those deeper parts of the brain. to decrease blood flow in the surface and get it deeper. And thus they become activated, those deeper parts of the brain, and they feel like nice, good. And sometimes they peak and they get even deeper. And that deepest part is the brainstem.

But that's rare. And now the professors, after looking in the brain scans and looking in my brain, and part of my joke, but they found compelling evidence that I possess brain activity in the brain scan. That's a joke. Your brain is actually working. Yeah, it is. It's not new anymore. You have one.

It's not new anymore it's not new anymore okay second hand thing is they said the the part of the brain you made act robustly activate we never see that in even with seasoned practitioners in mindfulness in different areas of the brain. In different, deeper areas of the brain. And especially under stress. And stress is the killer in society and people are not able to tap into the depth of the brain no more. And now we found a neurological pathway into the deepest part of the brain

and everybody is able to learn to activate that and if you just repetitiously go a couple of times then it becomes stronger this neurological pathway does the control from the surface of the brain into the deepest part of the brain and if you are able to go actively into the deepest part of the brain you are able to go actively into the deepest part of the brain, you are able to go in all the ways in between. That means all the parts of the brain. In Hanover, we showed that the breathing technique is making 100% activity of the brain. Suddenly, the neurology, the electricity is activated everywhere in the brain.

It's a disco. And the dance is only beginning when you are able to bring 25% dominant blood flow only in the surface of the brain, but now everywhere, then the activation of the brain but now everywhere then the activation of the powers related to those parts of the brain are within our control and will how much of that becomes under the the aegis of conscious control versus the activation then setting in motion some kind of autonomous processes that um stimulate the the immune response in the best and most healthy way like what is the awareness level in terms of what's going on like are you consciously like when you're in the mri and they're shooting the cold water and you can't really do the breath work,

but you're, I presume, entering into a meditative state, like how much are you, is it like an effort-based thing or is it something that because of your history of doing this, that your body just suddenly knows what to do? Like, I'm trying to understand, like for somebody who's listening to this, that your body just suddenly knows what to do. I'm trying to understand. For somebody who's listening to this who's coming in brand new and doesn't really understand what we're talking about here,

break this down into little chunks so people can really get a sense of what the experience is like. I thought it was going to be very difficult in the brain scan to show active, say, commanding from the brain, the body, without moving, without muscular activity, without just lying there. Just the thought, here comes the cold. normally cannot do anything just by thought related to the cold coming on the body making the body colder and you cannot do with your thoughts nothing and i thought it was going to be very difficult but no i learned that in nature in numerous kinds of situations for example climbing without gear steep rocks getting cramps and thinking that way. Or being in a cylinder full of ice after an hour.

I got always this problem with the kidneys. They become too cold. I can think and warm up my body from the inside out just by thinking. Or put a hand in front of an infrared camera and within a minute I can make it 10, 12 degrees going up. Just your hand? Just my hand. And are you thinking that?

Yeah, just do it. Right. And so there I was in the brain scan and I thought, I'm just going to give it my shot. And what I did, because there was a terrible noise going on, they asked me to meditate. In brain scan, they said, right, MRI machine, yeah. Meditate on that. that no i i i just began to just to have a reference point of reference of my own brain being there and what happened is i felt no cold it became warm i could even wander off with my thoughts to the place and feel the warmth and it is not difficult to learn to command the

body top down by your thoughts and be the master over your own physiology and with that bringing happiness strength and health or anything that is out of balance back into balance. That's the power of our mind. And I learned it in nature. And I say, you don't need to climb Mount Everest or go into ice water, all those things. They are just a mirror that works when you go into regular practice therein about the power of the mind, the neurological neurological pathways we invest in unhappiness we invest in the wrong things we don't want to be not happy but we're not being happy as a result of the oxidative stress within us going through the blood-brain barrier and taking away the balance between the

serotonin dopamine and become depressed. We don't know how to deal with that. But now we found top down, we are the commanders over our hormonal system. When anything is out of balance, and once again, you don't need to go into the extremes. I did that. I was the pioneer. I was the scout. And I say, the enemy is over there. That's the way to tackle it. And here we make it simple. On paper, this is the map, biohacking map. And this is what you got to do instead of going frontal into those enemy lines and losing a whole lot of your life and time and miserable misery going into misery no there's the space and if you just do that you become in control of yourself and can it be so easy it is simplified it's there and if you invest into happiness, strength, and health, you are the commander.

