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 there's a way I do not only endure,
the cold, I love the cold. >> 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 run 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. >> The question is,
is everybody able to do what you do? >> Yes, I am able to train people
in room temperature in just a weeks time with a relatively
simple technique and make people be able to
influence their immune system. >> We were skeptical, so Wim invited us
to take a crash course in his method and see just how easy it is
to become superhuman. We first met Wim on his
houseboat in Holland, where he began to teach our whole
crew the basics of cold immersion. Growing up in the 21st century, we're naturally skeptical of
everything we read on the internet. But to put Wim's method to the test,
we would have to suspend our disbelief. Because no true miracle can be
accomplished without some faith. In this case, the miracle would supposedly
involve the crew and I taking off our clothes and climbing to the top of
the freezing cold Mount Sniezka in Poland. But before that, our training
began in the canals of Amsterdam. So, while I'm climbing the mountain, if they haven't done the training,
then they'll be screwed, basically. - Yes, and the film too. >> We are going to start
with the breathing. You will see feeling is understanding. And later on we can dig in all
kinds of scientific literature and readings and comparisons and
statistics and all that, we don't need. You are going to feel it, we are pioneers. Okay, just go on. No thinking, just feel. Your head is becoming light-headed. >> Wim was going to teach us
to endure the cold like him. But first we had to learn the basics. Wim told us to spend one minute
breathing in more air than we let out. Then he instructed us to take
one last breath and hold it. By using his technique,
we were able to hold our breath for much longer than usual. I didn't really know what was going on,
but my body was doing things it had never done
before, and I was pretty freaked out. But also very curious as to
where this would take me. It was like I was going
through some second puberty, where instead of becoming an adult,
I was becoming a superhuman. >> First round, 2:17 for Matt. Crazy, yeah? - Whoa.
It's something, yeah? You still? I just stopped because I wanted to listen. But I was still good. - Good. >> My whole body was just
kind of like tingling. And then when you said to stop breathing, it just didn't seem like I had
the need to breathe at all. It was really amazing. Who are you? Who are you? I mean, I can't argue with the results. You've done things that no
one's ever done before. But there have been hundreds of
people throughout history in the past 4,000 years who have claimed
to be able to do all sorts of miracles by controlling their body, using
the power of meditation and breathing. What makes you different? Is it that you're the first
one who can actually do it? >> Absolutely not the first
one who is able to do this. But I am the first one to
bring it to science and to take away the speculation around it. >> What was your life like
before you became an iceman? >> Actually, I was a father of four
kids and bringing them up alone. Because my wife accidented in 95. So that kind of adversity and sadness maybe motivated you to... - Oh yes. Inspire yourself in the same way
a lot of people that do... Yes, sadness is a deep trigger. Where I got peace was in
these breathing exercises. Swimming outside in the cold. The cold is merciless,
but righteous as well. >> So, Wim's just told me to get into
my shorts, which can't be a good sign, because it means we're
gonna get into the water. Wim's already shirtless. >> Scared shirtless. Scared shirtless. Just chill out, man. >> All right, yeah! >> Oh, boy. >> Let nature go within you. Breathe, motherfucker! >> That is some cold Amsterdam
canal December water. Keep on, silently, witness, witness, witness. You're doing just fine. You're going the way I
know it naturally goes. I don't feel cold at all. I feel like if you keep relaxed and you stay in there you could do it
forever like this guy right here. Look at this madman. So now our producer has to go in as well because she's gonna need to be there when we do this. So good luck, Casey. >> You can come in too. There you are. Hello, take it easy. You know people think I'm crazy. Maybe I am crazy. But not because of my
breathing techniques. Not because of my cold water swimming. Not because of my being
fearless in extreme challenges. 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 am not into death. I am living. >> 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 this 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 the techniques of Wim Hof,
