“Fear does not go away by itself. You have to confront your fear, mold it, then learn to control it in it’s own irrational reality. Every human being has the power to do just that. To go deep within and confront your inner being is a powerful act. Going deep and developing the will power is the only way.” -Wim Hof
This remarkable man is surprisingly unknown despite all his breakthroughs and accomplishments – and he has inspired me. He seeks to unlock the limits that we often place on ourselves, and encourages us to grow beyond these ways.
Wim Hof is currently 59 years old, but is continuing to overcome great hardships and climbing cold mountains with only a pair of shorts on (as seen at 35:30 of the video below). He currently has 21 Guinness Worlds Records, a feat which he believes all people can do. This is a short list of some of his achievements:
- Running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle, barefoot only wearing shorts
- Swimming underneath ice for 66 meters
- Hanging on one finger at an altitude of 2,000 meters
- Climbing the highest mountains in the world while wearing shorts
- Running a full marathon in the Namib Desert without drinking
- Standing in a container while covered in ice cubes for extended periods of time
As I was browsing YouTube, I had found this video titled “BECOMING SUPERHUMAN WITH ICE MAN – Wim Hof”, and I normally assumed it was going to be “click-bait”, but I was still curious. So I clicked.
I was pleasantly surprised. I highly recommend checking out the video, as it provides a much better presentation of Wim Hof, his achievements, and his ideas by following the development and experience of adults undergoing his guidance.
Although his achievements are extraordinary, most would assume he is especially unique and only capable of doing this. But Wim Hof proves every human is capable of doing this. We often place expectations that prevent us from exploring new opportunities and confronting challenges. For Wim Hof, willingly facing the cold or climbing a mountain is a test of the mind. For many, these challenges appear to be physically impossible, but Wim Hof believes that with a change of mindset, and mental fortitude, it becomes possible.
His courage and perseverance has made me understand how truly limitless our human capabilities are if we are willing to face discomfort and set our mind to it.
The video is an example of taking normal people, and after meditation, breathing lessons, and mental and physical preparation, going up a cold mountain at an elevation of 1590 meters, a severe understatement for the temperatures, all in beach shorts. And remember, this is all being done in 4 days, in FOUR DAYS, while other mentally and physically challenging activities like swimming or standing in freezing cold water or standing inside snow are being done, climaxing with the mountain climb. It further demonstrates how far the mind is being pushed, by doing the training in the quick span of 4 days and having great results.
I didn’t believe this, but he has proven it. By taking regular people, and training their mind and body through breathing methods, meditations, and endurance, he has allowed them to face seemingly impossible challenges like climbing a mountain with wind chills of -27°C – as he claims is a symbol of our internal doubts and conflict, with only shorts on, demonstrated countless times by the groups of people he trains.
Another instance revealing the great potentials of the mind in facing any challenge is seen by an experiment by RadBoud University. Wim Hof, normal people who he has trained, and “typical” people are injected with dead bacteria. While this seems harmless, when a person is injected with these endotoxins, their immune system immediately creates various physiological changes like fever, nausea, headaches, and shivering, this is called the innate immune response.
Now scientists didn’t believe it was possible to control your own immune response, but that is exactly what Wim Hof and his students did.
All of his students and Wim Hof were able to dampen the response to the presence of endotoxins by willing influencing the automatic nervous system. Normally this region should not be controlled at all — it ensures you remember to breath, beats your heart, and your “fight or flight response”, all key functions, that, if you did control, you might accidentally forget to breath or beat your heart.
The students of Wim Hof did the special breathing method they were taught for the first 2.5 hours of the experiments, and showed drastically weaker illness symptoms. The students had flooded their body with adrenaline, which correlated to a greater production of interleukin-10. This decreased the release of cytokines which would cause inflammation of the typical symptoms of illness, and the students would recover faster and had weaker symptoms. All of this from mentality?
It seemed unbelievable to me, normal people, who with the simple power of their minds were able to overcome illness and affect physiological responses.
Normal people were able to climb that frozen mountain, normal people who challenged their body to new lengths using their mind.
Meditation and breathing are not really being physically strong and are more directly related to mentality, but somehow they lead to overcoming physical hurdles like bacterial infections, it reveals the astounding potential of the mind even when the body cannot endure.
Take placebo’s which are like “fake” medicine, where the administer tells someone they have a cure for some type of illness, and gives a pill or cure that does not actually have any “real” benefits, but serves as mental assurance. However, in certain cases, placebos are known to actually work! Demonstrating more clearly the power of mentality in overcoming all forms of hardship which I had believed was just pure “luck” or “coincidence”, although because of the lack of research, it could still somewhat be luck.
Personally, Wim has inspired me to try and test my mind, and I have been willingly doing cold showers to see if I can. While I don’t believe I can climb a freezing cold mountain at 1590 meters in elevation yet, Wim Hof tries to prove that all people have the capability, it’s simply a matter if they will themselves to.
I had always believed in the limits of physical capability where I could not do things like climb a freezing cold mountain or even more, resist an infection, that these were only for a special select few, but Wim Hof has given me the courage to explore and test my mind. And while the research of the true extent the mind has on physical and personal capabilities is vague, it is a topic that is very interesting and is currently studied.
I would like to finish by asking about the greater importance adversity plays in our lives. Are we really going to surrender when we experiences hardships, fears, and discomfort, or are these also opportunities to fully experience life — and fully discover ourselves.
Featured image