That is step number one. Change your paradigm. What's interesting is that because you have done all of these crazy things, swimming 66 meters under the ice cap and climbing Everest. And the intention behind all of those is to draw awareness to the power of the human mind to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But the crazier the feat, the more easy it becomes for people

to just say you're a crazy outlier. That this is- I'm still a crazy outlier, by the way. But what I love about you is is every time that argument comes up you deflect it and say no this is like I do this to show what's possible I can teach this this is replicable and put me in the MRI let's do all these studies like you become this guinea pig I mean we've only talked about two of the many many studies that you've done that time and

time again are showing things that previously we thought to be impossible. And you're getting, what's amazing is you've created this groundswell movement. I mean, I don't know, five or six years ago, nobody ever heard of you. Now you're veering on becoming a household name. Everybody knows who you are, the Iceman Cometh. And you're teaching these practices, you've created this scalable family business where you're now teaching practitioners to teach your methods. And this is creating this spider web that is, you know, expanding exponentially with every day. And it's really cool to see. And you're getting coverage, not just in Vice, but in medical journals. And people are paying attention to what you're doing. But what I see between the lines is still a reluctance of the

traditional medical community to really embrace or pay attention to what you're doing. There was a Rolling Stone article that said something along the lines of like, look, he's done all this stuff and everyone's verifying it and he's done these studies and still he's kind of being ignored. Yes. Right? Exactly. So walk me through that.

Yes. Ignorance. Ignorance, it's called. ignorance ignorance it's called and that's the basic of fear-based thinking genetically already for hundreds and possibly thousands of years it's the power system the power system is still on people just want more and more couple of people and they never are satisfied it's a it's a it's a mind so much in control over others, but not over themselves. And so, you know, people in power are not necessarily more happy than somebody else. It's just they are the crazy outliers, not me. I just want to be in nature. I want to be with my mother, with my

father, with my kids, and all together happy, strong, and healthy. I think I'm a crazy outlier. Like, I'm crazy about my wife and my life. And with that comes the whole family. And I'm crazy about it. Fucking bloody crazy. And I will stay being crazy with that. Those are the core values of happiness, strength, and health. And they are present. So I think that's just. And what I see in the world, hey, man, anybody can see that. It doesn't make sense.

But it's there. It's the power system. It's the mainframe. It's the mainframe. It's the matrix. And I think we are little now, but we are becoming bigger and bigger. We are beginning to settle into the hope and trust and confidence of the people that we actually are innately built to be happy, strong, and healthy unconditionally. So that's why I go through these signs.

And let us face, hey, you want to battle inflammation and chronic pain? Millions, hundreds of millions are suffering from autoimmune diseases and pain, chronic pain and chronic diseases and we found an answer easy answer to tackle that considerably for everybody so you better think twice before you say no to this then another thing is the mental disorders and the feeling, the connection with your own hormonal system and get high on your own supply looks like, hey, this guy is happy from Amsterdam. No, I go through neuroscience and show for the first time in medical history that we have an innate capacity to get neurological control over our hormonal system and become happy, strong, and healthy. It's there. So mental disorders, goodbye. Inflammation-causing diseases, goodbye. By the way, killer number one, cardiovascular-related diseases,

a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away how simple is it contraction and dilatation of veins three times the world is within us and you train it if you just step a little bit out of your comfort zone behavior and take the cold shower after the hot one then you tackle the serial killer, the cardiovascular-related disease. Makes more casualties than any war. Nobody is saying too much about it. It's a silent serial killer, and you are able to tackle it through a cold shower, and you own neurology. I'm going to take the cold shower shower on regular basis and train vascular fitness my vascular system and thus it becomes flexible and not full of sclerosis calcification which is

stopping the blood flow of going through and you get a lot more energy just take a cold shower physiologically what is going on it? It's anti-inflammatory. It's alkalizing your blood. What else is happening? It's absolutely, yeah, we did the studies. It's alkalizing the blood. We suffer from low acidification. Acidification.

