Wim Hof, the "Iceman," defies science by controlling adrenaline, immune responses, and pain through controlled breathing and cold exposure—like 80-minute ice baths that raised his core temperature or suppressing endotoxins by 100%. His methods, validated by Harvard and Dr. Rhonda Patrick, helped fighters like Alistair Overeem and even cancer patients conquer Kilimanjaro in two days without gear. Modern lifestyles stifle natural resilience, but Hof’s techniques—oxygenating cells, raising pH to 7.6—could revolutionize health, from depression to obesity, proving humans retain untapped physiological mastery. [Automatically generated summary]
Yes Like many Probably I was in a soul search and I visited many countries traditions languages esoteric disciplines and also like you, you know karate and kung-fu and yoga and But also the dervish, the Sufi, Buddhism, all kinds of traditions and disciplines, but it could not really fulfill me in the depth.
A certain day, it was a Sunday, I was attracted to cold water.
I don't know why, but because I was seeking already for years, you have a charge within you.
You always keep on looking, searching, seeking.
And at that moment I felt the attraction and I knew I'm going to go in, you know, ice water.
And it only took me 30 seconds or one minute, it took, but I felt this is it.
This is able to connect me with the depth of my physiology, the way nature has meant it to be.
Without air in the lungs, you are able to stay much more than normally.
Why?
Because we change your chemistry.
Carbon dioxide went out, O2 went up, filled up all the cells and the pH levels go up.
Then we are able to tap into the central nervous system and at the end we got the brainstem.
And that's the place of the pineal gland, hypothalamus, pituitary gland.
And the pineal gland makes the secretion of adrenaline in dangerous situations.
Normally we do not get into it because of our shallow breathing.
But this is the way to get into the The most primitive part, the reptilian brain, without many difficulties, and fend off bacteria, getting better into the endocrine systems.
We'll talk about it later.
You're past 1.10 in minutes, and you're still on.
That shows that the capacity to fill yourself up with oxygen is a lot more than we normally use.
And as we do not use it, we are not making use of the full capacity of our physiology.
Now we found out we got a different layers, and we never use it.
And this is the way to learn to use it, to tap in and bang, into the primitive brain, into the endocrine systems, immune systems, the way nature has meant it to be.
Everybody is able to do it.
145. And this is only round one.
If we would do like three rounds, you would go to three minutes, four minutes.
Without air.
Without training.
It only shows the capacity to store up oxygen inside.
We never use that.
You're doing great.
He's doing already 2.5, almost 2.10.
Whenever you feel the urge to breathe, you don't need to force.
It's only learning how to oxygenize the body and all the cells.
You're going great, man.
Nice one.
Feels good, huh?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's okay.
2.30.
Yeah, when you feel the urge to breathe, you breathe in fully and keep it for 10-15 seconds.
Normally it's a controlled experiment and they did it with thousands of people already and nobody was able to control to the depth of the immune system.
Because the endotoxin provokes a response in the immune system, you become feverish, you get headaches, all over agony, uncontrolled shivering, vomiting, you know, things like that happen.
But the people I trained, first I did it myself, then they said, yeah, but you are the Iceman, you are an exception on the rule, and you confirmed the rule because of this.
Right, but how many in the group are doing your method?
That's the thing.
When they test normal people on things, the amount of people that are doing what you're doing and trying these kind of experiments and going under ice and breathing the way you're breathing, it's almost none.
Worldwide.
I mean, I'm sure more people now are inspired to do it because of you, but so I don't understand how they could say that you confirm the rule because you don't, you know, it doesn't apply to you.
The endotoxin is a part of a bacteria and the immune system recognizes it as a negative intruder.
So that's why it is a controlled experiment.
And this is the way they inject it, and they try to learn about the immune system, the endocrine systems, by doing this controlled experiments on many, many people all over in the world.
Like 25 years ago, I already stated and told everybody the autonomic nervous system and the immune systems related to the autonomic nervous system can be influenced.
The autonomic nervous system will be no longer autonomic.
And that's what I told.
Many people mocked me because of it.
And they told me negatively that I was crazy and all that.
You know, in the beginning, when I was 17 years old, as the story began, I went into the cold and it just felt good.
I felt connection.
After years of searching, then you have a certain kind of knowledge, you know, from the inside also, the gut feeling and intuition, and that's more than what we think.
And this is not a reaction to how your body felt when you got out of the water, like you're saying, hmm, I feel like I get less sick, I feel like I'm healthier.
When you're saying this to people, when you're 31 years old and you're telling people, I can control my immune system, they must have been like, you're out of your fucking mind.
Look at this guy.
He's jumping in the freezing water and he says he can control his immune system.
