- What's up Believe nation?
I used to get sick a lot,
I used to believe that if I didn't eat the right foods
I would get sick, that if I didn't sleep
the right number of hours I would get sick,
that if anybody around me was sick then I would get sick,
and guess what happened?
I got sick a lot, and then in January of this year
after getting really sick I decided
I am never going to get sick again.
Never sick again, I'm always going to be healthy
and dedicated myself to learning from some of the masters.
People who have figured it out for themselves
on how to never get sick
so that also spawned this new series called Never Sick
and today we're going to learn from Wim Hof, the ice man,
on his techniques, his strategies, his secrets
to never get sick,
and as always guys as Wim is talking
if he says something that really resonates with you
please leave it in the comments below,
put quotes around it so others can enjoy it as well.
(upbeat music)
(mysterious music)
- [Wim] To me God is cold, you could say that.
I think of the cold as a noble force,
it's just helping me, it's training me,
it's bringing me back to the inner nature
the way it was meant to be,
and this way I do not only endure the cold,
I love the cold.
(deep slow breathing)
(electronic music)
- We live in a world where there's all kinds
of false healers and fake alternative medicine programs
you can sign up for.
It's a rare moment in history when someone comes along
who can perform real miracles
with real evidence to back them up.
Wim Hof has defied logic time and time again
and always under scientific scrutiny.
He holds the world record
for being able to be submerged in ice for almost two hours
without his core body temperature changing.
He's climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a pair of shorts
and ran a marathon in the desert without drinking any water.
He's even proven in a laboratory setting
that he can withstand illnesses using the power of his mind,
but he's not a freak of nature.
According to Wim anyone can do what he can do.
They just have to learn his method, the Wim Hof Method,
using a combination of cold immersion,
breathing techniques and mental focus
anyone can accomplish feats
that were previously thought to be impossible.
- I created a method, the components are breathing,
mind set and cold exposure,
gradual non-forced cold exposure,
and that's to optimize the mind body connection.
- Wim has figured out ways, namely through breath work
and through exposure to cold to take conscious control
over aspects of his physiology that for most people
they simply can't tune into and control.
(wind blowing)
(piano music)
- The cold, my warm friend,
it brings about a whole lot of more energy
and that together with breathing
makes you so powerful but then you lose your wife
and it all rumbles down.
Four children I had with my wife
and I was to be with her forever.
She was the love of my life, she died.
She suicided.
It's a black hole within yourself.
It breaks your heart and you don't know why
but the train of daily life is going on
and you got to catch up otherwise you lose it
so I had to be there for my children and yes,
we created a new nest.
My children made me survive in that time,
but nature healed my wounds.
The cold gave me a direct understanding of deeper breathing
and how to heal a broken heart.
Then I went and did all kinds of remarkable challenges.
Apparently they found it very remarkable and great
and spectacular so I came in contact with television.
One after the other they challenged me more, more,
more, more, more.
"Hey go swim 50 meters under the ice.
"Go and swim 100 meters under the ice.
"Climb Mount Everest in shorts."
That led up, that the scientists became curious.
"Hey what this man is doing
"is not possible physiologically."
- The science of what Wim Hof Method does
is one of the primary interests of my lab now
because it is so powerful
and it's been shown to be powerful in the immune system.
We believe it will also hold some real potential
for treatment of neurological diseases.
- [Wim] And this breathing technique brings you right into
the deepest part of physiology, anybody can do it.
So you become the alchemist of your own chemistry.
The first time I went under the ice
the water is as sharp as needles.
I saw this as a big huge sharp diamond.
At 35 meters I lost sight
because the retina, it froze, I couldn't see nothing,
I couldn't breathe of course and then my consciousness
succumbed to a lower consciousness, this is survival.
I do not fear death, I fear not to live fully.
If I live fully I'm not into death, I'm living.
- [Matt] It isn't all about breaking records.
Wim's mission is to use his body as a laboratory,
to revolutionize our understanding of physiology.
In 2011 he was injected with a bacterial endotoxin
in an experiment that challenged
our understanding of the nervous system.
In normal humans the injection
should cause a strong immune response
leading to fever, chills and headaches,
but not in Wim.
It appeared that he was somehow able
to suppress his immune response
by making his body secrete adrenaline,
suggesting that his method can allow us to influence
our immune system at will.
Scientists thought he might just be a freak of nature
so to further prove this theory
they performed the same experiment
on 12 subjects Wim had trained in Poland
and the same thing happened.
- Normally it's very difficult
to increase your adrenaline levels by your own will.