Yes, acidification uh we suffer from that that's where chronic chronic acidosis acidosis that gets into the lymphatic system and in due time it comes back in this into the system creating all these defects called autoimmune diseases those are not my words biochemical professors they say and they said we have to congratulate our colleagues in in the university of neming to have found university or what of name is a place it's a city okay it's a city in the netherlands Netherlands and there we found by putting getting the endotoxin inside we found a way to battle with the course of autoimmune diseases which is inflammation inflammatory markers cytokines and we bring them down within

a quarter of an hour and a part of that is alkalizing the blood but not only in the blood also in the lymphatic system and the lymphatic system has a storage capacity the garbage but you need to empty it and if you don't then at a certain moment it comes back into the system after years and years and nobody knows how it really works and now we found that we are able to tap into the lymphatic system and cleanse the liquids. And how much of this is the breath work versus the cold exposure? Is it the combination of these two together? Like how does that work?

So the ice is nice and wise if you learn how to deal with that. Gradual cold exposure. But a cold shower does the trick. Cold shower is really… How cold does it have to be? The way a cold shower is happening right over here. That's cold enough. The thermogenesis, the vascular fitness the stimulation begins and you will get

more energy because we got millions of primitive muscles within the vascular system and they all become strong so they help the blood flow and the stress of too much heartbeat it goes down like 20 minutes 24 hours a day that means a lot of stress caused by too high a heart rate is is gonna be down a solution and how simple just take the cold shower they do not even think about it just do it you get a lot more energy because all these little muscles begin to help the blood flow, nutrients, the minerals, the oxygen. It brings it all to the cells. And in the cells, we got the mitochondria.

They get the right stuff in the right speed. And you get a lot of energy inside. And the heart rate goes 20, 25 beats a minute, 24 hours a day down. And there is their peace. And while you are in action, you become so much more in command of this chemistry is when suddenly the neurotransmitters of our thoughts are able to command what is going on inside.

That is number eight, network number eight, the interception, which I showed, that was thinking, cold water comes, skin temperature, I don't want it to go down. It didn't go down. Like two times 35 minutes, cold, warm, cold, warm. I just stayed over there. Stayed completely flat neutral yes

even one degree up so that is how we have an ability to activate our body to be protected skin temperature or core temperature uh skin temperature both core temperature skin temperature, both, cold temperature, skin temperature, and the DNA. Now, this is what they saw in San Francisco. They say what this is, is like hormetic stress. It's a positive stress that stimulates. It's not undergoing stress. It's you go to the stress. You are the one to activate that stress. You got it in control and with that you

activate the body to go to its utmost functionality and there you get a grip on and with that comes the innate capacity to become happy strong and healthy and out balance what is out of balance, and it's all there. If you could design, like, what do we still need to study and understand? Like, if you could design the ultimate study to better understand the phenomenon that you're speaking about, what would that look like? Like, what do we need to do next to really dive deeper into what exactly is going on? dive deeper into what exactly is going on. I always say, yeah, the origin of what I set out for, my drive, is because of the soul. Everybody is talking about the soul.

Nobody knows what it is. And I say, this time, we're going to bring the soul where it belongs. With all the core values it belongs to, which is happiness, strength, and health. It's pure goodness. It's inside of us. It's powerful. It's beautiful.

It's called love. And this love for life and everybody needs to come back. And because nobody was listening, everybody making war, and God is love, and they make war between each other, and they kill each other, and this and that. You are wrong, we are right. Hey, no, no, no, no. The real experience of spirituality is my aim. I call it the science of the soul. before that happens we need to show that we are able to tackle seemingly unsolvable matters like depression bipolar inflammation chronic pain anxiety fear ptsd trauma those the real terrorists

let's tackle that first and then get into the the right condition of the DNA, the deepest control over the deepest of the brain, and the deepest of the physiology up till the lymphatic. When everything is being able willfully to be reached and influenced in, nothing remains. The soul is there. And it can be revealed. It can reveal itself to you. Yes. People are scared to love though

yes love the greatest power of the universe yeah yeah yeah you want to be uh able to uh with a thousand push-ups and enormous schwarzenegger kind of muscles and and and know a whole lot and all that. It's quite fear-based. Love the family going back there and recognizing that the beauty is all there and embrace it and being able to be proud like a Maasai warrior with the lions over there and the little lambs over here and in between like consciousness, that consciousness.