How did you convince people to the point...
That you got actual scientists to measure your blood, do legitimate scientific studies on you.
Was it your accomplishments?
You went, for people who don't know, you did a bunch of really unbelievable tasks.
I think going to buy clothes is insane because it's like you're not challenging nature.
You can go up with a car as well.
And then you go up Everest.
Anything artificial you use in nature doesn't make you having the right connection with nature.
And what I wanted to challenge in all the challenges I did, like marathons beyond the polar circle in mid-winter and shorts, but also in the heat of the desert without drinking, We're hanging by one finger on a mile up in the air.
So the powers that our body has, the untapped powers that we probably had for millennia, dealing with the cold, dealing with the heat, dealing with adversity, dealing with struggle, all those powers are not being tapped into, so because of that the body just atrophies and it doesn't know what to do with itself.
As soon as I want to do research, they did research on mindfulness.
For example, mindfulness related to depression.
And I think not only me, also psychiatrists.
They saw the blood values, the markers in the blood within our study.
And most probably our method, this, what we just did.
It brings the people very much faster into controlling their endocrine system.
The endocrine system is about hormonal balances in the body and because we are not able to tap into that, We are victimized because of too much stress, or this, or the daily life, or whatever, and we get depressed, and we are not able to get out of it.
Now, this method, because of tapping into the endocrine systems, makes you feel you are able to rebalance the hormonal disturbance in the body, creating eventually in length depression.
So, I want to research on this, because this is, my wife died in 95, Because of suicide.
I had four children with her.
I was powerless then.
My heart was broken and I had no money, no nothing.
And then this struggle and this fight began.
I'm going to prove this to the world and create a shortcut for anybody who is depressed or sick and everything.
And now we got the key.
We got the key to The endocrine systems and the immune systems.
And anybody can do this.
And because it is done by science, it's beyond speculation.
We make it a choice.
And that's why I'm on a mission.
And this mission brings me here to Joe Rogan, who's a good guy.
What happened with your wife, that your wife killed herself, was due to depression.
And you feel like that type of depression, the depression that a lot of people experience, is because their mind is not stimulated the way it was intended to by nature.
Is that a fair way of describing your thoughts on this?
And that we're left with a residual effect of civilization, in a way, where your mind is overwhelmed with things that really are not natural, like living in a cubicle, the stress of office life, traffic, things that aren't natural.
And that's why they've shown tests that in many cases exercise can be just as good as antidepressants, just as good as medication for people who are depressed.
Which totally makes sense if what you're saying is right.
It totally makes sense that your body like has a desire to exert itself and it is a built-in system that's designed to deal with certain natural stresses running from predators dealing with the cold and dealing with weather and climate and And nature and the adversities of the environment as far as like challenging yourself climbing hills and exerting yourself.
We don't do that that much and because of that that's what you think leads to this dis-ease of the brain.
Yes and you know for many people who are depressed they are quite unable to Get into the body and begin to run and things like that.
It's the brain.
And we are going to solve this by very easy techniques.
Instead of them having to run because their environment is really pressing upon them, they feel completely immobilized.
But if you are able to tap into the brain and let them make feel the change, that he is changing the chemistry of the brain, Then he becomes a different person much faster.
But I'm subject to science and I want more research on this and soon we have the outcomes and then we will tackle this problem with depression.
It's related to the endocrine systems and having no connection with it.
Normally the hypothalamus in our primitive brain, the brain stem, is not under our control.
But these breathing techniques, deriving from being in the cold so much, they are very effective, not only in the cold, which is stress, But also in the heat, also for a predator, also on Mount Everest where there is a lack of oxygen outside, and also for daily stress.
But how much more power we are able to learn to control?
And that the blood taken from me while I was in the tank, I got a few remarkable results.
One is, the blood taken, it was exposed to endotoxin afterwards, but in a laboratory, without me, ex vivo it's called, and they saw Normally, it has a very violent reaction on the immune cells in the glass of the laboratory.
And that's the way we are actually built to be able to.
And that was one thing.
Another remarkable thing.
Before, I was going into the tank.
They took blood from me as well.
And this blood was looked upon, into it, by a microscope, and they saw 300% more metabolic activity in the cell without moving.
That's the mind.
My mind was already into, I go inside that one, in that box.
I need to do 80 minutes.
I program up to cell level what I'm about to do.
I need more energy because energy is needed to withstand the impact of the cold.
So I control my body by my mind, and that's all of us.
And this mind then makes the connection with the hypothalamus, which is the brainstem, and that is able to control the hormonal system, the immune systems, the vascular system, all the systems.
Now when you say that your metabolic rate rose 300%, is that a normal thing because of the cold?
