The Way of the Iceman:
How the Wim Hof Method Creates Radiant, Longterm Health
Disclaimer:
I am not a medical doctor. Everything I share here are things I have learned from others and from personal experimentation. I am simply sharing what has helped me. Hopefully, there are a few nuggets that help you on your personal journey to become healthy and serve the Lord with all your might. If you have pre-existing medical conditions, check with a doctor (a functional medicine doctor if possible).
I am not a medical doctor. Everything I share here are things I have learned from others and from personal experimentation. I am simply sharing what has helped me. Hopefully, there are a few nuggets that help you on your personal journey to become healthy and serve the Lord with all your might. If you have pre-existing medical conditions, check with a doctor (a functional medicine doctor if possible).
The Way of The Iceman revealed weaknesses I never knew I had, but also revealed a path to strength I never knew possible.
This book highlights 3 key areas:
- Cold Training
- Breathing Exercises
- Commitment
Cold Training:
“All these blood vessels ensure that the billions of cells in your body continually get enough nutrients and oxygen. If they work properly, your whole body will function better, because it will get more nutrients and oxygen. Your brain will work better and the same applies to your muscles, intestines, heart, liver and so on...What does all this have to do with cold? When you expose yourself to the cold, by stepping into a cold lake for example, your body automatically closes off blood flow to the less vital parts of your body...By exposing your body to the cold, you can train your blood vessels by closing them forcefully, then making them open again. It’s like training your muscles. For example, you can train weak arm muscles by doing push-ups. At first, your muscles will hurt and feel weaker. But after they have recovered, they are stronger. It’s the same with your blood vessels. You benefit from having stronger arms even when you are not doing push-ups in the same way that you will also benefit from having open blood vessels when you are not cold. But you can train your blood vessels by exposing them to the cold.”
Cold exposure also Increases White Blood Cell Count:
“White corpuscles are a collective name for different cells..They defend the body against infection from bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, yeasts, and foreign substances. If we have an infection, we also have more white corpuscles, since the body will produce them to fight it...Research carried out by the Thrombosis Foundation (Documen-tation Centre 1994) shows that people who take a cold shower daily also have more white corpuscles. The researchers explain the increase in white corpuscles by the activation of the immune system, which releases more white corpuscles.”
“DO-IT-YOURSELF:
TAKING COLD SHOWERS Take a warm shower, as you always do. Then, while the water is still warm, start doing the following breathing exercises: Breathe in and breathe out slowly. Breathe in deeply and breathe out nice and slow. Keep doing this for about a minute—taking a total of six to ten breaths. Then, turn the shower to cold. Of course, you will start breathing more quickly and the cold will give you a shock. The trick is to breathe calmly again. Control your breathing under the cold shower. The moment your breathing is under control, the cold will feel different. If you find it difficult to set the shower to cold in one go, do it in two or three steps. You can also start by just holding your feet under the cold spray, then your hands and arms, then gradually bringing your whole body under the cold shower. Stay under the cold shower for a minute. If you are unable to relax with the breathing exercise, try another trick—rubbing yourself. You can “lead” the cold spray over your body with your hands. Massage your arms and legs as the cold water goes over them. The cold might feel a little less intense.”
Breathing Exercises:
“Many people breathe 13, 15, 17, 20 or as many as 22 or more times a minute. Even when they are sitting quietly in a chair, reading a book. A resting respiratory rate of between six and ten times a minute is enough.”
“Breathing exercises are considered to have many benefits.
They can:
- Help you relax
- Give you more energy
- Help you sleep better
- Help relieve headaches
- Are good for extreme athletes
- Help relieve back and neck problems
- Help relieve intestinal problems”
“DO-IT-YOURSELF:
CHECK YOUR OWN RESPIRATORY RATE Count how often you breathe in a minute.
If you breathe more than ten times a minute, then your body is ready for action, but your respiratory rate is not compatible with sitting quietly.”
“If you breathe more calmly, your heart rate will slow down and you will improve the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in your blood...Breathing is not only directly connected to the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your blood, but also to your heart rate. Your heart and lungs are inextricably linked to each other. If you breathe faster, your heart rate will almost certainly increase. If you breathe differently, your heart rate changes, as does your heart rate variability.”
“Breathing incorrectly can cause a whole range of health problems.
