to train US Navy SEALs. His boundless enthusiasm for the work reveals
his joy in being of service.
“It shows in measurement equipment that doing these breathing tech-
niques creates gamma, theta, and delta (brain waves/states). This is where
we actually should be, instead of in stressful brain waves all the time. Are
we creating a healthy economy or healthy people? For the sake of God we
need to bring back LOVE.”
Love is a key part of his message, his mission, and his very heartfelt pres-
ence. Throughout our conversation, I was aware that I was sitting with a
true yogi. In fact, the only time I’ve felt that same level of pure connection
from the heart was when I’ve sat with Ram Dass in Maui. I was immedi-
ately taken by Wim’s wild character and positive spirit. He offers a solid
message of personal empowerment and hope. His passion can get loud,
and he is highly effective in tapping into primal energy. Wim is known to
bust out an acoustic guitar and start singing at concert volume during his
workshops. There are actually few people I’ve experienced who have more
of a love affair with nature than Wim.
His love affair with nature, with the breath, and with ice all came from
Wim’s own search for healing. The sud-
den death of his wife and the mother of
four of his children (from suicide in 1995)
and his ensuing healing journey was the
catalyst for the Wim Hof Method. For so
many, that kind of tragedy can take you
out of the game. Wim’s response was to
dig deep within, seek answers in nature,
and then make a relentless commitment
to share those answers with the world
to help others heal. His family continues
to be part of the story, as his adult kids
work with him to run the family business
around teaching the Wim Hof Method.
So, I wondered, is the Wim Hof Meth-
od a real and effective healing modality
in handling the challenges and traumas
of the modern world? “I’m a simple guy
but with a big belief.”
The source of that belief is found in
Mother Nature. “The mother’s ability
as Mother Nature is to guarantee happi-
ness, strength, and health to her children.
That has been gone too long.” Without
that connection, people experience, “A
lot of confusion, insecurity, no confi-
dence about what they are really able
to do.” He is honest about his journey.
“This was the way I was in the beginning. There I began my soul search.
So, I began diving into esoteric disciplines, philosophies, traditions, lan-
guages - yoga, Tibetan meditation practices, kung fu, karate, Sufism, Bud-
dhism, Hinduism.” After all of the his study, his intuition led him to the
cold the way some are led to the heat.
“At a certain moment I felt attracted by intuition and instinct to go into
cold water. I found it not through books and not through all those prac-
tices I did, I found it directly through this cold. It shut my mind up. I made
a deeper connection within the self as well as the body. My consciousness
became: I am this, I can do this, I feel good, I can stay good.”
Wim’s ability to find the way into the what he calls the deeper part of the
brain is one that he reminds me is well-traversed by the traditional yogis.
He cites Patajanali’s Yoga Sutras and the pathways described through the
eight limbs that lead the practitioner to samadhi or higher consciousness
through austerities. He translates for me the first few of Patanjali’s sutras:
“Yoga is the silencing of the modifications of our brain. Then the seer ap-
pears the way he is, the expression of the soul in consciousness.” Beyond
the science, this is what he is aiming to reach. After all, he translates the
Sanskrit word asana as the seat of the soul. He describes the cold that he’s
drawn to as a tool to help the body train for the skills in enhances adapta-
tion that the yogis themselves were pursuing. The philosophies Wim stud-
ied still influence his work today. Throughout his personal journey, Nature
was one of Wim’s teachers. A teacher he continues to follow. “Nature can
be merciless but righteous,” he says.
I bring to Wim’s attention that this is a heavily repeated quote, and
I ask him to elaborate on it. “I call it merciless, but it’s only merciless
to your ego, to whatever you think. It’s sometimes painful to go from
your physiology and your conditioning into the deepest part of your-
self. That’s because we’ve been alienated from our deeper self, the physi-
ology. The physiology in the brain - as in the body - is connected to all
the cells. I found that out when I went into the cold water; because I was
a trained body, it was not cold at all.”
Since cold is a centerpiece of his teaching, I asked him: “What is your
strategy when you submerge yourself into the cold?”
“At the moment you go in, you have
to just be. There are no words in cold
water. It’s only sensation and hormonal
presence. We have an enormous poten-
tial to adapt, but we lost this connection
with the deeper parts of the brain (the
limbic system), and thus we’ve become
conditioned by the neocortex to the mod-
ern way of thinking. We make beautiful
houses with air conditioning and heating
and we go from A to B with cars and all
that. The deeper parts of the brain are
needed to be stimulated through not be-
ing in thoughts but in being. Just feeling
good. Feeling great. People take drugs
because they don’t know how to access
this anymore. What I found now is a
way to get into this deeper part of the
brain that affects the endocrine system,
which is the hormonal system.”
With a lump in my throat so that
I could barely articulate my words, I
asked him about how he healed from the
trauma of his wife’s suicide. “Something
inexplicable happens when you experi-
ence severe trauma through emotional
loss. You can be as good as you are but
that trauma strikes into your hormonal
system and creates an imbalance – you no longer have control. You may
be the best in the world in skiing or top in this and that, Ha! Nature is mer-
ciless. You have to find connection again, in the depth. And that is what
I did. So, from there I began to become aware to really connect because
there was no other way to get deeper than the grief was rooted.”
“I’ve learned my power of the mind is going into the depth of the mind
not only taking away the grief, but learning about the mind and its pow-
er. That’s not done in schools. But it’s there. And it’s able to tackle the
problems of life. That’s the school. Life is not always a straight path. Life
has its own way of unfolding. It’s not through the school we learn, we
learn through life.
Wim’s fluid ability to dance between yogic philosophy and esoteric ideas
of the spirit with the articulate language of science makes a huge impression
on me. He is committed to scientifically proving what he teaches.
“In America, the biggest killer is cardiovascular conditions. Gradual ex-
posure to cold water optimizes the vascular system, the over 70,000 miles“I will not stop until we have
a world of happy, strong and
healthy people. I will NOT stop!”