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And if you want to learn more about 511, their mission, their products, then listen to episode 338 of the Behind the Shield podcast with the CEO and founder, Francisco Morales. Welcome to episode 532 of Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Wim Hoff. Now, Wim is known around the world as the Iceman, initially for some of the incredible physical endeavors that he could endure, especially in extreme cold.
From climbing Everest in just a pair of shorts to being submerged in ice for almost two hours, he showed the world that he was able to endure incredible extreme cold for a long, long time. But that was purely just to get attention. Wim's goal was to show not only his own control of his human body, but to be able to teach that that is in every single one of us.
After gaining the attention of the scientific world, he and several of his students were tested not only with their cold exposure, but even their immune response to an E. coli strain being injected into them. So I cannot stress how powerful his work is, how much you need to subscribe to his free app right now, the Wim Hoff Method, and how many incredible areas that we covered. He has done documentaries, he's been on multiple podcasts, so I tried to hit some new areas that I hadn't heard before.
From his early life to how his breath and cold therapy helped his own personal journey of grief, not only from losing his wife to suicide, but also a following divorce. We talk about extreme heat, which is very pertinent to the fire service and many other professions. Before we get to this incredibly powerful conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on. Subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating.
Every five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of 532 episodes now. All I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to everyone else who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce to you Wim Hof. Enjoy. Just by using the power of breath, the life force itself, it's not out there, it's in here. It's right here.
So that together with belief, you know, our neurosignaling, our will, is able once the body's pH levels is high, alkaline, through the breath, deeper, then you change the biological environment for the neurology, that is connected to our neurological neurosignaling of our will, to be able for us to command our own body. And it makes perfect sense to me. It really does.
I'm looking forward to this conversation because I think if this last year and a half is showing us anything, is people 100% believe that their health is external. And that's so tragic. Exactly. You cut through the chase and that's it. They are dependent on something out there. The doctor is there, the pill is there, the medicine is there, the vaccine is there, but the healing power is inside. Of course, the vaccine is there and the doctor is there and the hospitals are there and all.
It's all there. But the healing power is, we have shown this in brain scans, how to connect neurologically with that area. These professors with whom I worked, psychiatrists, professors and radiologists, Professor Vaibhav Divakar and Professor Otto Muzik from the Wayne State University in Detroit, they say after doing brain scan studies with me, we now have the compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomous processes inside the brain related to mood regulation.
We are able at will to regulate our own mood. And that's it. We normally are so stressed out and we get stressed and that deregulates our immune system. We become sick because the stress just turns into a biochemical residue that deregulates the functioning systems. And then we become sick. A sickness is nothing more than a signal that something is wrong. So is fear that something is wrong. But they are feeding the fear.
They don't go to the source. Also with this COVID and all the other vaccines and other ailments and even cancer is based in inflammation. And we live in this society with a destimulative behavior that causes low grade inflammation. And that in the long run will turn into deregulated immune system functioning. And then we get all kinds of autoimmune diseases. Because our bodies are slight acidic. They are not alkaline.
And our neurology, which is connected to our world, the neurology is neurotransmitters, our will is neurotransmitters, is connected to the neurology of the rest of our body. But because there's a wrong biochemistry going on, because of low grade inflammation caused by the stress and destimulative behavior, we become sick at a certain moment because the body needs to be alkaline. Nice pH, nice flourishing fresh blood flow, great going like flowing.
And it is not because we destimulate, always wearing clothes. When you go into a cold shower, you drain millions of the 70,000 miles of vascular channels. That is capillaries, arteries and veins. And once the flow goes better through the system, it reaches the cells with all the energy. And it's for the low tension of the muscle, the muscle tone in the vascular system, which is 70,000 miles in every body of us. That's why I say cold shower a day, keep the doctor, even the doctor is doing it.
You see how I go? Yeah, well, it's so pertinent. Yeah, man, the thing is, we have to bring back the simplicity to the people that we are in charge of our own body and our own mind. We are built to be so. But we got so, as you said in the beginning, into the external that we think we need something out there to be in here, able to regulate what is out of balance. No, we need to go with our minds, with the commander, the captain. We are the captain of our own ship.
That's the way nature meant us to be. Not to need something out there. A captain on a boat doesn't need another boat to pull him. No, he needs to be igniting the forces inside the boat to go the directions he set out for. That is the way we are the captain of our own ship inside the commander of the over the neurology, which is everywhere in our body, our bodies. And it is connected to the vascular system, which is 70,000 miles.
The contraction and opening of that vascular channels inside is done by the neurology, by nerve endings. And they are connected with our will, which is also a neurosignaling coming. And therefore, we have the ability. For example, right now, close your eyes. Close your eyes a moment. Now, just be in your body and feel, become aware of the heartbeat in your left big toe. I feel it. Can you feel it? Yes, yes, I can.
Yeah, that is the way we our consciousness is able to go into any part of our body, not only into the left toe, but also into the liver, into the heart, into the intestines, into the scrotum, into the thighs, into any any place. That is the power of our thoughts to balance out what is out of balance inside of our own bodies. And if we just breathe well, if we breathe well, then the pH levels, they rise. They become alkaline.
The right pH level makes the neurosignaling of our will able to do the job inside our bodies. It's amazing. It truly is. So I would love to just just get some background and then get up to your work. I think there's no better time than now to talk about breath and mental health, talk about breath and immunity. But just I don't want to drag you down the same road you've been a lot of times with the Everest crime and the world record breaking ice. It's all new. It's all new. It's all new.
So I'd love to just start at the very beginning, though. So if you wouldn't mind, because this is an area that I haven't heard you discuss on many podcasts and I watched several documentaries on this as well. Keep your reservations away. Just shoot. Shoot. All right. So tell me where you were born and then tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings.