Because that's one thing that they tell you, that it's a great way to lose calories, just dress very lightly when it's cold outside, and it forces your body to work hard to stay warm.
It was, and that's also a thing about the brown fat adipose.
We got all these cells, but as we never exposed to cold anymore, it's not stimulated.
It's like a muscle.
You're not trained.
It becomes weaker.
So we got also these cells which need stimulation.
I did experiments with the brown fat adipose in the nuclear department of nuclear medical department in Maastricht, a different university.
And it showed that I had the same brown fat adipose levels as a young man, like 20 years, 15 years.
They still have it.
You get older and you wear clothes and you lose it.
It's logical, but I always expose myself to cold on a regular basis.
So, they had me exposed as well in an experiment like that, and they saw that I, with the same level or amount of brown fat adipose cells, I could produce five times more energy.
That's what they saw.
So compared to these guys, because of the breathing and influencing on cell level, I was able to do five times more.
And this could be a solution for people who have overweight, because when the fat is consumed, Which is very in the moment when you need it.
Then it gets depleted.
Then the rest of the white fat in the body is being withdrawn very systematically, very effectively, direct.
And like five times more effective.
It's maybe a solution for many people living in the West with, you know, obese problems and heart problems, vascular problems because of it, etc.
And I had my friend, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who's a scientist, and she explained what's happening inside of it.
And then I took her to the chamber and had her stand in the...
The cryo chamber.
And she said it was incredible when she got out of it.
She was a scientist.
She understands the body very well.
So she knew that it was raising her levels of neoprenephrine and her whole body was being stimulated by this reaction to this extreme 250 degree below zero cold.
But it is not necessary to re-establish the right natural connection between your brain and your endocrine systems and immune systems.
Just a little bit of cold is enough to trigger the vascular system the right way.
Enabling it to work better with the nervous system and then the breathing and focus.
Your mind.
Like the mind was able, without moving, to produce 300% more metabolic activity in the cell.
That is mind.
The mind is so much able to do so much more.
And this is the quintesis.
This is the essence of what I come to tell you.
We've got to change our belief.
We gotta change the way we think.
It's like a paradigm shift.
Why?
Because we have proven with thousands and thousands of results, beyond speculation, that we are able, if we use our mind once again, Not in dependency for doctors and this and that.
No, you are able to repair yourself whenever you feel not healthy or depressed or with a loss of energy, you know, strength, happiness and health.
Then you should go in.
And breathe better.
They will re-establish the connection with the endocrine systems and immune systems and the brain together.
And then repair whatever is producing an obstacle for you to function in the world.
Maybe you are able to function in the world, but you don't feel good.
You know what happens when I'm in the ice for an hour, for example?
Most of the times I begin to feel it, the cold, at the part of the kidneys, which is mostly on the surface, and the cold gets there, the ice.
Then I ain't got no...
There is no way I'm able to move because it's like six, seven hundred kilos of ice around me and I'm not able even to breathe very much because it's pressurizing.
What I learned is to think it a way within a minute.
Within a minute I make the difference from the brain to the kidneys and change the temperature like 10 degrees.
We need to pay attention to ourselves again, trust ourselves again, believe.
Believing is neurotransmitters in the right way and when it connects with the body again and we got the techniques and it has been shown with thousands of results that we are able to control.
The endocrine systems, or better said, our mood, becoming happy, yes or no, serotonin, melatonin, dimethyltreptamine, and all the other hormones, we are able to tap into that system.
We have shown that.
Another one, the strength, which is adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine, noreadrenaline, cortisol, and all that, we have shown.
More than somebody lying in bed than somebody going into a bunker gym.
That's strength.
And then health.
Health is the immune systems.
Learning to tap into the immune systems and like cryotherapy, as you were mentioning, it goes up to the bone marrow.
It activates these blood markers over there and people with arthritis then are able to move better again after a session like that.
But we, with these breathing techniques, we get into the bone marrow as well.
And there we have the T cells.
The T cells and the B cells.
And they are a part of the specific immune system.
And the specific immune system normally only begins to work after two weeks.
And then the body knows what kind of molecules it needs to produce to kill the intruder cell.
And it gets on the membrane, the skin of the cell, and it kills it.
Instead of inflamating the older body, it goes very specifically.
But it takes two weeks.
We do it in one quarter of an hour with this breathing.
And only with this breathing you are able to control the pH level.
And the pH level right as we are mammals.
If you look in nature, you see all these mammals.
If you take blood from them, they all have the right pH degree.
Very alkaline.
But only because we wear clothes and we live in a comfort zone.
We do not stimulate.
Thus, oxygen doesn't get as deep as it could.