we showed that he was able to increase his adrenaline levels
to very high concentrations, even higher than people that go
bungee jumping for the first time. That was something that we didn't
think possible before that. >> If we learn to influence
our immune system at will, we could potentially use that to treat
inflammatory disorders where the immune system is overactive, including Crohn's
disease and rheumatoid arthritis. But Wim didn't seem to think that there
were any limits to what his method could accomplish, and
that made me skeptical. He was eager to show that he could help
anyone, including people with cancer. So he invited us to dinner
with his friend Rene Gude, a famous philosopher of science, who had taken up the Wim Hof method
after being given two months to live. >> I don't think Wim is a wonder worker,
and I'm not taking him as a wonder worker. - Miracle. >> A miracle worker. I want to forgo that people who have
cancer think that they're off their cancer next week. That's not a fact, but
there are very good things happening. >> So this really is kind of
on the frontier of science. It's science that we are testing now. It's science we don't yet
have a full explanation for, but we know that it has
results worth studying. >> Yes, and
the real frontier of science is looking if this immune system is
an auto-immune system, or that we can influence our
immune system in the hope for that the immune deficiency
diseases decrease. And the results are hopeful, but
hopeful, I use the word myself. >> Everything that Wim does is based
in science, but surely faith in Wim and nature and
ourselves is also really crucial to accomplishing the things that
Wim teaches people to do. >> As soon as you put the exercise in the
center, and you see the difference between religion and spirituality and science,
there is, in fact, just the explanation. Religion, spirituality and science are circling about something
that's definitely good for us. Train your body, man. As a human, what has this done for you? >> I'm not easily convinced,
but I'm always looking for something that gives me some
control in this fucking situation. You have a life expectancy of two months,
and then you're out of control. Maybe it's the same with
the autonomous immune system. I would like to be
autonomous myself a little. And when there is really something that
can be done and proves it's all right and makes me feel better, it's... - Very satisfying. It was very satisfying. It was very satisfying. Please, let nobody who see's this
program think that you're just getting into control and then drive onto
some mountain and conquer cancer. I don't like this speech of conquering
cancer and doing something. But when you get something to do and
to practice which you understand and which you can do and
which satisfies... Some feeling of control comes back and
I like that very much. >> Hypothetically, if research came back
and it turned out that actually your methods weren't working, there was
some kind of trick of adrenalin or some other factor that accounted for
all of the feats of endurance. What would that make you feel? >> I'm okay. You know,
I want it to be evidence-based in science. And I don't want to give any false
hope to any person in this world. So, I'm into science, but
he is interested in a natural method that needs only the commitment of a person to make it work within just a day or
two days. You will be able to go
deeper into the system and learn to control the immune system,
cardiovascular system, the hormonal system, the muscular system,
autonomic nervous system. All that,
I mean it's just learning to go back into the inner power which we all have. >> We traveled to Poland for the next step
in our training, which would hopefully end with us climbing Mount Sniezka in our
shorts and not getting hypothermia. In Amsterdam, we had our first little
taste of training with the Iceman. But for us to really get into
what Wim calls cold hard nature, he's invited us here,
to Mount Sniezka in Poland. This is where he trains
all of his big groups, including the 12 scientific test subjects
that later proved they were able to suppress their immune
response in an endotoxin test. >> Control. No hocus pocus just the magic
of your [INAUDIBLE]. Make it work guys. Control into your brain. Nobody else's, no blah blahs,
just make it work. Deeply in, let me go. >> Faster. Okay, count down. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Good. It's really bizarre to be in
a room with a bunch of people who are tripping out from breathing. You get these tingly sensations