Yes, I was with I was one of nine and my father was not able to work because he had like seven or nine hernias and he was operated. He was invalid. He was a great guy. He played a lot at home with all the siblings. And so very little money we had living in the south of the Netherlands, one kilometer from Germany, 12, 12 kilometers from Belgium. It's like different languages coming to you.
Back then, I'm talking 50, 60 years ago, the television was like two channels, black and white, was not even introduced at a certain moment. It was introduced black and white, two channels. And then but I learned how to speak German because it was only one kilometer away, my own language. And then you got French. French is like 12 kilometers away. It was French speaking a language. And so you learn those languages from early age. And we because my father was always at home. He was invalid.
He had a allowance from the government. And yeah, he played a lot with us. We had a lot of checkers, playing cards, playing football. I mean, he was invalid for work, but he could direct and he was funny. And my mother was a Puritan. My father was like a gypsy and my mother was a naive, but very pious woman, Catholic. Catholic. And we had the church always. We always played in the church. We thought it was bollocks and nonsense.
You know, a man standing there doing, oh, he's a super Christ and this and that. And I don't know what the church did, but divine it is not. We played a lot in the church still. Yet I believe in a real belief, a real faith is something very, very, it's the most precious thing in the world, in the universe itself. Because belief makes, it is the power of your mind. Through our belief, we are able to manifest anything. We only have to keep on with our faith. And we lost that in this society.
But back then, we played a lot. I've been growing up doing, playing every day with all my siblings. And of course, we also had different elders, the older three siblings. They were having their own thing. And then you got the middle part and then you got the little part in the back, like an animal. The tail in the back, we wear the middle part and the hat, those were the oldest people, the oldest guys.
We're always looking up, but not too much because we in our ballet say of our own bubble of three, four guys. That was me, my twin brother, and Rudy, my just younger brother, two years younger, and the other one four years younger. So we played a lot. And then when I became like 12 years, I began to become having great interests. In contrary of all the people living in Lemberg at that time being Catholic, and you need to go for your career and school and position and money.
I was into esoteric disciplines like Buddhism into Hinduism and becoming a vegetarian at 13, which was something very unknowing. I was the black sheep suddenly, not eating meat, makes you a strange guy, alien guy. Why is he doing that? That is not sane. That is not good what he is doing. I had to be like everybody else, but I was not. And so from 12 on, once you begin to do something out of the ordinary, you think different, you are different.
And I began to philosophize a lot, debate a lot, think a lot. When I became 17, I had read hundreds of books already. And I remember this day in Sunday morning, it was nobody around in the park, me pondering again, philosophizing in my head, you know, it's like a hamster always goes on, on, on, on. Then I saw the cold water, and the cold water drew me. It was an attraction coming from my instinct, something. And it attracted me, and I went into the cold water, and I felt what I was looking for.
And that was a deeper connection with my physiology, past the controlling. Here I had to let go. And if you let go, a deeper being, a deeper awareness comes to you, and you become one with it. That's what I felt, but I did not know that at that time, but I felt it. And that made me feel so good, and I had this rush all the day, just being one and a half minutes in this icy water.
And I felt great going into the ice water because I was ready to take the pump from being a philosopher and thinker into feeling. Now I'm saying to everybody, feeling is understanding, because feeling comes from the deep. And we lost feeling when we are in love, we then a feeling endows us, which is fearless. We just want to go to our love. We end up thinking at that moment. That moment, the power within us is stronger than our fear, than our doubt, than our thinking.
We are no longer wise or is just blind into this faith, into this power called love. And that was exactly what happened when I was 17. And since then, I've been doing that every day in my life, during every winter, going into the icy water. And the thing you become aware of when you go into icy water is breathing. And you learn that deeper breathing makes you powerful, makes you stronger than the icy water is able to contain you in.
So I did that. And very soon I could stay five to seven minutes under the water in icy water, in peace. Fully in control. Imagine what kind of control that is. It's not only the holding of the breath, it is the being in icy water and feel great. I told nobody because everybody was thinking, of course, I was crazy. Who goes into icy cold water? Who is so crazy? He's taking his clothes off in winter time and snow outside his eyes and he's going to go in there.
He's crazy. He must be an idiot, a crazy frenetic. Forty five years ago, forty five years ago, I began to go into icy water. And that changed my physiological, my physics, my awareness, which is much deeper. And that's logic. And that's what I'm showing now. Everybody in the world. In the beginning, I thought, yeah, I kept it only for myself. But twenty five years later, doing all the practice, all the time, changing my consciousness, changing my understanding of how body and mind.
I got a contact with a newspaper and they did an article on me, just a little. But it was enough to explode the television world to get to me. And then I showed on TV that going into freezing icy water didn't inhibit me to do splits. One arm handstands, put two legs behind my head after being in the icy cold water in freezing temperatures. Cardiovascular system, which is working like oil, like smear, like like ointment for the articulations and tendons and muscles.
So much that I was so flexible even after being a half hour in icy water. I just just before this, I was also an icy vet for a quarter of an hour. Directly afterwards, I'm just doing splits and all kinds of flexibility. I'm 62. I'm more flexible than any youngster. Or they have to do real professional ballet or all these women, these Chinese girls or gymnastics. I'm very flexible. And man, this is because when you go into the cold, you train your cardiovascular system.
And that is killer number one. Killer number one is cardiovascular related diseases in our society. You go a cold shower a day, keeps the doctor away. How simple can we bring it? But how much it is needed in this society, and especially now with this fear, so much fear and so much knowledge forgotten about what we can do against and fear and take autonomy over our body and mind when there is danger. Now, they say there is danger of COVID. We can just bring it down.