You have shown this.
Two and a half minutes without air in the lungs.
That means the capacity to store up oxygen is far bigger than you normally use.
In this technique, which has been shown as the first group in the world to be able to tap into the autonomic nervous system, related to the immune system and endocrine system, it shows the depth And this depth normally is a result,
maybe, of yogis who are really going into Samadhis and Dharanas and into the Kundalini up to the Sahasrara and all that, the Kumbhaka yogis.
I know all this, all the terminology.
I've been doing Sanskrit and Hindi before, but I thought it would be far too complicated.
They made it into a myth.
We Westerners, we have no time.
We want to understand things the way we are living.
And I thought to simplify it and science backed it up.
Now, when you're talking about your breathing, you were saying that when you were young, that when you discovered this type of breathing, that you could see the lights.
So what you were saying before about someone who has a cold, so you would tell them to utilize your breathing method and concentrate on the area in which they're sick.
Like if they have a lung infection, concentrate on clearing the lungs.
You've got to go to the place where something is happening.
So if there is a disturbance, you go to the disturbance until you release it.
You've got to learn to connect once again.
That's the change of the belief.
The change of the belief is nothing more than the mind, which is neurotransmitters, electrical potentials, and use it once again instead of being alienated because of comfort behavior.
You learn to use these neural microbiological patterns again, which are existent, but they are down-exercised, un-exercised.
That's why we don't trust them, because they are not so strong.
Learn that these are very capable Of you making connection with the endocrine systems, immune systems far deeper, thus being able to control happiness, health and strength.
And we are going to prove this more and more because I'm dealing with the universities and I want to I want cold measurements, figures, statistics, no speculation.
Is that why you started doing these things, so that people would pay attention to what you're doing?
Because when you hear someone's doing that, when you hear someone's climbing Mount Everest in their shorts, you go, what?
Okay, what is he doing?
How's he doing that?
And then when you find out that you're incredibly healthy, and you're vibrant, and you're doing all these things, and you're allowing yourself to be tested, and you're showing this ability to regulate your immune system, and this is all incredibly exciting stuff, and then the scientists come in, because then they're like, okay, what is going on here?
It tells in the university books now, which have been dedicating one chapter about the Iceman, which is the study which we did.
There you see the old story where professors normally, they say, yeah, this is not possible.
In the books it's stated, it is not possible to do a half marathon barefoot or climbing Mount Everest that way because of the physiology of ours and the hardships outside.
It's not possible.
But this guy is doing it.
So, how?
So, I began to raise questions, and then they invited me to be tested.
I only want clinical proof of what I was doing, which surpassed the physiological laws stated in the books.
If I was able to produce that in laboratory settings, and then they had something to start off with.
To do which could be a possible method or abilities, evidence-based, helping people who are sick.
And now we are going to do more clinical studies showing sick people to be able to cure a lot faster or not having to make use of as much medicine as they do now because I'm not anti-pharmaceutics or anything like that because I'm not into politics but I want people to know There is so much more within every
person here in the world which will enable you to tackle a disease Unhappiness and having no energy or strength and we are able to do that and that's love.
I want to bring back love in the world constituted by happiness, strength and health.
It's just fascinating that you're such an outlier that it took one person to come up with this method and one person to challenge these ideas that the body can't do this and now they have to reconsider.
There's seven billion people on the planet.
We've been around for who knows how long.
We've thousands of years of written history.
And then they had these laws that they believed that the body was capable of doing and not capable of doing.
This is where it ends.
That your body can't do this, your body can't do that.
And you came along, one guy, Wim Hof, you come along and you change everything.
I was never out there to change the world, but because things happened in my life, I was triggered in the depth of my body and even in the emotional part, as I explained before, because of my wife and all that.
And now I'm very, very certain I got a mission.
It was born in 2007 in the Feinstein Institute, Manhattan, New York, when Dr. Kevin Kammler gave me the results, blood results, after an experiment in the Feinstein Institute, which is a biochemicals institute.
And he told me, if you are able to reproduce these results And pass it on to a group of persons, say in two weeks, then that would mean huge consequences for human mankind.
Then the missionary was born.
My mission was born.
And since then, I want to get into it and beyond speculation, prove it by evidence.
And it is belief.
Emotion and belief are very close together.
We lost the emotion, we lost the feeling, the sensitivity, and we lost the belief within ourselves.
And we got to go back to the belief.
Belief is able to tackle science.
Belief is able to tackle any problem in life by every person.
And belief is chemistry.
And we have to go back to that chemistry.
And we are showing this by scientific evidence and results.
It's so important to human beings because we were operating under a false assumption.
And this false assumption had made it into textbooks.