Adrenaline is released by the autonomic nervous system
and autonomic means that you cannot voluntarily influence it
so if you walk outside and you are robbed on the street
you will have a heart rate of 160 and your blood pressure
will be sky high within seconds,
but if I ask you now to increase your heart rate
you cannot do that, you cannot voluntarily modulate that,
and with techniques of Wim Hof
we show that he was able to increase his adrenaline levels
to very high concentrations
even higher than people who go bungee jumping
for the first time.
That was something that we didn't think possible
before then.
(electronic music)
- Right now we are right over here, 750 meters,
we go up to 1,400 meters, that's the Karpacz,
from the Karpacz we go to the Sniezka
and it's cold so all you have studied Matt
you are going to need it
and now just don't think, but focus,
trust your body to be able to cope
with the elements up there and you will be able
and with that you are going to show for yourself,
"hey man I can do this, wow."
(electronic music)
- If you ever wanted a real test
of the Wim Hof Method this is it.
If you concentrate hard enough the snow looks like sand
and you just feel like you're at the beach.
- Exactly that's the mind,
if your mind is on it,
then you're quite capable of dealing with the elements.
- Yeah 'cause it is a bit nippy really.
- Yeah.
Hey. - Good morning
- Good morning
(deep slow breathing)
- There's a method to this,
what I'm doing is breathing in more oxygen than I need
and then breathing out without fully letting go.
Doing that five times and then on the final breath
squeezing the oxygen into your chest, neck and head
and that creates either real or illusionary heat
and then you let go,
and that's how we get to the top of the mountain.
Oh shit. (laughing)
My crampons.
Minor crampon emergency, I'm fine.
(deep slow breathing)
There are a few theories
as to why Wim Hof can do what he can do.
One is, that he has a higher level of brown adipose tissue
or brown fat in his body,
which is a heat generating tissue in the body.
Studies have shown that people who work outside in the cold
have higher levels of brown fat
so it's possible that he's able to manipulate
the level of brown fat in his body
by exposure to the cold like we're doing right now.
Another theory is that he's able
to secrete the hormone noradrenaline at will
through breathing and by jumping into cold water
and that adrenaline allows you
to overcome coldness and illnesses.
Another theory is that he uses a form of mediation
similar to the Tibetan Tummo meditation
which by shutting off the activity of the mind
your metabolism gets redirected into generating heat.
It's probably a combination of all those three
and some as of yet unexplained physiological phenomenon
as well, but Wim takes it a step further, he says,
that using his method you can go deep into the body
and actually control your own autonomic nervous system
and immune system.
- [Wim] I went to the scientific scrutiny of research
and put me to the test and they saw amazing things,
but then they thought,
"you are the ice man, you are just one test subject,"
and I said, "no what I can do anybody can do."
- You can just start doing this technique
and you can modulate your adrenaline levels by will.
The stress hormones are able
to modulate your immune response.
There are many diseases that are influenced
by your immune system
and you can imagine that it would be of interest
if you could modulate that immune response and suppress it
that it might be of benefit
for patients with diseases like that.
- How did it feel when you finally got recognition
from the science world that your methods worked?
- I cried, really.
You know what happens when your wife
whom you love so dearly, she suicides,
you don't understand it.
You just don't understand, you have no power any more
and finally because you have been everywhere looking
for how to silence the grief,
to finally get scientific recognition,
that's the time when you break,
that's the time when you get relief,
that's the time when you can let go,
that's when you cry.
(upbeat music)
Look at, look at the clouds.
- [Matt] Oh whoa.
Wow. - Wow.
Mother holy mama.
This is nice huh?
(laughing)
- It's amazing what the body can do
when you actually force it to go to its limits.
- [Wim] Yes to it's natural ability.
- We crossed the border from Poland into the Czech Republic
and now we're just about to summit the tallest mountain
in the Czech Republic, in our shorts.
- Well done Matt,
all the way, good.
- [Matt] How are you feeling?
- Ah I'm feeling good.
Once again back up.
(upbeat music)
(wind blowing)
They asked the professors and all the scientific world,
"what's happening with this guy
"because this is not possible.
"They're genetically the same, imprint,"
my brother, and they see he is not capable
of doing what he is capable of and why?
Because I just dove deeper.
It's my breathing,
if we just breath more deeply,
change the chemistry inside, not shallow breathing,
deep breathing, slowly but surely.
This is what you do consciously.