Of course, you should be feared because it is the greatest power of the universe. But it's inside. It's tangible. We make it accessible and clear and effective. In the last two years since you were here, I'm sure you've worked with hundreds, if not thousands of people. And now you have all these instructors out there conducting workshops and spreading this message and working with people. What are some of the case studies, like transformations that people have undergone, people that you've worked with.

Yes. We got so many thousands of people. Let me explain. How many people are out there doing this right now? Oh, I think millions. I think millions. And it's on, but I think it's still, the whole world should know that there is a non-dogmatic choice to be happy, strong and healthy. Evidence based. That is what I want. There is no dogma around this. It's there.

I'm just saying, look, look at this. You don't have to choose your happiness, strength and health, but the ability to become that is there. but the ability to become that is there. So we got about 40,000 and more testimonials of people who are completely healed of their disease. A variety of diseases as much as diseases exist on this planet. So it gives absolutely cause to study more because I think this natural key we found is unlimited. It's only inaugurating a new dimension through a different paradigm into the power of our mind within our control. The soul itself is knocking at our door.

So I was training the Navy SEALs in Pearl Harbor. I went and drove up there, and there was the bar, and I was thinking, what am I going to teach these guys? Day two it was. Because I always say things and then just before the bar i got a mail of a gp a practitioner a woman a doctor giving me this mail and i read it out loud not out there, just for myself. Hello, I'm Jan.

Last year, I jumped from the third story down because I had it with the pain. I woke up in the hospital. My brother told me about you and what you do, about the autonomous this and that and that. And now I just wake up every day. I'm happy and I'm strong. I'm confident. I love you.

GP, Jan, so and so. Then I went to the Navy SEALs. I said, let's win this fucking war. This war on anxiety and bring real peace therein. Because this is the war really going on in all the world and the navy seals sleep deprivation and a lot of stress a lot is there going and doing the breathing there and convincing them that they are in command not the general of their own that they are there. And you have to sometimes just shut up and get in, become the commander consciously, and start with your own beautiful mind and the power of your mind and to, yeah, give

some water to your garden, then the flowers will come. Well, I'm sure they loved it because they're already, I mean, that's a population of people who are very familiar with discipline. A lot of respect. And they're always trying to, you know, sort of control their reactions. And, you know, they have to be dialed in on such a higher level than the average human being. They, I would think that this is like, this is like the advanced placement course in how to, you know, comport themselves-stress situations to function at their peak. Yes.

And for that, the cold is a great mirror because the cold, and especially ice-cold water, is really stressful on the cells, biology, and our mind. Absolutely. So, the cold we use as a mirror to develop more skills of the mind and refine them and develop them more and tune them better and and that's it and then the cold is of no use anymore but a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away keeps on going it's nice you it's you don't have to take care of your body if you just go into the culture because it will take care of your body yeah have you or any of these studies looked at the impact

of of these techniques on addiction yes there are a lot a lot of people who fall in an abyss when they are no longer, say, addicted because the substance is gone. And the reactions and actions caused by the substance, they are not being triggered. So the breathing helps greatly to fill up that gap. So, yes. greatly to fill up that gap. So, yes. And breathe, like, if you had to, if somebody had to choose between the breath work or the cold,

or you probably don't even want to make that decision. No, no, I do. I say the breathing, the way I learned about the breathing is because of the cold. Because what do you do when you go into cold? That's what you do. you learn to go more into profound breathing because then you are able to change the chemistry which is opposing the impact coming in for that you need to change the chemistry is done by deep breathing because we wear all the clothes that's why we become shallow in our breathing so i say to people mind about this that you are building up a deficit of the right chemistry in your body just deep

breathing and conscious breathing during the day sometimes just it's all for free. It's out there. And you just do consciously. Consciously means the neurology, it goes paired with the chemistry. You learn to really tune in with the right chemistry in your body, making it alkaline to the level of the lymphatic system, the garbage getting out and cleansing. It's all there. And simple. So walk me through like a day in

your life you're traveling all the time do you set aside times during the day to do a diligent practice or is this something that you're just persistently doing throughout the day like constantly reminding yourself and bringing your awareness back to the breath. Automatically in this conversation, I sometimes just take a deep breath in. And that's it. Only when you let me talk. Yes. You can do that.