And if a guy like you comes along and shows a method for changing your physiology, and if you could teach that to children early on, you would change their operating paradigm.
You would change the way their mind views the world.
The thing is, I lost the fear of death right over there.
It's like every animal in the world dies, you know, in peace.
When they die, not of an accident or this or that.
Because their blood is alkaline.
The pH level is really up.
And the body is able to retreat in the nervous system, then go into the central nervous system, and then the tunnel of the light, and that's it.
You go to sleep.
And I had the same sensation.
My pH levels were so rosen before I went in, That there was never a lack of oxygen, or the lack of oxygen was there, but it was never disturbing with withdrawal.
And if you use all the time oxygen at a certain point, you don't use oxygen, and you get in a storm or a blast or a whiteout, then you're just lost.
Yeah, a simply loss.
Up there, it's a different loss.
Now, listen, I am going for the fourth time now, climbing Kilimanjaro in January, coming, and I teach people to do it in a record time, without mountaineering experience, and even having diseases like Roma, or asthma, or chronic diseases, things like that.
In four months, Four days, actually.
One day in one month, I train them.
And then they have to do homework, say, exercising at home and believing.
Just be in it.
No, no ego, we go, I always tell.
Then in four months, the oldest participant without mountaineering experience is 76 years old, and we are going to do it in a record time.
That's learning how to use, if you know how to use, the adaptive power of ours, and you endorse it with the right breathing and belief, The belief was the neurotransmitters who are influencing on cell level.
The breathing brings about the right pH level and then the adaptive force is able to adapt, to enter into the body because the chemistry is right.
And we just had a talk, and the man is so in control of his body, he can read my mind when he's talking with me, if I'm being right, because he can feel what happens with his logic and his body.
So he thought it to be right and okay, and then he's listening.
He's a pupil.
He's very humble.
He's a nice guy.
That's all.
And he is learning, listening, respecting.
Okay?
And then he took it up.
I told him what to do.
I told him, you have to regain the connection with the hormonal system.
You know, when you fight, you try everything, and your hormonal system gets out of balance, sort of.
And I'm not talking, you know, Alistair Overeem is his person.
I don't know the way he is now, but I'm going to meet him, say, next week and do a last training, directing, simply awakening His ability, like everybody, the ability to connect with the deeper physiological systems within our body, enabling us to do about anything, because this adaptive power is really so far out.
Well, for fighters, that could be a huge advantage because one of the big things that happens to them during hard training is their endocrine system starts to break down.
Their testosterone levels are very, very low during training camps because they're oftentimes overtraining, meaning their body can't recover.
They're training so hard, their body doesn't have enough time to recover.
You think that you can stimulate the production of testosterone?
And in that way, without any damage in the brain or nothing like that, it also begins to, if you do it on a regular basis, it begins to reestablish neural patterns between the neocortex, The surface of the brain, our thinking, and the primitive brain.
Now, this Mount Kilimanjaro thing, I want to get back to that, because to me, what's dangerous about that is not you, because I think that you have a very deep understanding of who you are and what you're capable of, and obviously you've done amazing things, but these other people...
Okay, but it shows once again the mind and the breathing.
Because the breathing, when people get a headache, which is the first sign of acclimatization problems, high-altitude disease, AMS, acute mountain sickness is what it is, then just make them breathe and bring more oxygen to the brain.
So all the, you know, 26 people ranging from 22 to 65 with coronary problems with all these diseases and still able to do it within two days, in shorts.
And you're saying an attitude, meaning like a negative attitude or an attitude of ego, like the ego protecting you from giving in and realizing your true potential, right?
And that's one of the things, like I can tell just talking to you and being around you, that you have this very powerful belief in what you're saying and what you're doing.
And when people are around you and they give in...
When people are around someone like you that has this legitimate, powerful belief in what you're saying and what you've proven to be true, then other people absorb that.
And it's one...
It's a thing that if someone has an attitude, meaning a negative attitude, they have too much ego, they're going to say, well, who the fuck's this guy?
Well, why does he think he knows this?
Well, you know what I've done?
Let me tell you what I've done.
That type of person is going to fall apart, right?
Do you think that the cold water is maybe even better than a cryo chamber?
Because it's so hard to breathe in cold water.
You know, when I was hosting Fear Factor, one of the hardest things that we had people do was cold water stunts.
Especially if you're not used to it.
I've jumped in cold water before.
One of the craziest feelings is you can't breathe.
When you get in the water, your body goes...
It's like this weird thing where your body, you can't...
Even if your head is above water, you can't...
Like if I get in a pool, okay, like a normal pool, like a swimming pool, it's nice.
I can breathe.
I breathe just like I can right now.
