It's been about a year since I posted about Wim Hof, and he's become more well known since then.
Anyone using his methods ? How does it compare to pranayama and other stuff ?

I did stuff like that when I was young. Like running without shirt in Winter for 10-20 kilometers, in Finland it can be as cold as -30 Celsius. It is a form of ascetism, I'd say. Fun but not the essence.

I also got to know of some other Finns who actually never use other close than short pants, rain or shine, summer or winter. There are a few people like that here. Wim Hof puts on a jacket when he gets his feats done. These guys don't. 

But nevertheless, even if Wim's method is not really meditative or spiritual, it is helping a lot of people. Which is nice.

Are you claiming it's a common ability, or a result of living a certain lifestyle in a cold country, or that you gained a siddhi during practice ? It's kind of a tradition in Russia and other northern countries to cut holes in the ice and get in the water for jollies and health, maybe after a sauna or whatever, but do they take it as far as Hof or get into it as an endeavour in the same way ?
In the documentary film of his Arctic circle run he's the only one not dressed in cold weather gear, everyone else seems to be well wrapped up. It would be interesting to see how many people eschew those permanently like you say. I've never been to that part of the world so I don't know

Whether it has a spiritual effect he doesn't go into that much in interview, but he says it does. Deep concentration is part of the method, it's a kind of pranayama after all. To me it looks as much a practice as anything else. He says he tried all the usual eastern stuff before he got into the cold and that did the trick for him, whatever that trick is, I guess it would be, yeah, deep absorption or egolessness. Nobody gets into that in enough detail in the inteviews he does so it's hard to tell exactly what difference it made but I think it was the cold forcing him to gasp in more oxygen than he was releasing, as per his method. Not sure, would be nice to find out.

There's a lot of thinking being done in medical science on the role of inflammation on depression, and Hof demonstrates control over the immune system and inflammatory response. It's looking like a certain amount of untreatable depression is caused by general inflammation in the body, could that not be related to people's experience of the Dark Night ? For example, if low mood doesn't respond to pills, and keeps recurring to people on a contemplative path, maybe some of that is immune system based ? Just wondering.

The idea of Hof's method is that it increases epinephrine and cortisol, it's a stimulating method which lowers the inflammatory response. Would relaxing meditation increase the inflammatory response (I ask any helpful biologists) ?

In this particular study, mindfullnes reduced inflammation, whereas relaxation did not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/meditation-brain-changes-study_us_56b4b7aee4b04f9b57d93bef

cheers!

I’ve been curious about Wim since you brought him up last year. One thing I’ve been inspired to do is swim outdoors as the water got a bit colder. I only got to 59 deg F before giving up though.

The one thing I find very interesting is the clear transition from body comfort to the very strong aversion and discomfort when getting in the water. I find my reaction to the cold to have a similar flavor as aversion to unpleasant emotional states. But with the cold water, it is much easier to work with due to the clear transition. I work on accepting and relaxing into the sensations, and the unpleasantness passes fairly quickly. The water doesn’t have to be too cold for this process to be available.

I often find it tricky dealing with unpleasant emotional states because they tend to creep up slowly over time. But I do find the same mechanism that I use for the cold water applicable – it’s a sense of not resisting and opening to the unpleasantness. It’s a way to work against the instinctive reaction to resist and tighten up against it.

John,

>Are you claiming it's a common ability, or a result of living a certain lifestyle in a cold country, or that you gained a siddhi during practice ?

- What do you refer to as ability? Not needing clothes at all? It's not common in the sense that there'd be hundreds or thousands of people like that in Finland but I know of 4 people who are. Three of them are/were war veterans from 1940's. You know, it was a tough war. I bet cold is nothing for men like this.

The 4th fellow is 89 years old and still walks 14 kilometres back and forth on foot, without clothes, to take a casual swim in a freezing river. He does it everyday, just a towel on his shoulder. There was an article of him in small local paper in 2014. I have posted such stuff last year in Wim Hof's Fb-group but the group went silent on news like that. Lol.