throughout your hands and your body, so it feels like everything's vibrating. And then you get kind of
like a sense of euphoria. And for me that was it. You cried. >> Yeah. Mine was so weird. All my hands were like this. They just locked and
I could not move them. Then I just cried and cried and
cried, and I couldn't stop crying. I wasn't thinking about anything sad,
it was just like, it came up. >> It's hard to talk about it
without sounding really cliche, but when I first did the breathing,
in the middle of it, I remember thinking, I'm so happy, I just want to get up and
hug all of you people. I love you, I love all of you. And I guess that's how you
become a hippie, pretty much. >> I was amazed to see some of
the reactions that people had here. What's happened when people have
this kind of big responses? >> What we do, we are going deeply into
the physiology past, the condition, and what appears, people begin to cry or
they release anger. Whatever is hidden deeper
than the conditioning, these techniques make it
quite able to go really deep. >> I guess it's kind of similar
when a psychologist gets someone to relive past trauma and
come to terms with it. >> We do not need psychotherapy. Fuck off! Just let it breathe in. Just bring back the control
within yourself. Connect back with the body. This time we are able to cleanse it all. All of the people say, yeah, you cannot
steer life, and you cannot do this, and yeah, it's part of life, and
it's destiny, and it's fate. Fuck fate, and fuck destiny and all that. No, this time we learn to control
our happiness, health and strength, and that's not philosophical or sectarian. It's chemistry. >> Do you ever get any
really negative people who never really succumb to the cause? >> I have a very good example of that. Scott Carmen is
an investigative journalist. He came from America to this
place to cut through the crap and the charlatan business and
all that and that was me, you know? The charlatan and the crap,
and it took him two days, and when he converted into hey,
but this shit is good. And he was standing with us
in shorts after two days. And now he wants to write a book and
bring it to America and everything. >> Make a big circle, big circle. It may look like a Pentecostal ceremony
at times, but if you hyperventilate for long enough, it's normal to experience
euphoria and muscle spasms and seizures. It's more difficult to imagine how that
can make it easier to stand out in the snow for an hour. Maybe, like in the immune response test,
it had to do with secreting adrenaline. But whether it was some ancient secret of
human physiology or simply brute force endurance and mental focus, it seemed that
Wim's method was working on the group. My suspicion was that the secret was
the infectious charisma of Wim himself. And just being in his presence was
inspiring us to accomplish things we never would've normally done. You're getting into some pretty
deep places with your mind, and although it sounds kinda out there,
when you experience it, I can't even... It's scary slash amazing at the same time. >> I don't know where, but
I was gone and I saw things. And I didn't even notice that I
was screaming and making noises. It was really amazing. >> It's just something
we don't know we can do. In the east part of the world, it's in
the culture to teach people how to do it. In the western part of the world,
it's not a culture. >> Enlightenment is a form of happiness
and health, and it's not as deep and profound as people imagined it. >> I had a thing called Crohn's
disease about ten years ago. I've been to detox centers and
spent thousands and thousands of dollars on lots of different
health alternative improvement things. A lot of them are quite new age and
just a load of old bull shit. At least Wim Hof has been working with
a lot of different types of scientists and advanced hospital research,
that's the beautiful thing. You've seen him on the Guinness Book
of Records where he is sitting in an ice cube for two hours. >> So what's going on? >> We are filling the torches with gas, we are going to the waterfall later on,
like a fairy tale. >> Wim's method would never have
spread beyond himself if it wasn't for his business savvy son, Enahm whose
turned the Iceman into a website, an app and a global brand. I sent him some news when I was in Tanzania. Enahm, I've been looking around here,
but even in these far places where I'm getting,
I don't find an asshole as big as you. >> Yeah, as big as me, yeah. >> You are still the greatest. The greatest asshole. >> The Wim Hof method did
not exist four years ago. It was an Iceman doing a trick