I've shown this in the university studies. So why does not being taken up because we think too much that we need the doctor, we need the pill. We are in fear because they say it to us that we are in fear. It's like a mantra. It gets to us. If you say a person, you are a donkey, you are a donkey. At a certain moment, he doesn't talk to you anymore. It begins to do. You know, they begin to act like donkeys. Our society has made us fearful beings while our soul does not know fear.
Our soul lives forever and is unbreakable. Where is that spirit when we are in love? We have no fear. Where is the love for life? Where is that uninhibited power? That's what they should teach us in the schools. And that's where I come in from nature, knowledge that makes us able to control our brain and body so much better in just one day. In one day, through one podcast, we can awaken people to their innate capacity to rule over their happiness, strength, and health.
It's nothing more than logical to be in control of your happiness, strength, and health. We got the capacities. We got a hormonal system, immune system, the energy systems in our cells, and we have shown true science, so no speculation about it, that we are able to control that at will. So, there it is. I had a podcast with him, the bulletproof guy. A lot of people know that. But in his podcast, he said, Wim, it seems you got some answers there. And what is enlightenment?
And please tell it me in one sentence. And then he said, OK, all Bibles and Korans are written on that, but I got to say what is enlightenment in one sentence. Just be happy, strong, and healthy, because the rest is bullshit. We believe so much bullshit, they have been telling us that we need cars to be happy, houses to be happy. We need all kinds of external compensation to be happy.
They promised us disguise and divinity and God itself and psychedelic beauty and amazing experiences if we only buy what they got. But we got it already. We got it with the T and with the D. We got it. We are that. We are born to be divine. We are born to be in control, in check of our neurology. That is our brain. Do not develop only 16% control over our brain, but 100. And that's what I show in Brainscan. I show how to at will, conscious will, activate 100% neural activity in the brain.
And then because of true breathing exercises, you can do that. You can change the biochemistry in the whole of brain, then the blood flow changes and the neural active. Then you are able to connect with any space in your own brain. It's nothing more than logic. When the soul is not fertile, how can you see it? When our brain has a blood flow mostly in our thinking brain, then 25% less blood flow is in the rest of the brain. It's on the standby. It's not flourishing.
It's not the right conditions to enter in, build into the rest of our pain. That's why we need external validation, compensation, pills, this and that. And now we have shown in Detroit how to enter into the deepest part of our brain at will and robustly activate that part. And that makes us now able. It has been shown. It has been in a paper, and these professors say we now have the compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomous related to mood regulation.
We can control at will our mood. When we feel sick, our mood is affected. When we feel emotionally disturbed, our mood is out of balance. And anything that is stressed in the end is biochemical stress. And now we are able at will, because that's part of the biochemistry, our will, neurotransmitters, to re-regulate our mood. Whatever the cause is of the stress, could be emotional, bacterial, viral, mental, physical, doesn't matter. In the end, it's biochemical stress. And that makes us feel bad.
And now we are able to re-regulate that out of balance mood and to bring balance. And that's what I've been showing in Detroit and in Hanover in one of the two best brain scans of the world. And it is science only. We make money of people who are sick. That is the disease in this world. With the money. We are unconditionally able to be happy, strong, and healthy. That's the way nature meant it to be.
That's the way nature, through millions of years of trial and error, has given us being capacitated to rule over our body in our own brain. And then they say in science, only 16% of our brain we can control at will. It's 100! It is stupid to think that after millions of years we got a brain that is a lump of meat that is only 16% in our control. It's 100! And it makes us able to be happy, strong, and healthy. Because the brain is the neurology connected to the hormonal system.
That means the dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, the opioids, the cannabinoids, the whole thing is inside regulated. And we are able to at will control that. To enter into it. To rebalance what is out of balance. Maybe less dopamine becoming depressive. And then we need, okay I want some more dopamine man, inside. And then if you go into icy water, dopamine is being risen with 250%. And noradrenaline, which lacks, is one of the crucial factors for depression.
And noradrenaline lack is risen with 540%. It's science. It's a pill without side effects. And why are they not? I did not hear anything while the Covid so-called pandemic is going on. That they talk about how to boost your immune system naturally. They don't talk about it! I've been saying the same thing for almost two years. Yes, so they are murderers and I don't believe in murderers.
And I say something which is even good for those people who think they can make billions and trillions upon our misery. And have people die. For those I have a very positive message. You don't need money to be happy. You want to be really happy? We got it. Just breathe motherfucker. That's what I say. And go and take the cold shower. Sometimes get out of the comfort zone behavior. Because you need to deep stimulate your brain, which is in deeper areas than you're thinking.
And for that it needs deep stimulation. Once that begins to work, your monosystem begins to become within your control. Your immune system becomes within your control. And we have shown that. And your energy systems, the amount of energy you need, you will be able to have access to so much more energy than you need. And with that you will automatically or naturally help others. Because anything you got too much, you can give away. It's a natural thing. That is the real human.
So we forgot to be real humans and we think we need to buy things to become happy. It's not. And now the turning point needs to be done and I do that through science. Only the best of them in the world. So I go where no speculation is there. I go where we are able to enter into a new paradigm. And the new paradigm is where in we have control over our own mind. For God's sake, it's our own mind. I just say autonomy within our own mind, who is the director of all the systems inside our body.
And with that we have the capacity to become happy, strong and healthy. And it all started when I was 12 years in a family with nine siblings. But I was born one of the twins. Like 62 years ago. Back then they only had these wooden trumpets to listen to what is going on inside in the womb of the mother. There were two children. I was still in. Well, my brother was being delivered.
I was still in and they thought, there's no one in there. I was so deeply in, they didn't notice there was another one. And they only almost too late found out I was there. And they rushed me to the operation room because I was too deep in. And my mother, who was the highest woman, faithful, Catholic, also in fear at that moment, they were going to God. While they were rushing her and her bed to the operation room, she was invocating at that moment, saying,
I will make him a missionary. And there I came out, out of the black hole, into the world, into the light. And with those words I almost was suffocated. It was purple little shit coming out with those words. Look what it now has become. I will change the world, man. You know why? Because the world needs it. And I will reach billions of people now working with the BBC, 12 programs in January.