You do that 30 times,
the chemistry in the body, in the tissue is changing
and it's changing so that the body is becoming oxygenized,
alkali, and then suddenly the brain body connection
is possible by pressurizing, by. (inhaling deeply)
Once you begin to have that connection with the body
then you are able to connect with it in the brain
and that's what we do right now with Stanford University
to get rid of PTSD, fear, trauma and depression,
to learn to expand consciousness,
and together with breathing
you create the right chemistry
and then the neurons, they channel off and thus
your perception your consciousness is going to be,
you smell more, you see the colors brighter,
you experience deeper
and that's the brain and then connecting once again
with all the cells makes you a beautiful living being.
Are you ready?
- Mmhmm.
- Relax.
Deeply in,
and let go.
Deeply in, let go.
Once again deep in,
make it circle.
(deep slow breathing)
Feel lightness, luminous in the body, lightness in the head,
tingling in your fingers.
Make it effective.
We have to get rid of the CO2 in the body
that will enrich your oxygenation,
that will enrich the O2, the oxygen within the body
and we need the oxygen in this exercise.
(deep slow breathing)
This exercise consists of 30 breaths,
fully in, let go, fully in, let go.
Some people will do it by the mouth,
some people will do it by the nose, who cares, just do it.
CO2 reduction is what we want, is what we aim for.
Thus O2, or oxygen will be enriched in all the body
and we will consume that O2,
that enriched O2, the oxygen
by doing push-ups without breathing.
She will show that she is able,
she told me she could do like 10 push-ups.
Let us see how many push-ups she is going to do
without breathing, we'll see.
(deep slow breathing)
Okay five more.
(deep slow breathing)
She is focused as you can see
and that's what we need to release the right hormones
which make you stronger, dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline,
and it's all concentrated,
by the mind you can control this hormone,
and there she goes.
Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, without breathing.
17, 18,
20, wow, look at her, 22.
(upbeat music)
This is the exercise with the shower.
The shower exercise to train the cardiovascular system,
we got the muscles everywhere in the system,
some 100,000 kilometers so we are going to trigger it, how?
How, by not choking when you go into a cold shower.
In the beginning of course of the course
you go from the heat to the cold.
Your body learns to adapt, I mean the veins learn to adapt
and they are triggered, the muscles work
and in a couple of days it's bearable.
You can do it because the condition elevates.
Right now I'm going to go into this cold shower.
What should you do?
Have mental focus, I'm going to do this whole heartedly,
I'm not there or there with my mind, I'm right over here.
Okay that's number one, then the second is,
the breath, the breath is inside as you know
and it can control and you have learned to use the,
manipulate dramatically the force of the breath within
and it triggers the nervous system
and the cardiovascular system.
So keep your control by referring to your breath.
Steady, it's your control.
Me as a trained person of course,
my cardio vascular system works almost directly on it.
So it closes up down here around the liver,
the lungs, the heart and the head, you know the brain.
Of course everything needs to be the same always
so close it, and that's what I did with my mind,
just before, just when I talked to you right now
and you can learn this too.
Actually it's to elevate your power,
which you got already over there inside,
and for the rest have a nice shower
and if you feel like. (erratically breathing)
Then it means it's not closing right
and that's why you are choking
so learn to have the right cardio vascular system
by following the steps.
First hot, then a little bit colder, up to bringing it
to really cold and then directly like this,
directly into the cold and have a great shower
because your cardio vascular system is great.
(upbeat music)
Why I teach this method to show that with a simple method
out of nature we are able to tackle the greatest problems,
which is depression, fear, anxiety and pain,
people with chronic pain.
That's all unnecessary suffering going on
and all those industries keeping on
and say, "yeah that's normal," and I think that's sick.
- If it turns out that non-ingestible approaches
such as breath work or cold exposure can approach
some of the potency that medications can provide
or have failed to provide
then it's quite possible that one can heal from the inside.
- Guess what?
We found the proof to tap into our body and mind
enabling us to become happy, strong and healthy.
- Thank you guys so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed.
I'd love to know what did you think of this video?
Are you inspired by it?
Did you take something from it?
Are you going to learn more about it?
Are you going to try this breathing
and cold exposure strategy?
I've been testing it myself so far,
getting some early results
but I'm excited to continue the test.
Are you guys going to try it?
I'd love to know your thoughts on this video
as well as the series.
Do you want to continue this series and profile other people
and their thoughts on never getting sick again
leave it in the comments below.
I'm super curious to find out
and I'm going to join in the discussion.
Finally I want to give a quick shout out to Victor Lim.
Victor thank you so much for picking up a copy
of my book Your One Word,
I really really really really appreciate your support
and I hope you enjoyed it.
So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is, much love, I'll see you soon.