Yes. Right. And, you know, yeah, cold showers, I love to take them. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not, you know, going into more more more puritan kind of training yogic training and abstinence no i take it all i like my beer in the afternoon yeah to drink a nice little beer hey i like it i like it i'm i'm not a ascetic yogi or any i can be the ascetic yogi.

But that's enough. I don't need to be. I enjoy life. No, you do. I enjoy my kids. You live in the world. You're a man of the... You're not an ascetic.

You're not going to be living in the caves in the Himalayas. But when you hear those stories of those yogis who meditate for months on end or or become breatharians are those apocryphal do you believe in that have you met any i try i train their breatharians for example yeah they have sometimes a loss of energy and in the cold you need energy so i train them in the cold and through the breath work and and the neurology of their brain, which is also conditioned within their confines, they are able to gain a whole lot more power over themselves, over the energetic metabolic processes on cell level and all that.

Yes, they feel better afterwards. So yogis should get out of their caves and begin to teach what they have found instead of being their egotistic little shitty selves. Oh, I'm so beautiful. I'm not only, only, only. No, no, no, no, no, no. India right now is calling for me also. So it's like the wise people do not longer only come from the East. It's now here.

Right here I look at one. And we bring consciousness and we bring love and understanding to the people. That makes us man. That makes us universal. That makes us man, that makes us universal, that makes us eternal. One of the things I love about your story is that it's a very human story. It's almost this Joseph Campbell warrior's path that you've been on that was really birthed out of grief and pain with the passing of your wife.

Oh, yes. That kind of led you into this world of self-discovery. And there's a beautiful full circle aspect to this because you're teaching people how to overcome their depression and their grief and their pain and their suicidal ideation. Because this is very, very personal for you. Normally with suicide, now no longer because of this and exactly what you point out is the full circle i began in grief my wife jumped from an eight story down i was left alone with four kids no money there i was i had to survive my kids made me survive nature healed me and then I began to see what was

the effective mode of it all and then I was able to transmit this to other people and then I began and I had the chance to show it within a scientific laboratory settings, experiments, research, I fully was on. And now, the full circle is, if I would have known what I know now, I would have saved, be able to save my own wife. So for those who are in these situations, where they are in full despair of having their beloveds in depression, in bipolar, in a complete out-of-control brain, we got now, and endorsed by science, a way to tap into the brain and make the change. You love your beloveds, do not only love, bring non-sentimental functionality, affectivity toward them and get it done.

It's beautiful, man. What do you think people most misunderstand about you? Well, I look like a crazy motherfucker, but I am a crazy motherfucker. The thing is, I'm going to also change the world. And that is normally, he is a crazy motherfucker. Yes, I am.

But I am changing the world. So do understand that. All right, so we've got to wrap this up here in a minute. But I want to know what you mean when you say nature can be merciless but righteous, which is something you say often. If you find yourself climbing without gear, there is no mercy there. You have to think you've had a gram so away, otherwise you die. You become blocked or when you are under the ice. You got to find a way out of there and not go into panic and paranoia

because it kills you. It gets you out of control. Or there on Mount Everest in a wide out. You got to find a way. Otherwise, you freeze to death. And many other situations have led to me. Yeah, nature is merciless. But at that moment, you always have a gap wherein you can find a way out. Trust, deeply trust and be confident that you don't need

fear because you have the control over your mind, even in the greatest of despair and darkest of your moments to get out because the light is the love and the love is the universe and we got them. The mind truly is the final frontier. Yes. Yes. And you are an astronaut into the deep recesses of the uncharted geography of consciousness and the brain. And I commend you for that, man. This is worthy work for your life and you're doing

much good for humanity and it's greatly appreciated. What's cool is that it's really been done outside of any mainstream media. I mean, you did the Vice documentary and you get covered in various places, but it's YouTube and podcasts and really this new form of media that is really helping to spread your word. And I think it speaks to the power of how storytelling has shifted in the way that we receive it as a culture. And I wish you well. Thank you.