And that will read, I will show that people are able to heal them for days as the medical establishment could not heal them in 20 years. And maintain them in pills and medicines and therapies and still having the same disease there. Only a sort of maintain. They survive. I will show them how to connect with their healing power. That is where this came from. Because I am that missionary. I am what my mother told me to do.
Without me knowing subconsciously, little purple shit coming to the world. And there with those words, they are tattooed upon me. And I found out 48 years later, I found out, yes, 48 years I was back in New York, doing a world record outside.
And then the day after I went to an institute. And that institute, Feinstein Institute, a biochemical institute in New York, supervised by Dr. Kevin Tracy, one of the board members of the jury of the Nobel Prize winners for medical achievement, a real authority. New York state healthcare. He supervised that experiment where I was experimented while doing my techniques in a nice room. They took the blood from one side and I was connected to a heart, lung meter on the other side.
And I was doing my thing. A week later, I got the results. And I did a documentary at that moment with 2020. And I got them the medical mysteries. It was chapter number 12, I think, the human popsicle. Because I had done being immersed in ice for one hour, 34 at that time in the middle of New York. I was on Times Square, I saw myself that evening. It was kind of flabbergasted. But the other day I went to that institute and a week later I got the results.
And it showed that I had influenced deeply into the vagus nerve. And if you do that, that means you bring down inflammation. And inflammation takes down in a death every year 60 to 70 million people. So COVID is 5 million people, it's also inflammation based. But inflammation caused diseases is like 60 to 70 million a year. Nobody talks about that because it's good business. But I showed in 2014 how to get it down.
But back then in 2007, I showed at the Einstein Institute. And then Dr. Ken Kamler, who followed me with the results, I was looking over Central Park from a hotel there at the 16th store. He told me, Dr. Ken Kamler, I got the results. When if you are able to reproduce the results given after your experiments the last week, then that means huge consequences for human mankind. And then he named so many diseases related to having no control over the vagus nerve
or having control over the vagus nerve. Up till then, nobody showed being able to influence deeply into the vagus nerve. I did as the first one. And then he said, if you are able to reproduce these results in a group of people, that means more human mankind. And at that moment, the dime fell. As they say in Dutch, de korte, ding, yeah, I can do that. Because what is it?
It is breathing and believing. And that makes the inflammation go down. I can do that. Boom, half hour later, there the missionary was born. Half hour later, I got a phone call, Wim, your mother has died. You see how it relates? My story. And it's real. We all have stories, but we got to listen to our mothers, to our hearts, to their love, to the care inside and never, never be shaken into in our faith
to be able to make the change, whatever it takes. We are the soul. The soul is eternal, unbreakable. There is no fear. When you are in love, you go, you fly. Nothing can stop you. Where is that power? That is who we are. And that is where we missing out. That is where I came from with my family when I was young in a society where you need money, you need to be Catholic. But I got my mother to invocate at my birth and she did it. Somehow she did it. Mothers, holy mothers, my holy mother.
Every mother is holy. And that's the way we need to respect the world again and each other. We need to care and not to be self-indulges. And it is, and it is. No, you need to care for each other. Then the blessing will come and it will, it will filter down to your soul. And then your soul is blessed. And then you feel real satisfaction. You will feel real peace deeply inside your subconscious, everywhere in your brain.
And then it becomes full bloom. The neurology keeps on growing inside like being a child. Stronger the growth than the understanding. We get stuck. We get clotted inside. And we need to be innocent again. Innocence is right here, right now. Like every tree grows bigger every year. And that's the way our brains work as well. It is like a tree, the neural activity, it grows newly, newly, newly.
When it grows newly, newly, newly, it's expanding consciousness, perception, neurology. And then you are saved because it connects with all the vascular system, the hormonal system, anything. And I found it. I found what my mother had invulnerable. And so I'm that missionary. And if I can change the world, because I'm going to change the world within two years, Hollywood film is also coming now.
Next year, it's out about my life. But mostly is to show that one person with faith is able to do, to change the world. I'm not able as a simple guy, humble guy. But I arise and I say, I say I can do it. That's my faith. I got the right to have faith. So if I'm able to do that, what can we do both? What can we do with all the listeners who are listening right now?
Guys, get your faith in. You are born to be divine. You are born because God exists, because light exists. It's neurology. It's DNA. It's our ancestors. We can dive into it. We are the natives in harmony with nature. The native is one is back and science is showing in the DNA research that the genetic past, the trauma of the genetic past, we can heal it. With that, we heal and free the spirits of our ancestors. Have some care. Have some love for your ancestors.
Respect for others and sisters because we are here on the most beautiful spot of the universe. We don't need to go to Mars. We don't need to go become nuts and go to Mars or any other Milky Way and chocolate. We need to go back on the earth and become one with who we are for real. That soul, that beautiful soul, we're shining like diamonds in our eyes every day and enjoy it unconditionally everywhere.
And in that way, we will take down inflammation with that cancer and depression and disease and just feel great as we are. Beautiful. Well, you touched on depression. A lot of people listening are military first responders, medical and mental health or lack thereof is definitely a factor. Now, you were exposed to that very acutely by losing your wife in 1995. You already had this breathwork. You already had this cold exposure by that point.
What impact did the loss of your wife have on your practice and was a lot of that preparation that you did, did that prepare you for that? Because when I got divorced, I listened to a lot of Wayne Dyer. I don't know if you know who that was. And it really gave me the tools to deal with the grief of losing my marriage.