- Taking cold swims without sauna is what a large number of Finns do on daily basis. Finland is called "Land of thousands lakes", because there are lakes everywhere here. And for 8 months a year the water is either cold or freezing. So naturally swimming in cold water is very common just like swimming in warm water is common to Brasilians. Some people swim in snow in their yards, without sauna. And most people swim in snow from sauna in the winter. This stuff is inbuilt in being a Finn, ancient stuff that has a lot of healing benefits. Like hot sauna also. Sauna's here are commonly 70-85 degress Celsius.

>It's kind of a tradition in Russia and other northern countries to cut holes in the ice and get in the water for jollies and health, maybe after a sauna or whatever, but do they take it as far as Hof or get into it as an endeavour in the same way ?

- There are people to whom cold is of no concern at all, no limits. Wim Hof pushes limits because he has them. Fine with me but from the view point of a northerner (Hof is Dutch, from central Europe) he is just a showman. His feats are impressive for Californians but not to northerners because there are people to whom cold is nothing.

>In the documentary film of his Arctic circle run he's the only one not dressed in cold weather gear, everyone else seems to be well wrapped up. It would be interesting to see how many people eschew those permanently like you say. I've never been to that part of the world so I don't know.

- I logically assume that there are people like that in Scandinavia and Russia what I describe above. But nobody keeps track of such people.  They have no Hollywood production team or Guinness show. They are just guys and gals living that way. Nothing more special than that. And they don't do any practices for preparation or anything because they don't need or know about it.

- I recently moved to a small sea side village in Souther Finland and was checking ice swimming possibilities earlier today (I used to live in the capitol where the distance to such place was too long but now it's 1 km away from where I live) before I saw this thread here. I've been taking cold showers in the mornings for about a year. Yeah. It's wonderful, refreshing.

I've heard that in Japan, sometimes people on meditation retreats are suggested to take a cold swim if they get too stuck with something. Yea, Japan is big with this stuff. They have waterfalls everywhere and it gets quite cold there in Winter.

Cheers from Finland

Beautiful

And not only tough guys,

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/programs/metromorning/lake-swimmer-mcdonnell-1.3551070

This guy comes to mind as well.

" Dr. Giesbrecht demo cold water survival and discus the processes of hypothermia."  

He talks about the cold shock response while in the icy lake,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3gy5XyaBo

Hof doesn't just overcome cold, but heat and altitude too. It would be interesting to compare someone acclimatised to the cold with Hof on these other kinds of stress.
I think the most important thing is that he's got himself in the lab to be tested, with excellent results, and (for some reason) nobody seems to have bothered doing the same with your average Finnish geezer. Unless I'm wrong ? Years ago, Herbert Benson tested some Tibetans doing the tummo/wet sheet trick, and there may be secret stuff by the military, or banned tests by nazis etc, but as far as I know only Hof has been throughly tested. I think he has done brilliantly to use showmanship to get the necessary attention for something that has been obscure to western science. I always thought tummo was probably nonsense or genetic.

What about consideration of how this comfort with cold has been lost, generally ? At some point in our past we started wearing clothes and ceased to be naked hominids. So why was there a demand for clothing, if we don't need it ? Was there a physical reason, or a cultural one ? Apparently Africans have the same potential for enduring cold as Europeans so whether it was due to migration to colder areas, or climate change is an interesting question.

Fascinating stuff. I think the cold shock and gasp response is something that is moderated by training the breath, and the vascular system. At least that's what Hoffies say.

I played around with some of the breathing exercises. To my understanding (based in some podcasts with long interviews of Wim Hof and a couple of documentaries on him & his method) breathing is central, and he doesn't just go out to the cold. What to me is interesting he's able to teach people to get many of the benefits very quickly, with breathing, exercise and cold exposure. He's studied different "traditional" breathing exercises, and has mentiond at least Tummo (tibetan heat-generating breathing) in some interview. 

He's been clinically shown to affect his immune system more than "normal people", for ex. counter effects of injected endotoxins that would leave normal people pretty sick. And he was able to teach 12 people how to do this in 4 weeks. To me, that's really impressive. 