which was only one person. So, Iceman is a superhero. Nobody can be as the Iceman, because its
just one person, it's a superhero. Wim Hof is a person like everyone else,
and he already gained this fame to attract the attention to show the whole
world that everybody is able to do much more than thought of, so I thought that's a beautiful goal. To bring that back to the people. And yeah, I've started doing the platforms
and now here you guys are you know. I saw the things already from my
childhood, what he could do with people. So I trusted it. >> How much of this came out of
the tragedy of your mother's death? >> Everything started there. Because my Mom was psychotic. They consented her with 11 personalities,
and she was never there for us. It was always my Dad being there for us. They stuffed her up with pills
to get her outside of society. And she committed suicide. So that was the beginning of my Dad
exploring for, okay, what's the answer? Where lies all these problems? So he went challenging himself. You know if you don't have an answer,
if they don't have an answer, you're going to find yourself an answer. I know where I came from, from a valley. It's like a trauma. She jumped from eight floor. That's my grief, I loved her to death. But the world is huge,
it's not interested in natural effects so much, it's the money. It's very difficult to bring this to
their standards, but we are on it. So science in time now will take it on and
we do our studies. >> Everyone's about to participate in
this kind of non-religious ritual. They hold the torch to represent
the fire within, then get in the water. Yeah, it might look a little bit
sectarian and I've said it before, I don't think this is a cult, but
the thing is Wim is so charismatic, if he gave me any poison to drink
I'd be the first person to drink it. >> Five. Four. Three. Two. There you go, one. There we go all in and let them go. I am going to tuck you in. >> I love being tucked in. We're so cute. The group had gone and Daisy and I werenleft with our own personal iceman trainer. In the lead up to climbing Mt.Snezka, we were gonna need all the extra help we could get. >> That was so weird. That was at the trippiest it's been. >> Yeah, you get eventually,
these white hallucinations, but it might just be depriving
your brain of oxygen. I don't know if that's good. Maybe. >> Here is the summit,
which we are going to get to tomorrow, in snow and ice, and just in shorts. This is what I did before, on Mt.Everest. I was up till here, in shorts. Coming from 5,200 to 5,800, 6,400, 6,700, 7,500, 700. Over here I was. >> He walked up Mt.Everest in his shorts. What have you done with your life? We've just done the fun part of the Wim
Hof method which is when we get to do the breathing exercises and
make ourselves feel really giddy and now it's time for
the part that everyone hates. Which is stripping down to our shorts and
jumping in a freezing cold waterfall. The waters running so
the water doesnt actually freeze but the temperature is below freezing. That means this is pretty much
the coldest water I'll ever experience. So we've just come out of
the freezing cold water and I cannot tell you how cold it was. It was the coldest water
I've ever experienced. I can't feel my toes at all. To each one of my toes, the toe next to it
feels like a foreign object in my shoe. Cuz I just can't feel them. You just start to think fight or
flight mode. I need to get out of this water. This is not where humans are meant to be. >> [FOREIGN]
- Yeah, of course. You know nothing about Poland! >> Obviously, you have your mission,
which is a noble one. But I have to ask, is it not also
a bit about the bragging rights of being able to say I climbed
Mount Everest in my shorts? >> If I can use it, I use it all the time. Too many are records. Too many of them have given
no real peace within myself. My unrestfunless deeply within,
created by not me, but by destiny itself. So, I gotta solve this, until its
at peace and, okay I will keep on. I think the king and the queens,
all these funny hats. The thing about that,
if you're healthy electromagnetically, you are able to distinguish
an energy field around your head. - See you're doing that thing you always do, when I'm really into
what you're saying. It's filled with beautiful metaphors. I'm ready to accept you as my leader. And then you say something I
can't quite get my head around. What is an electromagnetic halo? Oh, that's just your nervous
system actually as electric signals. Yeah, okay. Iβm following you nowβ¦
- And if your brain bit not fucked up then you got a nice electrical
field around your head. >> Do I have any kind of aura? >> Yes, you got. >> Really?
