TACHYON: I'm trying to determine whether the human mind
can influence matter.
In order to gather evidence,
I'm conducting a series of experiments.
So far, I've tested whether or not our thoughts have power
to move objects, or influence rice in water.
My experiments have been interesting, with mixed results.
My firsthand observations with mindful meditation
have pivoted me in a new direction.
I want to test the power of the mind
on the actual body of the meditator.
I search for the most extreme form of meditation I can find,
and come across an ancient Tibetan practice called tummo.
Its practitioners are said to be able to summon an inner fire
that changes their temperature by as much as 8 degrees.
This inner fire is said to heal their heart
and burn away internal impurities.
To put tummo to the test, I ve picked a cold, wet day
for my experiment, and I ll make it even worse
when I ask my subjects to sit in a freezer truck
for as long as they can.
The first has no experience at all with meditation.
Initially the volunteer doesn't appear to be suffering from
the cold, but after a few more minutes it becomes clear that
he's reacting to the freezing temperature.
He's obviously shivering, and my sensor readings show
a steep drop in his skin temperature,
nearing the point where frostbite can set in.
After 25 minutes, it's clear that I need to
get him out of the truck.
To be honest, I was kind of cocky at first.
I was just like oh, I got this, you know.
Just felt cold, and I was playing with
the vapour in my breath.
But when they turned that fan on the second time,
that's when I felt okay, now it's really setting in.
My hands were shaking a lot more,
my whole upper body started shaking,
and I wasn't really playing anymore.
I was really just trying to breathe.
What was happening inside your mind?
I was just trying to focus on just trying to
keep as warm as I could by deep breathing.
The control's vitals changed dramatically.
His skin temperature dropped from 29 to just 3 degrees;
dangerously close to the point where skin freezes.
I definitely knew I was in
a little bit more of a crisis mode at that point.
(Laughing)
So the cold defeated you?
Uh, yeah.
My next test subject is Brad,
who claims he can control his body temperature with tummo.
Incredibly, Brad says he learned to do this all online,
without the years in a Tibetan monastery
that tummo usually requires.
If his claim is true, it would give me solid evidence that
we are capable of unlocking hidden powers in our minds.
You walk in the freezer, you sit down.
What is going through your mind?
At first, I felt that I wasn't as cold as I thought I would be.
But as I sat down on the chair, I realized that I was going into
this deep tummo technique.
It felt like just the walls of the trailer were just very,
very tight, so it was keeping a lot of the cold energy.
So it wasn't until I actually started getting into it a lot
more that I noticed the cold was intensifying a lot more.
But I was just in a state where I felt that I was completely
in peace, completely in harmony.
I'm basically just starting to centre myself firstly,
just clearing my mind, then I just start doing...
breathing in, so I just start...
(Heavy breathing)
And just really starting to intensify that breath
as I do it more and more.
Types of meditations that I go through,
a lot of it is guided visual meditations,
a lot of it is censoring meditations,
but tummo is something that just really helps me.
It also represents a bliss state as well too.
When you start practicing tummo a lot more,
you just feel very much at peace.
You feel very centred, you feel very aligned,
you feel like you're connecting to your body
on a very deeper cellular level.
You lasted an incredible 35 minutes.
When you're trying to overcome extreme cold,
what do you focus on?
So basically feeling like you have flames around you,
feeling like your skin is made out of a red hot element,
just feeling like you have steam rising out of your body.
It's also important to try and get
a really good grasp of breath so you can hold it in
for about a good 20, 30, 45 seconds.
And again, that's the catalyst.
As long as you can hold your breath in
for that amount of time, then you'll feel the heat
really just flow throughout your entire body.