Running a marathon in death valley without water, spending almost 2 hours most of his body inside ice etc are things that would be very dangerous to most people. He seems to be able to pull these off. 

For these reasons I wouldn't really compare him directly with "normal peole" who do cold-exposure. What he does is more complicated, and probably more useful than just cold. I think it also trivialises what he's doing and how it can be taught. One of the doctors who had tested him was speculating he might be able to momentarily raise his adrenalin levels with simultaneously dropping his cortisol levels, which might cause some of the changes in his autoimmune-response.

Here's a short animated tutorial on the method (don't know how accurate this is - I haven't been to Wim Hof's seminars or anything like that) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKgUE76udK4

Some speculation about what could happen.. I'd be grateful if someone with a deeper understanding of anatomy could comment if this makes any sense, or would have other ideas how the method might work. I noticed the hyperventilation part of the technique is close to 1 minute, which coincidentally is the time blood takes to go around your body. Could this over-saturate the body with oxygen? After that follows holding the breath, which then naturally reduces the amount of oxygen in blood. AFAIK some exercises of holding the breath are used to improve carbon dioxide tolerance. Also some recent research shows that red blood cells show pretty fast adaptations in low oxygen (high altitude) environments, and retain the changes for their lifetime (6 weeks I think).

Mapping Wim Hof's methods is interesting. It's tempting to say "It's all explainable in terms of my Special Models X, Y, and Z"

I agree with Marcus about trivialising his accomplishments. I think Kim is doing so. For example,
Do a quick Google search. He was, for example, shirtless when he did his ice bath world record. Also Kim seems to be ignoring that Hof has done much more than ice stuff. Kim's posts seem to imply that Hof is considering himself special. That's precisely the opposite of his claim. Not sure of Kim's motivation here.

Now to explain it all in terms of my Special Models.

I agree with Kim that you can consider it a form of asceticism. This isn't a sneer as asceticism can trigger deep states of concentration. Shinzen has explained this well. He also underwent a Vajrayana initiation involving maintaining high concentration in continuous cold.

My total pet theory: combination of: concentration/equanimity triggered by death-reality of cold, strong positive belief inspired by Hof's example, altered physiology and state of consciousness caused by chronically-shallow-breathing Westerners breathing deeply.

My critique of Hof: his poor English lets him get away with butchering the science when he explains the research. I think he should leave the science to the scientists and just continue to do impressive shit under observation.

My cynical take: it takes a kooky, culty Dutch senior citizen doing meme stunts (certified by Real Hard Science) and marketing it 'pseudoscientifically' for Westerners to realize the mind/body is less limited than believed.

The Radbout University study was impressive, and a scientific first, apparently. I've got asthma and allergies so I'm interested in the modification of the inflammatory response and want to see where this all goes. It's likely there are studies in the works for various inflammatory diseases.

In one of his recent interviews (Joe Rogan I think) he also claims to have raised the accepted bar for oxygen saturation. Whatever medical scientists use to mark 100% saturation, he's exceeded it. That's pretty good going, too.

I wouldn't rule out Kim's assessment of the likelihood of other people to have developed hardiness to the cold too as part of life in the north. The picture of the guy with axe.... that's half an hour's chopping, at least, and it wouldn't be worth all that work for just a five minute dip

The flip side of lowerig the immune response to reduce inflammation is raising it to fight infections. I'd like to know a bit about that but nobody has gone into that potential with him, that I have seen. He does claim increased ability to fight of pathogens, though.

I don't know how the science of the breath holding works, whether it trains the actual chemical tolerance of CO2, or just the discomfort associated with it, or both.
I've been trying it, and I can see how it could take the body beyond it's usual parameters for a fundamental, fear-producing survival instinct.

His website has some stuff on oxygen metabolism going into the biochemical pathways of ATP production and how high oxygen levels affect that, plus pdfs of the science papers and text book chapter.
http://www.icemanwimhof.com/science

He also has a Dutch skeptic following him and criticising his activities and science but there have only been minor things to pick up on, I think, the core of it all seems sound.

Very nice youtube vid, thanks.