But if you get in cold water, even if you're up to the same level, your head is above water, you can't breathe.
It constricts your body's ability to take in oxygen.
You're like...
Do you think then, in that sense, that maybe there's more benefit even to getting in a tub of ice and water than there is in one of those cryo chambers?
Do like a cryo chamber for the physical effects because they say that the cytokines are released in the body when you get to like 150 degrees below zero.
That's like the most benefit where your body produces the most anti-inflammatory reaction.
You don't get that cold when you get in the ice bath.
With water and the ice, it doesn't get to 250 degrees below zero, but maybe there's more benefit with the mind and with controlling the breathing in that respect, because you have to breathe in deeper, longer, and you can sit in an ice bath for 20 minutes, as opposed to the three minutes of the...
When I've taken people into the cryotherapy place, they say, I don't think I can do it.
I'm like, well, the first time you do it, you only do it for two minutes.
You count to 60 twice.
And it's over.
Just go one, two, three, four, five, six.
You do that, you're one-tenth of the way there.
You count to six, you're one-tenth of the way to 60. Do it ten times, you get to 60. Do it again, and you're done.
It's over.
It's two minutes.
It's nothing.
You can hold your breath for two minutes.
It's not that hard.
But an ice bath is a different story.
You get in that ice bath, you climb into that thing, and it's half ice, half water, you can't breathe.
When I get these people going, within a couple of hours, you will see that they are able to do so much more.
It's awakening the right pH levels once again, controlling it by breathing and focus, using focus, and then having a lot more control over the chemistry, and the chemistry is needed, controlled, when you get the impact of the Cold, which is a force, you need to produce chemically within your own body, consciously, a contra-force, an opposing force.
And we are quite able to do that, but you have to know how to do that.
And for every individual it's a little bit different.
So for tuning, like.
So, yeah, it's a vascular thing.
You say, we are able to go like 20 minutes in a cold ice bath, eventually, but not in a cryo-therapeutical chamber.
And that's because it works different on the body.
And it works on the marrow.
It gets deeper inside.
It's dry.
It's dry.
And, you know, water gets 25 times faster into the body.
It's a different force.
And I recommend myself, I don't know exactly, but I would recommend the ice bath beyond cryotherapy.
And cryotherapy is, you know, very artificial.
You need a tank, you need this, and people are not able to get into it, etc.
But when you get the means, hey, cryotherapy is okay.
And once again, I want to be beyond speculation, but we are able, and that's my belief, like 25 years ago I told everybody, the autonomic nervous system in relationship to the immune system can be influenced far deeper.
And they mocked me then.
And now it's science.
And they changed the books.
And now I tell everybody, listen up.
Health, strength, happiness is ours.
That's our natural state.
And whatever we use therein, cold or heat or stress or this or that, which is an impact on the body, we are able to withstand it or able to control it as we are able to control the system which is our producing happiness, strength and health.
When you watch that piece, it's undeniable because you're seeing you do these things and you're watching your enthusiasm and your belief, you're taking these other people, those reporters that were with you through these experiments and these techniques.
It's got to feel good for you to finally be able to get this word out and to realize that the light is at the end of the tunnel and that you've sort of reached this place where your ideas have gone viral.
He's a famous strength and conditioning coach, and he's the author of The Supple Leopard, Becoming the Supple Leopard.
He's a very, very respected strength and conditioning coach.
When he found out that I was going to have...
I didn't even talk to him, but he found out through the grapevine that you were going to be on my podcast, and he sent me a text message.
And I'll paraphrase it, but he said that what your work is some of the most important work that's being done today in the world of understanding the human body.
That's what he was saying.
He was saying that what you're doing right now for athletes and for people that want to understand how their body works is some of the most important shit that's happening right now.
And that for self-empowerment, that's got to feel good for you, doesn't it?
I mean, what does it feel like to you to realize that from the time you're 17, having this calling to jump into cold water, to getting this understanding of what that really means, to this breathing method you're developing, and then having this scientific This proof, this elaborate testing that was done on you that shows that your method has been proven.
Emotionally, you know, how deep can you go if you lose your wife, etc.
It has been healed.
It's one of my songs too.
I think now I've scientifically proven it.
Recognition has come.
The mockery has stopped.
Respect is regained, re-established.
And that's good.
But there is still so much work to do because...
The love and the care for the planet, for the children, for all the living beings still is not established.
We gotta change the mind and we gotta go on now.
I don't want anybody to suffer anymore from not being happy or not having strength or not being healthy.
And bring back the harmony.
Until that, we need to go on, but I'm really thankful for people like yourself and this person.
Kelly, thank you very much for endorsing this.