We will explain five of them:
- Pain in the shoulders or neck
- Agitation
- Intestinal problems
- Tiring quickly
- Heart palpitations”
DO IT YOURSELF:
“Breathe in deeply, without forcing yourself, and then out again slowly. By not fully breathing out, a small amount of air remains behind in the lungs. After doing that 30 times, hold your breath after breathing out, and wait until you feel the need to breathe in again. Repeat this exercise until you feel tingling, light in the head, or sluggish.”
Commitment:
This section goes into some of the mental focus required to put ourselves in extreme environments..even if “extreme” to us is a cold shower.
Science:
Through breathing exercises, Wim Hof demonstrated in laboratory experiments that we are able to activate our autonomic nervous system. We do this by controlling our breathing which controls our heart rate, which in turn controls how our body responds to attacks on the immune system.
Self-Experimentation
Deep belly breathing for stress relief, gut health & tight muscles:
The deep belly breathing first helped my muscle tightness. By learning to breathe more through my belly instead of using my shoulder muscles, my neck muscles are far more relaxed. I also use focused deep breathing to systematically relax from head to toe (great for stress relief). This can help muscles to stay relaxed and not pull things out of alignment.
The deep belly breathing also helped my gut within a few days.
There are 2 parts to it. First is learning to consciously breathe through your belly instead of using your shoulder muscles. This helps allow those muscles to relax and reduces systemic inflammation. It also allows you to fully oxygenate your blood, which means your body gets a higher dose of oxygen, which is necessary for healing and normal bodily function.
The second part is a breathing exercise you can do once a day that takes about 5 or 6 minutes. It is a combination of 30-40 deep, rapid breaths (full belly breath in and then releasing it out instead of forcing it out) followed by holding your breath as long as you can. (Wim Hof recommends repeating this 4 times, but I usually just do 2) It helps to lie down because it is essentially hyperventilating; you will get a little lightheaded and your arms and legs will tingle some. This exercise helps balance your body's PH levels as well as a variety of other benefits. Does it sound different? Yes. Does it work? Yes.
Fully oxygenating before exercise:
Wim Hof showed that by taking 30 rapid, deep breaths and letting the air out (equalizing, not forcing it out), this allowed your blood and muscles to be fully oxygenated. When exercising with a weight that you can manage for 8-15 reps, the reason your muscles can’t get one more rep is not because you have run out of strength, it is because you have run out of fuel. Since the ATP energy that your muscles need requires oxygen, taking these rapid breaths before a strength set can prepare your muscles by giving them more fuel. Usually, we start breathing hard when we start the set or are halfway through. This is when our muscles are already running out of oxygen and they signal to your body to start breathing harder. Adding the breaths before the exercise is like planning ahead for your body. You know that you will need the oxygen in a minute, so you are stockpiling it. If we wait to start breathing heavily until partway through the exercise, we are playing catch up.
In my personal experimentation, I use 15-20 deep, rapid breaths and let the air equalize. I only do this before my strength sets at the beginning of my workout. (Total of about 4 times per workout: 2 muscle groups with unilateral exercise (ex. 1 arm pushups)). When I started doing this I IMMEDIATELY gained 1-2 reps on ALL my exercises. This is huge because it typically takes a month for me to add a rep on some of the more difficult exercises.
Mental toughness:
Our mind is the most important part of true strength. Why? Because it operates the gas and brakes for the rest of our muscles. It sets the limits. When your brain gives up or tells you that you can’t do something (ex. lift a weight), you have been defeated. But what happens when you believe you can (or must) lift it? You dig deep and push through. The brain does this to prevent us from injury. If we exhaust ourselves too far in exercise, there is the potential for injury. But our brain gives a wide margin of safety. We can push ourselves much further if we always maintain good form in exercise. Learning to push your body beyond its current limits to grow stronger and build more capacity is just as much an exercise of the mind as it is the body. One way to grow this mental toughness and resilience is through gradual cold exposure. Your body CAN handle it, but can your mind? I started finishing my showers with a 20 count of deep breaths under as cold of water as I could stand. Each day I gradually lowered the temperature and increased the time until I was up to 40 deep, slow breaths (no hyperventilating). Setting it up gradually by each day increasing the coldness or increasing the time, you can tell yourself that you can last 5 seconds longer than before. Little by little your body adapts and at the same time, your mental toughness grows.