Great. Yes, I was already doing these things. But then at that moment, I really consciously took over the stair and intensified my practice because the only time I didn't feel this agonizing current within myself, which caused by the loss of my love of my life, being alone with four children, I mean, that's a marriage that is a commitment and not to be in myself, indulging emotional agony, which is unstoppable in a person.
If you have no contact or connection with that, but going into the icy water, then the emotional agonizing current is just stopping because you have to survive. And that gave me an opening, a relief. So you could find me every day, quite some time into freezing water because it made me it healed me. It stopped the agonizing wheel. And with that, the breathing, the breathing is if you go into icy water, you breathe deep, you go deep.
Emotion is deep. But because we live in destimulated behavior in thinking brains, we never go deep inside our own brain. When the emotion is damaged at that moment, we don't know how to go there because we never go. And we take it for granted. Go into discomfort a moment and you will be able to enter into the depth of your brain and then regulate what is out of balance.
And when you get divorced, when you get PTSD, when you get a trauma, whatever it resides within the emotional brain, we go even with these practices now because you are the one to go into the practice. You go into practice, you go consciously with that practice, with those systems that go be activated while you go into this discomfort. When you go into the cold, then deeper systems inside the brain have to work. You have to survive.
You create neural pathways, connection, and you get a hold of those systems. And those systems need to work when you are in emotional agony or disturbance, which is stored up in the hill campus and in the amygdala, the fear and the storage of trauma. There we are able to get in because now we have learned to consciously, neurologically connect with those deeper systems.
The survival systems are there too because when something dangerous happens, then the trauma is being stored biochemically in those parts. When you lose your wife, when you have a divorce, then you are emotionally, it is stored up. You cannot deal with that motion at that moment. It is traumatic. It is painful. And you don't know how to get there, but it is sending signals to you.
Hey, do something about me. Do something about me. You got to work me out, but you cannot. Through doing these practices, and that's exactly what I did when I suffered the trauma back then, I could just enter. I felt relief. In the beginning, I was not aware. Hey, I just felt relief. So you go back, but then you become conscious that you are able, even without the eyes, without the practice, to make adjustments just at will.
Because I've been so many times into that survival brain, into that danger brain, when we get divorced, it's dangerous what is happening because you are deeply rooted, connected inside the brain it is. And we cannot heal that because it's torn away. And at that moment, you are able to descend with your extra consciousness and heal it.
And then now I can talk about my wife. I can talk about my second marriage, which was not a marriage, but 10 years together, and being with one kid with her, and she separated. She wanted to separate. Not me. I was really depressed once again. I was torn again, and I had to fight myself again. But now I'm happy I did that because I learned how to deal with emotions.
The professor saying, now we have the compelling evidence, it's dramatic, and it is in science, scientific paper. We got the compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomous processes in the brain, that what was outside of our control. Now we have the found the keys related to mood regulation. We got it. And this is for all the people who are into depression caused by whatever could be divorced PTSD, or whatever is a trauma.
It causes depression, it causes deregulation of your dopamine, your serotonin, your normal hormonal homeostasis. We got the way to tap in to give you the keys by listening now. Just dive a little bit more deeper in what I'm telling you. Look on the website, connect with the community of all those people who had PTSD, who had suffered of divorces, of child loss, or very heavy diseases like cancer or whatever.
Go there and these people will talk, not me. I'm here just to provide simple techniques. And I go through science. There's no speculation about it. I'm here to explain that we found the ways to go in and to heal from severe trauma caused by whatever reason. Even it could be your genetic past coming to you in this life, and you don't know why is this happening with me?
Why did I become? It's your genetic past. And we have the ability to get into the genes as well. I'm doing the studies right now with San Francisco with the top researchers of the world. So this, it has it. This is the future. We are the future. The future is wherein we autonomously take control of our own mind, our own happiness, health, and strength.
Because that's the way nature built us to be, not to be schooled to sodomize the planet and to systemize the planet for a couple of idiots who think they can control us and take all the money. Stop it guys. This is over. It's done. We need to take autonomy and we have found the tools. So it's up to the person who is looking at this and we, you and me, James and Wim here provide a platform and they talk sense, common sense.
We have found through science the tools to get into your own mind and your own body. For God's sake, it is your mind and your body and nature after millions of years has given all the capacitation to end it what is out of order. Mental disorders, physical disorders, it does not matter. Emotional disorders, we have the tools only. We are never schooled therein. And that's why we need to bring this into schools.
That happiness, which is related to hormones, the hormonal system does. Health, which is related to the immune system and the control over the immune system much deeper. And power, energy, that is the energy systems, mitochondrial activity. All that is now scientifically shown that we are able to get into that. They should not only show us mathematics, history and language and only partially have control.
We should have control over it all. Once you get the sack because there is no work, you still have to be struggling out there. We have to change the paradigm and we got the tools to show it scientifically evidence-based. So there it is. This is what the person who is looking at this needs to know. Hey guys, we got the terrorists. We got them. And that is not Osama bin Laden. It's the terror in our own minds.
That is terrorizing our minds, making us unhappy, unhealthy and not feeling the strength of life no more. That one, we're gonna take it down. Take him or whatever it is down. And we are up. Love it. And it makes so much sense. I want to preface something so people can understand and make sure I'm even understanding it correctly. So there is a very well understood philosophy that we have become incredibly comfortable being uncomfortable.
We're uncomfortable being uncomfortable in a lot of the professions that are listening. At times we are incredibly uncomfortable. I'll train in my bunker gear, my fire gear and it's incredibly hot and we're carrying a lot of heavy gear. But what I've observed is that's once in a while and the rest of the time we might go to a cardiac arrest. But even though my nervous system is through the roof, I'm just holding a cardiac monitor and I'm not having any physical offloading of the stress.
So when you do your breathing techniques, you're stimulating the sympathetic nervous system. Is that because in the natural world we would have had an extreme response and then an extreme recovery versus the kind of slow burn of stress that most people are exposed to? Absolutely. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity is considered within science not to be within our control. It's out of our control.
