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Inspiratus Breathwork with Wim Hof

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Impact

February 13, 2024

5 min read

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Shane playing the bongos with Wim during an ice bath

In the summer of 2022, my girlfriend Anna and I attended a Wim Hof Summer retreat in the spanish pyrenees. Here, we got to meet the Ice Man himself, other Wim Hof instructors, and an array of inspiring attendees from all over the world. We had the blessing to learn breathwork and ice plunging directly from Wim Hof and his team. This experience was paramount in my growth as a breathwork facilitator and I bring forward Wim’s teachings into the Inspiratus Breathwork framework. In this blog post, I will have two sections: one talking about the experience with fun stories and one talking about the science of the Wim Hof Method.

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Experience

Wim’s energy was vibrant and alive from dusk until dawn. Every morning we started out with a talk from Wim and some breathwork. His ability to make people laugh and laugh at himself was unparalleled to any of my spiritual mentors. Self deprecating humor is a huge green flag in the spiritual community. Once someone reaches a certain level of enlightenment they realize they know so little in the grand scheme of the universe. High level masters always have the ability to laugh at themselves because of this level of attainment. This vulnerability allows people to get closer to them and their teachings to be accepted at a deeper level. I have witnessed people like the Dalai Lama, my mentor Dean Varun Soni (student of the Dalai Lama), my favorite EDM artist LSDREAM, and WIm Hof laugh at themselves before giving a speech or leading a meditation. It is something I am working on and a place that I hope to reach soon.

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After an inspirational speech and some breathwork, we would have breakfast and get ready for the ice bath. The first ice bath was 8 minutes long and Wim Hof was in the same ice bath as Anna and I. The drums were banging and Wim was leading us through Om chants while we were freezing our asses off. Halfway through, I was overcome with a sense of absurdity. The sounds were getting so funny and weird. I was thinking, “I’M IN THE SAME ICE BATH AS WIM HOF” less than two years after being introduced to him. The ice water began tickling my nervous system and I broke out in hysterical laughter. The joy and absurdity of the moment was so intense the only thing I could do was laugh. My ice bath neighbors were looking at me like I was a mad man but I just kept laughing for the rest of it. After that experience, there are sometimes when I ice plunge where I just can’t stop laughing because it feels so good. The next bath, we went up to 12 minutes and the last one I went to 16 minutes. It was fun to push the limit.

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After the ice baths, we would rest and have lunch. Wim would do a Q and A session with all the attendees. This would consist mostly of Wim rambling with inspiration. The theme of the week-long retreat was Inner Child Healing and I asked him when his inner child was hurt the most. This lead to him sharing about his wife’s mental health issues (Learn about it here The Dark Secret Behind the Ice Man | Wim Hof | Goalcast)

It got very somber in the crowd but he shared how the incident led to him finding the ice to calm his mind. After this incident, he has an inextinguishable flame that led him to sharing his method all over the world. The inspiration was building in his voice. He ended with yelling, “Now I’m changing the world.” Then he looked me dead in the eyes and said “and you are going to help me” and everyone started cheering. Having Wim call me out like that was a life-changing inspirational moment that I will never forget.

Science

While Wim spent most of his time talking about inspirational content, I wanted to see if they had progressed the scientific understanding of the Wim Hof Method further. The three pillars of the Wim Hof Method consist of breathwork, ice exposure, and concentration. Most of the science can be found in my paper Breathwork: What it is and Where it is Going. After my time researching epigenetics with Dr. Rael Cahn at USC, I was interested if Wim knew about epigenetics and if there had been any research done on the Wim Hof Method and its impacts on epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of the mechanisms that interact upon the DNA. There are many mechanisms that determine how our DNA is expressed and this varies based on our environment, diet, and stress. Oxidative stress can attach to our chromosomes (bundles of DNA) and can limit certain genes from being expressed. Oxidative stress can also limit our DNA’s/cell’s capacity to heal itself.

During one of Wim Hof’s Q&A’s, which were mostly inspirational rambles, I asked him if they had studied epigenetics in relation to the WHM. He cut the ramble and delivered an astounding scientific answer. When the body is exposed to extreme-cold temperatures, the body produces cold-shock proteins. These proteins do a number of things to protect the body and brain. One of the coolest things that they do is that they act as a protective gate to your chromosomes, helping keep out oxidative stress from interacting with the DNA.

The biggest takeaway from that week is spirituality and the search can be really fun if you allow it to be. Wim was making dick jokes before leading us into a breathwork journey. Life is serious enough as it is. Spirituality doesn’t need to have that seriousness in it all the time. WIm challenged my idea of what a spiritual teacher looks like with his laughter and joy. I hope to bring more of that into my practice.

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