We are going on and Harvard is coming in, which is one of the best universities of the world and we will undeniably prove That we are able to become strong, healthy, and happy.
She was with me two weeks ago or one and a half week in Amsterdam or in the Netherlands, my place.
We had a great, great discussion.
Later, she looked it up and compared the blood results with the The threat number one in America, which is arteriosclerosis.
It's the heart disease, anything what goes with the arteries and the veins and all that.
And that our alkalosis within this technique is capable of influencing in the arteriosclerosis.
Not a little bit, big time.
It's chemistry.
So we got it not only for the public enemy, number one, killing so many people in the U.S. It's all over the Western world.
We got it also for depression and we got it also for actually any disease.
We got to bring back the belief That we are beings who naturally should be happy, strong and healthy.
And as long as there are systems or this or complications and nobody knows anymore how to be happy and without war and without tensions and too much grieving and too much greed and all that, then we got work to do because the new world is a world of harmony.
And we are working on this and we do this together.
But because I have this control over the endocrine systems, the melatonin, serotonin, which is the day and the night, I didn't suffer any jet lag, but still it takes energy.
If you are conditioned, you're not able to surpass the effects of a jet lag.
But if you are able to get out of the conditioning, go through it all, then you are able to regain contact with the serotonin, melatonin balance within the body.
See, I think for a lot of people, the problem is they go to a job that they don't really enjoy, and they're stuck in traffic, and then they get to work, and the reward is they'll have a donut.
They'll have some coffee.
They'll have an egg sausage sandwich with cheese and mayonnaise and...
But you're getting sensations when you're eating that that are pleasurable, and that's their reward.
And to take that reward away from them, you're giving them a few less bright spots, an otherwise dull day.
Do you think that society has moved too fast for our bodies?
I think this is all kind of tied together.
You're talking about depression and you're talking about how our body is not really designed to deal with the stress that it deals with without any of the physical taxing of the actual unit of the body itself.
You know, the stress of exercise, of exertion, of dealing with the environment and the cold Yes.
All these things are sort of there's demands that are on the body and the same could be said about the demands of society, the demands of our culture, the demands of civilization.
Do you think that maybe what's happened is...
That our civilization has gotten too advanced too fast and our bodies just have not been able to adapt.
So they're left in this state of confusion and anguish because they're trying to get what they...
There's reward systems that are deeply ingrained in our DNA and they're not being satisfied.
That's the neural connection between the neocortex and the brainstem, the primitive part, the human part of the thinking, and the reptilian, the primitive brain, the brainstem, is cut off somehow.
And that's why we don't control the stress, just stress, which is stress hormone.
And the endocrine system is connected to the brainstem.
And we lost this.
And there's too much going on.
And we think the body will follow, but it is not following anymore.
We have problems.
And what we right now do is consciously bring back the neural Channeling between the neocortex with the brainstem.
I always say to the persons who would do endurance, you know, long distance running, could be 100 kilometers or 100 miles or 500 miles, they probably are knowing, not probably, they have to know, To breathe more than the normal conditioned breathing patterns which are shallow.
Because if you're not breathing deep enough, you will exhaust the reserves of oxygen in the tissue.
And then the man with the hammer comes.
You become acidic.
You're not able to run anymore.
That's because the depletion of the oxygen in the tissue is done.
So, I always say, take one principle, because we have the ability to store up more oxygen, but then you have to go past your conditioned breathing pattern, which is too shallow.
And under performance, under pressure, it will just take the oxygen out of your tissue and then at a certain point it's depleted and you are not able to run anywhere because your pH levels become too low.
So you are able to influence while you perform.
Thinking, you know what thinking does, influencing cell level.
Then you're able to get into the tissue and maintain in the cell biology oxygen instead of disconnecting and becoming acidic.
Oxygen is inside and gets on and is producing energy.
It's called aerobic dissimulation.
It's a process in the cell.
But we are very able to do that.
And I do that and I show that people just in a couple of hours how to do it.
I stand with people like even barefoot in the snow, in short.
Say on day two or three for one hour in the horse stands.
You know the horse stands?
And then stand for one hour in shorts and freezing temperatures barefooted for one hour in the snow in horse stands because they influence coal takes oxygen to combust energy combustion and it takes energy and it needs oxygen.
I had these East European and Russian people coming to my place as well.
And they look really tough and this and that.
And they have this attitude.
I say...
Okay, let's do an experiment.
If somebody is very tough, etc.
We take a bottle of vodka, we put it in front of us, we stand outside in the horse stands, Barefooted.
And then in one hour or one half hour, we drink all the bottle and still remain in balance because the cold is affected if you get alcohol in the blood.
I have a guy that I do podcasts with occasionally.
