The Superhuman World of Wim Hof: The Iceman
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.
I’m following you now… - 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 Sněžka, 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.