But now we have found we can deeply activate the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity. That means sympathetic nervous system activities, knowing how to activate at will 100% of our flow, neurological flow that is, the nervous system and all. That is what I have people to be. Because if you don't do that, if you go for say 80%, that's okay, but you create chemical residue. And that's chemical residue in the long run will block your system energy.
And now through doing this, we, oh wow, I see a hummingbird. Wow, just here, two and a half meters from me. Now he is, he's two meters. He's showing us beauty, green, a resident color. He's into the flowers. The bougainvillea. Look, look, just gone. I saw him in the reflection, the reflection of your window that I see in the background.
Ah, you see, I was not lying. I believe you back. You know, all that. No, the thing is, the thing is, if you go into icy water, then the deeper autonomous processes in the, in the brain and body. They need to work. And in our society, we made everything so comfortable because we are thinking beings. They're beings led by thought and we create extension tools.
But the thinking brain is the newest part of our brain, but there are all the parts in our brain. They are then not stimulated anymore because we, we, we create extension tools coming from our thinking brain. But we got a feeling brain and we got a survival brain, surviving brain. And there, there is in surviving, it is life force itself. It's reactive. It's the purpose. Why are we here? Because your survival brain, your life, the purpose of life simply is there.
You have no questions because you feel the life force. You are here because life is the purpose to live 100%, not 80% or 60%. I don't know how much it is, but we live on shallow. We breathe shallow. We live shallow through our thinking brain. And we choose not to go in discomfort, which actually is real comfort. Real comfort comes from feeling the survival part of our brain being alert.
So danger is not coming in. So what we do, for example, if we do this breathing, we bring ourselves in a dangerous state while being fully in control. Feeling kind of high and then create twice as much adrenaline, peaking, spiking in us more and more. This has been a comparative study of these breathing techniques. Doing this breathing, you create a spike of adrenaline going through your system,
the terriblant and the adrenals to be activated. That's the adrenal axis. It has been activated to the deepest and creates twice as much adrenaline spike than somebody who is going in there for his or her structure. That is bloody deep, deep stimulation. And with that, the systems for survival is to fend off danger. And danger comes in our society in many ways, like bacterial, emotional, mental, viral, physical. It's all dangerous.
It affects our systems and we have our deep stress mechanisms that deal with that, not alert. So logically, we can shoot people to Mars, but we cannot deal with cancer. We cannot deal with our immune diseases and depression. What is this? Guys, come to your senses. Real comfort comes only when you learn to stimulate the deep brain, all of our brain, not the way we are schooled, but all brain. And that means we are able to fend off any danger that comes to us if we only deep stimulate our brain.
How it is being done? Breathing, breathing and cold. Very able to get to deep stimulate our brain stem and all the mechanisms that reside over there. That is emotion. That is survival. That is dealing opioids and cannabinoids to deal with pain. It's all there. That part we can learn to control because real comfort, real power comes when you are able to regulate your pain, to bring down your pain.
That means physical pain, but also emotional pain that you can heal yourself, that you can feel happy, strong and healthy anytime you want because you are able to regulate the deep brain at will. And the world needs now to know that it is not difficult to deep stimulate our own brain, to have access into any part of our own brain through doing a couple of exercises that is able to activate those deep mechanisms at will.
We are doing those things at that moment. This should be brought into healthcare, general healthcare, global healthcare now. Now, because it is simple, it is there, accessible and scientifically endorsed. So what we are doing now, James, is bringing this through this platform. Because the governments, the power systems, the people who are in control of the money, they don't want people to be autonomously in control over their own happiness, strength and health.
They want them to go through the same cooling system, creating a narrowed down consciousness wherein the manipulation through advertisement, media and the whole thing is getting to the people and controlling their subconscious. And with that we create needs we don't need for real. And that now needs to stop.
People need to understand that the people who thought they have us within control since centuries, the same family who own about 80% of our own money, we get so little while there is so much, there is abundance for everybody, only a couple of assholes thinking to control us. And we got to stop this by learning to own our own mind. And that is in the sympathetic and in the parasympathetic nervous system.
And it has been shown that we are in control of the deep mechanisms within us that enable us to guarantee happiness, strength and health to us, ourselves and our children. It is nothing more than logic that where we have a faith, a mental control that is able to guarantee happiness and strength and health to our children, for God's sake, our beloveds. And to have a flourishing relationship everywhere where we are on the planet.
The mother in Tehran and in New York, they want the same. They want happiness, strength and health for their children. Let's stop the stupid differences and go to the beautiful core values of life. Happiness, strength and health. That is unconditionally there. A happy man doesn't go to war. A happy man is not into possession. He is fully aware. And that's who we are.
100%. And I think what's interesting, and I'm sure you've had the same lens, is this last year and a half, everything that empowers the individual to do exactly what you said, whether it's daylight, community, breath, good food, access to fitness equipment, all those were taken from the individual. And they were told to hide and they were told to wait.
And we'll let you know when we have a treatment for you, whether it's a vaccine, whether it's ibumectin, whatever these minutiae that people argue about and the actual underlying mental and physical health and immunity of the individual was actually made far worse by the choices of these so-called leaders.
Yes, I just recently had a podcast with, you know, the dog whisperer, and he says, we are crippled in this society with world leaders who think they can lead millions of people and direct them. They cannot even control their own chihuahua. I love that. And that's what it is. We have gotten so far out that the one who was able to carry out the shit that is going on, that is crippling us, and who are able to manipulate that shit, they become the leaders.
But they are no leaders. They are not happy. They are just in power. And there they are. They are crippling us. And you see it. They have endowed us with regulations and restrictions, making us sick, making us mentally crippled through this one and a half year of COVID. Man, they don't know. They should talk about the immune system. And that's it. We have to bring prosperity to the world through these channels.