>> Yeah, yeah. What's it doing? >> What does it look like? >> Wait a minute. Its coming, its coming! >> No, no, fuck you! Its already there man. You're the king,
she's the queen, and that's it! >> Well done, today. And tomorrow even better. Nature calls us. And Mother Nature says I
gotta tuck you in man. Because of a powerless situation of grief and emotion and now I've got the power. And now, I want to take away and
show scientifically that depression and all the diseases, almost all the diseases, we are able to learn to prevent them
from developing inside the body. Because we are able to have
a connection direct inside, which goes far deeper than ever thought. Boom, I'm gonna show the world
that everybody is able instead of being powerless to have
power over his own system. >> We just stayed in that freezing
cold water for one minute. And the craziest part is I
feel warm on the inside. It must be the adrenaline or
something, but I finally get it. By standing in there and
letting the adrenaline rush over you, you don't feel the cold. I could stand out here for a while. But I'm not going to because I might die. >> Right now,
we are right over here, 750 meters. We go up to 1400 meters, that's the Kopa. From the Kopa we'll go to the SnΔΕΎka,
and it's cold. And 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 go 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. >> If you ever wanted a real test
of the Wim Hof Method, this is it. If you concentrate hard enough,
this 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. [FOREIGN] There's a method to this. What I'm doing is breathing in more oxygen than I need and then I'm breathing out without fully letting go. Doing that five times and 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! My crampons! Minor crampon emergency, it's fine. There 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. Then that adrenaline allows him to
overcome coldness and illnesses. Another theory is that he uses
a form of meditation 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 phenomena 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. I went through the scientific
scrutiny of research and put me to the test and
they saw amazing things. But then they said 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 these techniques and you can modulate your
adrenaline levels by will. Stress 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 work? >> I cried. >> Really? >> You know what happens when your wife
whom you love so dearly, she suicides? You don't understand,
you just don't understand. You have no power anymore. And finally, because you have
been everywhere looking for how to silence the grief,
you finally get scientific recognition, that's the time when you break. That's the time when you can relieve. That's the time you can let go. It's when you cry. >> Look at the clouds. >> Wow, mother holy mama. It's nice, huh? >> It's amazing what the body can do when
you actually force it to go to its limits. >> Yes, to its natural ability. >> We 'vecrossed 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. Hello there. All the way. Good. >> How are you feeling? >> I'm feeling good. Once again, back home. >> One of the reasons it's been so
difficult for Wim to get his method accepted
by a scientific establishment, is that it's inimical to our society's
view of the body and medicine. Wim's figured out a way to
influence the immune system without the use of pharmaceuticals. And that could have big ramifications for
people with inflammatory disorders. Whether it can be used to cure actual
diseases remains to be proven. This is the frontier of science, so it might be many years before we
fully understand the implications. We came into this with a heavy dose of
skepticism, but within a few days we were able to comfortably climb a freezing
cold mountain in nothing bur our shorts. Wim gives people a chance to take back
some Control over their minds and bodies. And for
people who suffer from depression or illnesses, that kind of
help can be priceless. What's the final stage in your mission? >> Final stage is go back to the grief. Go back to the love, the lost love. I want to bring back love to the world. Love is compiled by happiness,
strength, and health. If you radiate good energy
because you are healthy, happy, and strong, that's love. Breathe! It's for free! It's life! It's good! Take em in! If you need to breathe you take em in and blow your mind. Come on. It's natural drugs.
He was on the Joe Rogan earlier this week too. Wim Hof is amazing
Is there a TL;DR for what is actually happening here?
Wim Hof (the Iceman) on Defeating Extreme Cold & Attenuating the Immune Response with Dr. Rhonda Patrick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=389c31dD9xg
So everybody is talking about the endurance to cold and saying how it's not that uncommon... Now, what about the stuff they injected on him and his was able to suppress fever and headache? and the same happened to the people he trained?
Wim Hof!!!! I did my research topic on him for my Paramedic course at the University! I used his conscious regulation of his hypothalamus and compared it to therapeutically induced hypothermia for post-cardiac arrest patients, and the physiological effects of it. This guy is the real deal. Awesome to see him pop up again.
"Without his core temperature CHANGING" ...?!
withstanding it for an hour would be a feat..but how can he possibly control his body temperature.
Incredible.
No joke, I did the "breathing in more oxygen than you let go" technique they mention for three minutes and then thirty seconds of full breaths and was able to hold my breath after for 2:19. I know I haven't actually tested how long I can hold my breath in a couple years, but it was never this long; maybe 1:15 on a good day. This was an excellent documentary bit.
The connection between sadness and breathing is pretty cool. This could become a new type of therapy. Imagine jumping into ice-water, you won't be thinking about tragedy or suffering; your entire focus will be on breathing to stay in the water. The ultimate clarity.
but not nearly as cool as Mr. Cool Ice