I want to... After this, will you go out and teach me like a quick breath practice? Yes. That we can share with people. Nice. So for people that are listening to this, we'll put that up on YouTube and everybody can get a little taste of Wim and the work that he does. I know you guys are on tour right now and you're teaching workshops. know you guys are are on tour right now and you're teaching workshops um do you want to let people know where they can find out about that and come and see you and and take one of these workshops

and yes blow their minds thank you thank you for the space uh it's the whim half that's my name method it wasn't me who made that up it was somebody else but nice uh wim hof method.com uh we uh will be in new york miami next month and san francisco and los angeles right now we go to vancouver and uh just be there because when i talk to a crowd uh to people, then it's always new. I just relate to what I feel. I trust my feeling and to come up with the right answers, with the right understanding, clarity. That's because we are the tribe.

We are like a tribe. So we have to come up with the existent blockages of energy at that moment. And for that, a live experience is a live experience. That is nice. That's good. No, one thing. We found the gateway into the deepest of the brain. And the power of the mind is the future. And we are in control of that.

And with that comes the absolute guarantee of happiness, strength, and health. I would not want anything more. Love. For you and for me and for everybody, my friend. Yes, sir. Cool. You should be doing, how come you don't have like a TV show? Are you doing a documentary?

Like, do you have any of that kind of thing in the works? Yes, I do. Maybe my daughter knows. What do you say? Are the documentaries coming? Well, there are several documentaries coming, but there's no TV show. No TV show? All right.

So we have stuff to look forward to. It would be great, a TV show. Why don't we start one? What would you call it? You want to do that? I'll do a TV show with you. Yeah. All right.

We'll become rich. We'll get out, man. And play your role. There you go. All right, my friend. Stay cool. Come back and talk to me again. Much love, brother.

Yeah, much love. Peace plants consciousness. Yes. All good. It's all there. Yep. All right, buddy. No speculation.

Get him on. it's all there yep all right buddy what a gem what a true gift of humanity that wim hof is pretty sure they broke the mold with that guy and i hope he bent your mind a little bit and helped you gain a greater perspective on what's possible in this human experiment we are all collectively conducting. Quick reminder that you can watch this conversation on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash ritual, as well as a separate standalone instructional video there of Wim and all his beautiful glory walking me step by step through his breathing technique. walking me step-by-step through his breathing technique. In addition, if this conversation or that video piques your interest and you wanna learn the full Wim Hof Method, he has an awesome 10-week online video course at wimhofmethod.com forward slash e-learning forward slash fundamentals.

I'll put a link in the show notes up to that. And Wim was kind enough to provide you guys with a discount code, RICH35, capital R, lowercase ICH35 to get 35% off that course. I do not profit off of that in any way. It's just a gift from him to you. And it's available now for the next seven days through December 2nd. For even more on Wim, check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com.

And let him know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts on this conversation with him directly at iceman underscore hoff on both Twitter and Instagram. dot richroll.com there you will find thousands of plant-based recipes all customized based on your personal preferences with unlimited grocery lists and grocery delivery in most u.s cities with international delivery rolling out as we speak amazing customer support really proud of this program and it's all available to you for just a dollar ninety a week when you sign up for a year so again go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you would like to support the work we do here on the podcast, there's a couple ways to do just that. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Simple enough. Share the show on social media. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can also support the show on Patreon

at richroll.com forward slash donate. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on today's production. It was a big team effort. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering production, show notes. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for the video podcast and for their beautiful graphics. Reese Robinson also helped with the video podcast as well as shooting and editing

the WIM instructional video and taking amazing portraits. DK, David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Annalema. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here next week with a powerful exchange with Jimmy Chin and Chai Vazharhelji.

They are the dynamic filmmaking duo behind the incredible Alex Honnold documentary Free Solo, which you should all go see immediately if you haven't already. And it's a damn good conversation. So until then, breathe motherfuckers. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.