Transcriber: Lucia Lutzová Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Wim Hof: It's a honor to be here.
Thank you for looking at me.
(Laughter)
Right here we got a box.
And I can do stuff like almost two hours
stand in direct contact with the ice.
But I learned it in heart nature.
Heart nature is merciless but righteous,
and it taught me to do things with my immune system,
nervous system, the cardiovascular system,
and my mind, beyond my thinking,
beyond belief.
And it was tested by Professor Hartman.
It was tested in New York; it was tested in Finland,
physiologically with the immune system.
All kinds of things came out
because I exposed myself to the extreme
naturally in heart nature.
It`s my teacher.
He taught me.
And I think we still [have to] learn a lot from nature
because we are not in balance with nature anymore.
It's gone.
But for that, we are here.
For that, you are there.
And I am going to do my utmost best
to convey a message which I got
since I was investigated by a blood research,
wherein I could suppress by thinking
and respiratory exercises,
which I learned at heart nature,
suppress the inflammatory marks in my blood.
So we can have power over the body by our mind.
But for that, we have to go back to be in balance with nature.
Nature is our teacher.
And I will try and show it.
(Applause)
Now, Professor Hartman is coming.
She's going to explain data.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Professor Hartman: Thank you.
Well, the big question, of course, here is:
How is it possible for a human being
to be exposed in an ice bath for one hour and 44 minutes?
Well, in order to answer that question,
we had to do an experiment.
Because there's no physiology textbook
that tells you, what happens to a human being in ice.
And I'll show you a little bit of the atmosphere
of the experiment in Nijmegen.
You can see here, Wim came to Nijmegen,
and we exposed him for 80 minutes in ice like it's now happening here.
(Video) (Chatter in Dutch)
PH: Okay. The big question that we all face in these days too
with the cold weather is how to keep ourselves warm.
Because our human body wants to stay at a core temperature of 37°.
In order to measure Wim Hof's core temperature
he swallowed a pill - the pill you see here.
And that pill travels through his stomach and sits in a splanchnic area.
And in that way we can precisely measure his core body temperature.
And what we expect
when he's staying in the ice like this for one hour, one and half hour,
that his core body temperature drops.
And we know, when it drops 10 degrees, up to 27 degrees, a person dies.
But already under 35 degrees, we talk about hypothermia,
and you really shiver and feel very badly.
So the big question is: What happens to his core body temperature
when he's standing in this ice?
Well, that was the first big surprise.
I'll show you the result here of the core body temperature.
The blue shade is the area when he is 80 minutes in the ice,
exactly like he's in the ice here in a few minutes.
And what you see is that the core body temperature drops hardly.
It goes from 37.7 to 37.4.
Absolutely not important.
So maybe there's a little layer of air between the ice and the skin
what gives him a bit of isolation.
But we measured a lot of skin temperatures too,
and that's shown in this slide.
And what you see here is many different skin temperatures.
They're all around 30 degrees, which is very normal.
And what you see is when he's in the ice,
most of that drop to 5, to 10 degrees, that's very, very cold.
So there's no isolation from an air layer.
His shell is very, very cold, gets extremely cold,
whereas his core stays warm.
And that's very exceptional.
And here you see two temperatures that are -
this is his head, and this is high up his shoulder,
that were the areas that were above the ice.
Another remarkable finding
is that when we go in the ice, or when we take a cold shower,
your heart rate and blood pressure goes up tremendously.
(Laughter)
(Indistinct speech from Wim)
(Laughter)
This is what happens when you go in a cold shower.
Your heart rate goes up tremendously.
And this is what happened with Wim.
His heart rate and blood pressure hardly increased -
only at the end of the experiment,
so only after 45 minutes to an hour.
One other remarkable finding that I would like to share with you
is that he increases his metabolism.
He can heat up his body by doubling his metabolism.
During the whole procedure,
while he was in the ice for 80 minutes,
his energy expenditure was twice as high,
and with that he produces extra heat;
which, however, can not explain the fact
that his core body temperature does not decrease more.
So what are possible explanations?
And I have three, and there may be other,
but one explanation could be
that Wim is very much into tummo meditation.
And from the tummo meditation, which is mostly done in Asia,
we know that it produces heat.
So maybe that`s part of his heat production.
Also, as Wim was telling a few minutes ago too,
it creates for him a possibility to control his vessels,
control his blood vessels.
What we see is that he can separate his core very well from his shell.
So this could be an explanation.
Another explanation is that Wim has been telling me
that he's doing this for years and years.
As a boy of 12 years old, he already jumped into cold water.
So maybe it's more of a training effect,
and we all could do it
if we just expose ourselves gradually to cold.
And by that train our autonomic nervous system
and control our circulation.
A third explanation could be
that he has some genetic advantage to do this,
that he has some changes in his cold receptors
or changes in his pain receptors
that make it more easy for him to do those kind of experiments.