Seasonal allergies/colds:
This was the reason I actually bought this book. All of the people that I read about who never get sick all do some form of cold therapy where they are being exposed to cold temperatures. We have moved a lot and must readjust to seasonal allergies every place we move. Last year I was using Claritin to get through allergy season. Seeing that some people used gradual cold exposure to strengthen the body's nervous system and adapt to environmental changes, I thought I would self-experiment. This year, we are well into allergy season and I have had no symptoms or need for Claritin. I am optimistic that this will continue and will definitely be continuing to finish my showers with a minute of cold water.
The deep belly breathing first helped my muscle tightness. By learning to breathe more through my belly instead of using my shoulder muscles, my neck muscles are far more relaxed. I also use focused deep breathing to systematically relax from head to toe (great for stress relief). This can help muscles to stay relaxed and not pull things out of alignment.
The deep belly breathing also helped my gut within a few days.
There are 2 parts to it. First is learning to consciously breathe through your belly instead of using your shoulder muscles. This helps allow those muscles to relax and reduces systemic inflammation. It also allows you to fully oxygenate your blood, which means your body gets a higher dose of oxygen, which is necessary for healing and normal bodily function.
The second part is a breathing exercise you can do once a day that takes about 5 or 6 minutes. It is a combination of 30-40 deep, rapid breaths (full belly breath in and then releasing it out instead of forcing it out) followed by holding your breath as long as you can. (Wim Hof recommends repeating this 4 times, but I usually just do 2) It helps to lie down because it is essentially hyperventilating; you will get a little lightheaded and your arms and legs will tingle some. This exercise helps balance your body's PH levels as well as a variety of other benefits. Does it sound different? Yes. Does it work? Yes.
Fully oxygenating before exercise:
Wim Hof showed that by taking 30 rapid, deep breaths and letting the air out (equalizing, not forcing it out), this allowed your blood and muscles to be fully oxygenated. When exercising with a weight that you can manage for 8-15 reps, the reason your muscles can’t get one more rep is not because you have run out of strength, it is because you have run out of fuel. Since the ATP energy that your muscles need requires oxygen, taking these rapid breaths before a strength set can prepare your muscles by giving them more fuel. Usually, we start breathing hard when we start the set or are halfway through. This is when our muscles are already running out of oxygen and they signal to your body to start breathing harder. Adding the breaths before the exercise is like planning ahead for your body. You know that you will need the oxygen in a minute, so you are stockpiling it. If we wait to start breathing heavily until partway through the exercise, we are playing catch up.
In my personal experimentation, I use 15-20 deep, rapid breaths and let the air equalize. I only do this before my strength sets at the beginning of my workout. (Total of about 4 times per workout: 2 muscle groups with unilateral exercise (ex. 1 arm pushups)). When I started doing this I IMMEDIATELY gained 1-2 reps on ALL my exercises. This is huge because it typically takes a month for me to add a rep on some of the more difficult exercises.
Mental toughness:
Our mind is the most important part of true strength. Why? Because it operates the gas and brakes for the rest of our muscles. It sets the limits. When your brain gives up or tells you that you can’t do something (ex. lift a weight), you have been defeated. But what happens when you believe you can (or must) lift it? You dig deep and push through. The brain does this to prevent us from injury. If we exhaust ourselves too far in exercise, there is the potential for injury. But our brain gives a wide margin of safety. We can push ourselves much further if we always maintain good form in exercise. Learning to push your body beyond its current limits to grow stronger and build more capacity is just as much an exercise of the mind as it is the body. One way to grow this mental toughness and resilience is through gradual cold exposure. Your body CAN handle it, but can your mind? I started finishing my showers with a 20 count of deep breaths under as cold of water as I could stand. Each day I gradually lowered the temperature and increased the time until I was up to 40 deep, slow breaths (no hyperventilating). Setting it up gradually by each day increasing the coldness or increasing the time, you can tell yourself that you can last 5 seconds longer than before. Little by little your body adapts and at the same time, your mental toughness grows.
Seasonal allergies/colds:
This was the reason I actually bought this book. All of the people that I read about who never get sick all do some form of cold therapy where they are being exposed to cold temperatures. We have moved a lot and must readjust to seasonal allergies every place we move. Last year I was using Claritin to get through allergy season. Seeing that some people used gradual cold exposure to strengthen the body's nervous system and adapt to environmental changes, I thought I would self-experiment. This year, we are well into allergy season and I have had no symptoms or need for Claritin. I am optimistic that this will continue and will definitely be continuing to finish my showers with a minute of cold water.
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