His name is Dr. Carl Hart and he's an addiction specialist and brilliant guy.
And he explained hangovers to me in a way that I never understood.
We have this very confused sense of what addiction is, and he said what a hangover is, is your body being addicted to alcohol, even from one binge session.
Your body creates these mitigating responses to the alcohol, and then when the alcohol is no longer present, your body has this horrible headache, and what it is is a compensatory response to the alcohol.
The problem is you're legitimate, 100%, but a lot of people are not.
I've had a lot of people on this podcast that I thought were legit, and then after talking to them, and then after going over their stuff, and then after being in contact with people who've criticized their work, you realize they're bullshit artists.
They're just really good at being a bullshit artist, and some of the stuff they say is true.
Well, listen, I love you too, and I love your spirit, and I love what you're doing, and I will help you in any way I can.
I will get this word out as much as possible.
I believe what you're doing, man.
I think what's fascinating is that the parlor tricks, as it were, or your feats, your amazing endurance feats, that's what's bringing people to you.
When you see you on Everest in your shorts, There's this one image of you out in the snow, and you're bouncing on some ice.
That gets people going, what the fuck is this guy doing?
And then they start researching it, and then they start realizing, whoa, this guy, there's been scientific examinations of his claims, and it holds up.
But as we not expose ourselves anymore, we get frostbite, etc.
But if you get into the system and you learn to control right and you get the right pH degrees, then the frostbite will not come because we got a mechanism to do that.
That will bring the cell temperature just above zero.
That means in Fahrenheit, what is it?
32. Because if it gets below, you get irreparable cell damage.
But yeah, we are mammals and we are able to do that, like dogs and etc.
So we are going to bring it back first chemically and then make understandable that consciousness and love are the best things on earth, accessible for everybody.
Now, are you experiencing over, like, how, what has been the last, like, few years?
Like, what has it been like where people are awakening themselves to your accomplishments and your work and your belief?
What has it been like?
It seems like is at least me on the outside becoming more and more aware of you.
It's like I'm getting people tweet at me all the time with your videos and articles about you and all these different people ask me about getting you on.
It seems like there's an awakening that's going on.
How much of a requirement has that been on your time and you?
And what does that feel like to you, to have all these people sort of like overwhelmingly coming after you now?
They are open and they have to learn from people who are wise.
You know, we are the elders.
Somebody's got to do it.
And that's us.
So we have the responsibility.
And are we able to respond?
And that's right now, right here.
That's why I'm here with you.
And you're asking, and I can feel you go deeper into it all.
What is deeper than love?
What is deeper than the care for a child?
And that's what we need.
And once it begins to establish the love continuously, without fear of disease, without fear of being unhappy, without fear of having no energy, etc., then the love will bloom.
Because that's the natural flower of every person.
That's why I call it children.
We have to make this beautiful, beautiful planet, which is actually the best spot in all the universe.
We don't need to look beyond Mars or there or there or there.
Just look within and make this world a better place in harmony with the nature.
I share that idea and I've been saying to people for a long time that one of the things that makes me so enthusiastic and so optimistic about the future is the fact that we can reach kids now in a way that we couldn't reach them before.
We can reach kids with ideas and with open-mindedness and with just massive amounts of information that just weren't available before.
That if you can change their opinion or inform them or expose them to new ideas that generate new creative ideas inside them Then you have broken the system and this system that's designed to carve paths that have already been They've already been traveled and then you know I want to be a lawyer just like my dad and you get on that same fucking path and you get stuck and And I think now there's an infinite number of paths and they're branching off into infinite different directions
and new streams and new tributaries.
And I think we live in a beautiful time because of that.
Because a guy like you in Holland can get your ideas out.
You see, I do a few things and then all of a sudden people know about it and then it spreads.
And then you connect with other people and you connect to me and I connect to the internet.
And then it connects us and then there's people that are...
Practicing what you do, and then they're going to tell their friends, and they're going to tweet about it and write blogs about it, and boom, boom, boom, and make videos, and then it's overwhelming.
It becomes overwhelming, and then it becomes a natural part of life.
You know, this study, which we did, It's actually the first study that showed that the autonomic nervous system in relationship with the endocrine systems and immune systems are deeply able to be influenced.
I mean, I want to say guys like you, but I don't know anybody else like you.
But I think what you've done is so amazing and so important because out of all these human beings, of all this stuff that's going on, all the different activities and interactions, all the different thoughts...
It just takes one person to step out with a new, unique idea that could be completely revolutionary and change the way people behave and the way people interface with nature.
Well, anything you ever need tweeted or put on Facebook or put on the podcast, just let me know and you got an open invitation to come back anytime you want.