We don't know yet.
I just gave three explanations.
We need to do more studies on Wim.
As you can see, it's really something exceptional.
He will be sitting for 80 minutes in ice like this.
His core body temperature did not drop.
Physiological we call this a mystery,
and we need to do more research to really understand
how you can control processes in your body
that we have thought so far that we were not able to control voluntarily.
So with this I would like to finish my presentation -
(Laughter)
I wish Wim good luck!
(Applause)
Host: Wow!
I think, [PH], you've got to come up here and do it all again
because we were all watching this guy get buried alive in ice.
Ahh.
So we're all going to pretend that this is normal and move forward.
WH: You should all do it!
H: I know it. I know it. I know I can.
(Laughter)
WH: (Inaudible)
H: Sorry?!
WH: Natural training.
H: Okay.
WH: You don't need to do this to this extreme
to have the benefit of a very good cardiovascular system.
H: Okay, let me just repeat what was said. I don't know if you heard it.
You don't have to do this -
(Laughter)
to reap the benefits of a healthy cardiovascular system.
That is good news
(Laughter)
for all of us that were thinking:
"I need some work on my cardiovascular."
(Applause) (Cheer)
Now, you know, when the clock goes off, we'll have to wheel poor Wim off.
(Indistinct voices)
So one of the ideas worth sharing is -
(Laughter)
was made famous by a young fella named Harry Houdini.
(Laughter)
Never get into a box that you can't get out of.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Unless that box is headed up toward the world moon.
But I have full confidence Wim is going to be out of there in no time.
Again, this is like nothing for him.
This is like watching TV.
And if you're watching it at Tuschinski right now,
I mean this is right here.
It's right here in two dimensions like everything we've done today.
(Audience chatter)
I do not know if there - it's like,
Are you sure you can't climb out?
Because it'd be pretty big trouble if there's ice everywhere.
The fake snow confetti was annoying.
the real - the guys from the Stadsschouwburg are going.
I really - I totally did not like the ice idea.
We stand behind no ice on stage ...
and ...
(Laughter)
Let me just say (Shout from audience)
you don't have to worry till I go over there and start helping pull.
(Laughter)
As long as I'm here just stalling, you know that Wim is safe and sound
and there's nothing to worry about
(Laughter)
except the potential for a slightly shorter coffee break.
Again, unless you run the Stadsschouwburg, then the risk is a wet spot here
that will make this red spot look like a non-existant red spot.
And now ...
(Laughter)
I'm still staying cool over here.
(Laughter)
So you know it's all OK.
(Laughter)
How about the guys who put this box together?
This shit does not break apart.
(Applause)
Here he comes. I've got a good feeling.
Here he comes.
Fantastic!
(Applause) (Cheers)
That is great!
We get a chance to ask Wim couple of questions.
Welcome back. How are you?
WH: Good.
H: One more time. Wow!
(Applause)
WH: Thank you. My fan!
H: He doesn't need the towel; he is not cold.
That's one problem he does not have.
(Laughter)
Wim, I have a couple of questions for you.
Are you OK, first of all? You all right?
WH: I'm totally OK.
Thank you very much for showing
that I'm going into extreme, and nobody needs to do this.
This is my sport, you know.
Football is healthy to do, you know.
But if you want to be top player, you've got to train.
So I train to do this.
And if you take just a little bit more, you know,
your thinking changes a little toward the cold
because the cold is a warm friend.
It makes the cardiovascular system -
(Laughter)
Yeah!
H: The cold is a warm friend ...
WH: It's a warm friend because it trains all the muscles in the veins,
and therefore ...
I want to to ask you a question.
WH: And blood is warm.
Streaming better.
H: Cold is warm. War it is peace. Love is hate. I know.
(Laughter)
WH: You know something.
H: You talked about the science. But why do you do this?
Not a scientific reason, but do you have a personal mission
besides, you know, "Don't try this at home"?
What is the personal reason that you do this?
WH: I developed a method,
which is relatively easy to adopt, to learn.
And it's about, you know, what I learned in the heart nature.
I learned to
use a different way of breathing,
which is able to make contact with the immune system
and the nervous system to very deep level.
But Wim, not how, but why?
WH: Oh, why.
H: What's your mission? You said - why you do it?
WH: My mission is to show that everybody by their mind
can reach more depth within themselves and prevent -
we got healing power.
We really got it.
But if we block it because we say:
"I cannot heal myself, I need to go to the doctor.
Be dependent. I need to take pills. I need to take that,"
then you won't be having this access toward your own healing power,
the inner doctor of Paracelsus.
2000 years ago it was already known and said,
and we forgot a little bit about this - we are dependent on outside forces
while we have inner power.
And by our opening up our mind toward that and be more conscious toward that,
we can really feel this inner power, healing power
and prevent from disease.
H: Fantastic! Wim Hof!
(Applause)
Thank you!