This now. We are talking common sense, guys. Common sense is the ability to be happy, strong and healthy in the family without the external needs. You need a little, yeah, food. It is normal. But you don't need six cars and ten houses and all what they say to become happy. You don't need to go to movies and this and that and more and more and more and more external. Cannot? Then you are in the bullshit created through the wrong neurological schooling of this society.
Be happy, be strong and healthy is living according to the natural laws, capacitated by Mother Nature. If you are not in there, you are in the bullshit created. Get rid of the bullshit. Yeah, I even noticed that move into America from England, you know, there was that whole concept of the American dream, which I think was based on, you know, healthy, happy, you know, just the idea of having a roof over your family's head, growing some food on that same little plot of land.
You know, having security, whether it's the white picket fence or whatever it is. And then when I moved here in 2002, and then that's when the property boom was happening and my friends had all these extra things. And then when it crashed, my friends had all this mental ill health from everything that they were losing that they clung to. There was this new American dream that was a complete, you know, consumers facade.
Yes, exactly. And it translates itself into neurological dependency, drug addicts. Same thing. We are creating habits we don't need. And then we can make money. That is the American dream now. And see where the American dream has gotten now. One out of every four people working, they quit their jobs because they don't believe anymore in what the government is telling.
What the president is telling now that even little children who have perfect immunity against, they need to be subdued to some money making scheme of pharmaceuticals. Like Nazis, they come. They've gotten there where they thought they won off in the Second World War. It's fascism. It's pure fascism. Where you guys got now, they're in America. I love America when I'm going there and I see the country, I see the people.
It's just where this corrupt people who are too much into power, but not real power. Because real power is the ability to have control over your own happiness, strength and health. You guys got too much into the money system, too much into Wall Street debt. And it needs to turn around. We need to get back to our families with the right core values, happiness, strength and health.
And being able, scientifically shown, to guarantee that every family in America, be the great country, be the country of the free and free yourself of dependency. Because you guys are enslaved with an external compensation while the family, the real builders of America, they have gone. Those values have gone. Rise guys. Be great. Be free in your mind and your body. Be free of disease, of unhappiness and of weakness. Become strong, happy and healthy. Again, what is going on right now, we see it.
And that needs to stop. This nonsense needs to stop and become common again. Core values straight up for everybody in the world. American dream is an American nightmare. And stop it now. Because wake up to the new reality. There is a new beautiful day coming. Let's get into that and let's give that to our new generations because we love them. Don't we? Then give it. Then give it. Then make it happen. That's where we come in, James. We come in, create platforms and shout it out.
It's there. The light is there, the future is ours to guarantee happiness, strength and health for our children, for God's sake. Beautiful. Well, I want to give you a quick kind of anecdotal story about my experience with the app because I want everyone listening. That's kind of like the next generation where technology is doing good things. Podcast technology is doing good things. I think there are a lot of benefits to this virtual world that's connecting us globally. Absolutely.
Your app, there's a completely free component to it. People have the option of subscribing and getting more content. But one thing that really amazed me and I'm relatively new jumping back into it. I dabbled at best before. I'm actually on my own kind of regenerative path. I'm six weeks, no alcohol, meditation, foundation training, some other things to really reclaim some of my health. But I did the breath work and then a minute cold shower this morning.
And without, there's no other way to describe it. I felt like I just had sex, good sex, like post orgasm, post coital. And it really made me remember of some things I heard about extramarital affairs in people with mental health challenges, for example, police fire and that release giving you that parasympathetic response, that deregulation. So if you wouldn't mind, tell everyone about all the options that are available on the Wim Hof method app.
So post coital bliss. That's what's coming to you guys. Yes. Not only I tell you, if you do this, according to a immunologist and the genetic professors, they say that the gene responsible for virility really spikes. So Viagra, goodbye. That is one of the so many benefits there. If you drink too much, you know, you got to hang over within 20 minutes of this breathing. The intoxication is out of there. That means toxins. You cleanse yourself doing this breathing.
And it is for free. I mean, breathing, it doesn't cost 25 cents or $2.50. It is for free. Just do it. So we got a breathing bubble. It's for free. It's there. You can also take some, you know, app, which is $4 or something. But you cannot buy health. But you get it off this. I've been working 45 years on this and trying to bring it out. It's natural. It is the consciousness to get back in line with yourself, to willfully control your happiness, strength and health.
All the systems you got inside. We do the breathing exercises. We do the cold practice to train the cardiovascular system. And then we create a condition to go with our mind into our body and regain control over our happiness, strength and health. That means the hormonal system, immune system, energy systems. And we are doing all the studies all the time. It's ongoing. It's my mission to not miss, to touch your heart and to bring your heart full bloom, flourishing like a flower, a beautiful one.
That's who you are. So become beautiful. Take this. No nonsense techniques. Take it on. Just do it once. And if it doesn't work, you can blaspheme me. But take it on once. You will be hooked. Why? Because this shit works. Got it? I salute you, you beautiful soul. Become beautiful. That is mother nature. Beautiful. I got one more area I want to touch on before I let you go. I want to be mindful of your time.
I know you're with your family, but with the people listening, a lot of us are wearing fire gear. And one of the most crippling things I've found, I'm not really exposed to a lot of cold. I grew up in England. I grew up around cold swimming in like 46 degree lakes. But the heat from my skinny English physique in the gear was the most crippling area. Now, I know you did a marathon in the Namib desert. So you were in extreme heat versus the ice and the cold that you're normally known for.
Were there any differences in dealing with that or any specific kind of visualizations or breathing techniques that work with the heat versus the cold? Or was it exactly the same for you? Thermal regulation is being held by the hyperthalamus. So what I did in the full marathon beyond the polar circle in my shores, after that, I decided now I saw everything in the cold. In the freezing cold, I did it.
