The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Potential, Transcend Your Limits

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While consistent Wim Hof Method practice is key, even a single breathing session charges your muscles with enough oxygen to double the amount of push-ups you can do, and just one minute spent under cold water gives you a jolt of energy that makes you feel like the Hulk for the rest of the day. It’s about knowing your mind is a tool you can learn to intensify and invigorate when you need it,’ he says. Discover Wim's journey from circus act to the scientific breakthrough that kick-started his mission and propelled him to becoming a global health leader. Having been taught by the majestic natural power of the cold, Wim is on a mission to share his philosophy with the world.

Wim is a great guy, and he believes in what he's trying to say, but the book reads like a long grumble. I go ahead and get my suffering over with in the cold showers, so I don't have to suffer throughout the day. With guidance suited for any reader—young or old, sick or healthy—you’ll learn how to harness three key elements of Cold, Breathing, and Mindset to take charge of your own mind and metabolism.

Hof met his first wife, Olaya, from the Basque country in Spain, while living in a squat in Amsterdam. I gave this 4 stars because I have this rule where if the book changes me, and changes the way I think, especially immediately, than it must have been significant enough to rate it fairly as a great book. The key to cold water exposure is explained in a chapter titled A Cold Shower A Day Keeps the Doctor Away. He would sit outside in the snow for hours and would often sleep outdoors during the winter without a tent or a sleeping bag. Wim has become known as “The Iceman” for his astounding physical feats, such as spending hours in freezing water and running barefoot marathons over deserts and ice fields.

And that’s the key: going back to nature and allowing our adaptive responses to be brought into everyday existence.It’s a filthy day, cold and driving rain, but he comes out barefoot, in just a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, singing. Armed with his motto 'what I am capable of, everybody can learn', Wim Hof is convinced that everyone can tap into their inner potential without having to invest the same decades worth of study, travel and daring. There is a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear and confusion at the moment, which is stressful for both body and mind,’ remarks Wim.

If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and your mind. Refined over forty years and championed by scientists across the globe, you'll learn how to harness three key elements ofCold,BreathingandMindsetto master mind over matter and achieve the impossible. Armed with his motto “What I am capable of, everybody can learn”, Hof believes that people can tap into their inner potential using his ‘Wim Hof Method’: a combination of breathing, cold therapy, and meditation. Hof believes our bodies are capable of doing amazing things and attributes his feats to this method, which he says can make the human body more resilient under physical and psychological stress.The book itself just doesn’t explain anything really, it just repeats the same promises over and over with loads of random case studies and just alludes to ‘data’ and ‘science’ and ‘trials’ without actually going into any detail or explanations. I found that going into cold water stops whatever is going on in your mind, you’ve got to survive in cold water, it is merciless, but righteous. A 2019 study of 13 people with spinal arthritis found a decrease in inflammation over eight weeks of breathing and cold water training.

Through decades of self-exploration and groundbreaking scientific studies, Wim has created a simple, effective way to stimulate these deep physiological processes and realise our full potential.And yeah, I am a little bit in awe of my body, that I can hold my breath for two and a half minutes. And that we have control over our immune systems and our anxieties, and the power to prevent illness, depression and inflammation. At one point, he picks up one of his many guitars, this one a present from a fan who has inlaid it with ice crystals and a picture of Hof’s face. I would recommend the audiobook as Wim can be a bit repetitive at times (not read by him tho, but hey, Apolo Ohno is great too).