Raised cortisol is one of the things suppressing the inflammation, but cortisol has a bad name as a stress hormone for it's effects on the brain, and bodybuilders don't like it because it has an adverse effecton building muscle.

Example, Pychology Today article says,
"The stress hormone, cortisol, is public health enemy number one. Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels: interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease... The list goes on and on."

So I'm wondering what trade-offs there might be.

It's not clear whether Hof has a permanently high cortisol level, or whether he has altered the parameters of any involuntary response, or whether it is just there only when he wants it.

For a permanent effect on an inflammatory disease like asthma or arthritis, does that require permanently raised cortisol ?

Some sources for those of you who are interested:

Here's a short documentary where he teaches 2 people to do some of the cold-resistance stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw

Tim Ferris interview, has annotated list of topics discussed with point of time in podcast for quick reference on topics you find interesting
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/07/the-iceman-wim-hof/

Even with very small testing of the method, I'm pretty convinced it has something I haven't felt with other meditation techniques. Especially the switching between hyperventilation and holding your breath seems to cause some interesting feelings in the body, and combined with the cold seemed to give a lot of energy and stay in a good mood more than usual. Holotropic breathing and Reichian work seem to also use hyperventilation, but does someone know if they use holding your breath in a similar way? (eg. 1 min hyperventilation, hold breath non-forcibly for as long as you can, repeat x 5).

From Asthma perspective the soviets did research on Buteyko-method, that has reducing oxygen intake as a central component. Apparently it works pretty well for reducing symptoms of asthma, and I know at least one person who's gone symptom & medicine free with it (also did a lot of internal martial arts & sports simultaneously, probably had influence too).
More at for ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method

My understanding is that it has some research behind it and respectable (as in impressive, but not unrealistic-sounding) results to claim.



Systema (martial art) uses breathwork as a tool to access & get accustomed to fear. They have a lot of training for that if you're interested, and IME it works pretty well. Also some good methods for handling pain in a relaxed way, and separating the physical and psychological components of pain - where it gets very vipassana-esque..

Thanks I will look at those things.

What is the physiological difference between the Hof breathing and the other types ?

The Hof one involves only partial exhalation, does that make a difference to the others ?

When I looked into this previously, I found that oxygen saturation is unchanged by deep breathing, it's just the CO2 is lowered, and the body uses CO2 as gauge to regulate breathing, not oxygen.

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_water_blackout
"Hyperventilation, or overbreathing involves breathing faster and/or deeper than the body naturally demands and is often used by divers in the mistaken belief that this will increase oxygen (O2) saturation. Although this appears true intuitively, under normal circumstances the breathing rate dictated by the body alone already leads to 98-99% oxygen saturation of the arterial blood and the effect of over-breathing on the oxygen intake is minor. What is really happening differs from divers' understanding; these divers are extending their dive by closing down the body's natural breathing "

So it's extremely common in yoga and meditation circles to go on about getting more oxygen into the blood etc - but that seems to be bad science.
Who ever thought a yoga teacher would ever talk bad science ?!

But Hof says he has raised oxygen saturation.
http://jrefan.com/the-joe-rogan-experience-episode-865-with-wim-hof/

I've always been skeptical of Buteyko, it gets a lot of criticism about anecdotal evidence and lack of proven studies, and has never been offered to me by a doctor. I think I tried it once, underbreathing until my face turned blue - didn't like it at all !

The wikipedia article says it works in the opposite way to the Hof method or other hyperventilation methods, and that it postulates that people are overbreathing rather than underbreathing. I never felt I was overbreathing when I get wheezy.

The article says it's important to nose breath, but along with the asthma often comes allergic rhinitis. If you've ever tried to nose-breath in a dusty room that just makes things worse, you'll know how problematic this is. I've had someone encourage me to clear my nose for breathing exercises just by breathing more vigourously through it. Annoying as hell. Meditation teachers please take note, some people have stubborn noses.

I've been trying cold showers (always liked them for a thrill) but never directly after breathing.
I just did the breathing in the shower, turned it to cold, and wow there's hardly any gasping !

...and I felt really good.