Now I'm going to run into the heat. Because if I think logically about what is dealing with cold and controlling it, it's dealing with a neurological control over the hyperthalamus, which is the thermoregulator within our body. Thermal regulation is also emotion, but it is also known as heat and cold. You get blisters when you are in too much cold. You get blisters also when you are in too much heat.
It's the same reaction physically. So the thermoregulator, the hyperthalamus, is being trained by going into the cold. You learn with your mind to deal with the cold, to exercise your adrenal axis before you go in. Before you go in, you set your mind. With setting your mind, you set your body. You are then ready to go into the cold and adapt. The same is for the heat. You learn to set your mind. When you are a firefighter, before you go in, set your mind.
Then your mind is able to go directly connected into the thermoregulator, the thermo-hyperthalamus. Then regulate. You set your mind before going into the job, into the fire. Then incredible things happen. Adaptive powers will be in play, in charge of you. You just let it go. Like going into the ice, you have to let go. Then at one and a half minutes, suddenly you are okay. It's like that you go into the heat. Before you go into the heat, you set your mind.
Then when you are in the heat, then it will be able to re-regulate through the hyperthalamus, the thermostat in your body making you cool while you are in there. I showed this in Detroit. You guys have a perfusion vest on where you go into a firefight. It's in there and it's cooling. That's what they did. They saw me in the brain scan. They put me in the FMRI, in the brain scan. Then this big tunnel, radiographics and radiation, all that,
and taking the pictures and all. While I was in there, they exposed cold water into the perfusion vest directly onto my skin. They saw me just by setting my mind, James, by setting my mind, I was able, not by doing anything anymore, I was just being there, controlled and unconsciously in the tunnel, the FMRI scan, and they poured icy water onto my body, my skin, my skin temperature, because I set my mind, did not go down.
You see? It's state warm. That is when the connection with the hyperthalamus is directly. This is an innate capacity we all have. All only, never exercised. If you don't exercise, you don't get muscles. It's logical, eh? We got brain muscles. It's neurological traffic. Muscles is neurological traffic. Brains is neurological traffic. You have to exercise it. Then you get pathways, and those pathways make you able to set your mind before you go into the heat,
and then incredible powers come in play. Test it. Don't go to the extreme directly, but see and be conscious of the fact. And let it go. When you go into the fire, approach it consciously, and it'll happen. You don't need to be paranoid. Oh, I need control. I need control. No. Easy does it. You are the observer because you already set your mind. Have respect for the powers of your mind.
At that moment when the external impact is there, internally it will do its job to neutralize so you can do your job. I think what was interesting, the first Vice documentary I saw, you had the students, a whole group of students, which is a big thing as well. People are saying, oh, well, whim's an anomaly. Well, over and over and over again, you've shown that you can teach this to everyone. So, you know, truly intrinsic for all of us.
But then you had that group from Seek Discomfort come. So this was a group who had already put themselves in very, very uncomfortable positions, had very extreme adrenal responses. And to me, that parallels police, fire, military. We just don't know how to harness it and how to take the good from that and then disregard the bad from that.
So just talk to me about what your mind shift was, what your, the difference when you had that group, because you basically didn't do any of the prep work and was still able to get them to do the exact same physical feats. Yes, exactly. Use your mind. I made a shortcut. OK, guys, you guys, you think you can handle this. Then I will test your power of your thoughts. I could feel it. And because I know how it works, I can take people and mirror it in extreme stressful situations.
Could be heat, could be cold, could be a spike, bat, could be, I don't know what, a thousand times push ups, whatever. And change the control instantly just by the power of your thoughts. It is like the mother who lifts up a car when because her child is underneath. We have extreme powers therein, but we don't know how to, as you said, harness them. But now we got it. They should every firefighter, every I also trained in Navy SEALs. And, you know, the best of the best. That's what I do.
I say to the Olympians, I say, I don't care how good you are. I make you better. So listen up. And that's what I do, because nature knows the best. And there we have unlimited resources. The power of our mind is unlimited. Only we need to learn to access and to begin with, learn to set your mind. Learn to have faith. And that faith is neurological investments, not into doubt. Oh, I cannot do this. I need this. I need this. No, man, you need yourself, your mind,
and get in connection the way you are built by Mother Nature. Get it back. In real dangerous situations, it is the responsibility of rescue, savers of humans and babies and animals and living beings to be in connection with that unlimited power to save others. That is love. Absolutely. Well, I'm sure people are captivated. If they haven't heard you before, then I'm sure they're totally drawn in now if they've heard other interviews and they're in the responder and tactical professions.
I'm sure they're drawn in. So where can people find the books, the app, you know, the courses? Where's the best place to go for all of those? Just look for Wim Hof, the Iceman. It's the Wim Hof. That's my name. They gave it my name. I'm happy with that. That's OK. Wim. It's WimHofMethod.com. If you look it up, there you will see it. And all these features. Look at the people who have healed. Look at the testimonials. I'm not talking bullshit, guys. I'm not just a storyteller.
I'm here to tell you. You are the storyteller of a great, great story, namely you. You are the star within your film. And it's beautiful. I love it. I think it's very, very beautiful and very interesting. I want to hear your story. So go ahead. Beautiful. Well, Wim, I just want to say thank you. We've covered mental health. We've covered immunity. We've covered peak performance. So, you know, I've waited a long time to have this conversation.
When I first heard you, I realized the incredible power, not just as a human being, but as a tactical athlete as well. But I just want to thank you. I mean, here you are now with your family. You've got a little one on the knee. And to take the time to speak to our audience, just know that I am truly, truly grateful. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Great. James, thank you for having me.
You are doing great work. Let's keep it up and bring Sans back to the world where it belongs. All the love, all the power. We got it.