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Hello and welcome back to the show.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'm Patrick.
I'm here with Ben.
We are joined by a new friend, Brandon Powell.
Gentlemen, how are you?
Doing well.
Fantastic.
Good to have you, Brandon.
Yeah.
Brandon, it's great to meet you.
I'm going to do a quick bio review.
I'm going to let folks know how we found you and a little bit of what I hope to talk to you about.
And then we're just going to get into this, what I think is going to be a fun conversation.
So you're a level three Wim Hof certified instructor, Brazilian jujitsu black belt, and you're the founder of something called On Fire P-H-Y-R.
You were amongst the first group of 25 international instructors trained directly by Wim Hof in 2015 2016.
Correct those dates if.
If that's incorrect and you teach breathwork and cold exposure to athletes gyms, corporate clients worldwide, helping folks unlock their autonomic nervous system and become happy, healthy and strong, does that all sound roughly correct?
That was great cool, We got to you.
I'm going to give Mark a shout out.
We got to you through Mark England, our friend, who's been on the show a number of times, founder of Unlifted.
I believe the first time he told me about you, he told me he was talking to me about how the two of you used to get detention together.
Is that roughly correct?
Well, Well, Mark and I were we were in a class together in sixth grade.
It was like our elementary school didn't didn't believe in us.
They didn't think we were going to adjust well to sixth grade.
So they let us have our own little area in the school where it was.
We only had four teachers as opposed to six.
They minimized it.
And anyway, long story short, we were together a lot that year and we became good friends.
And then from there, we just developed this relationship.
And I could tell you more about the story.
But what's really interesting is that Mark and I knew each other through all, through middle school, sixth through seventh and eighth grade.
And then I moved away and I moved to a town in South Carolina.
And obviously, I went to high school there.
And during that time, I made another friend.
I mean, I made a lot of friends, but one of my other friends was a guy named Adam Sirkunt Sirksati.
And Adam is now known as Adam Chin.
And Adam, he is Mark's partner.
So I knew Mark and Adam in two different states.
And then years later, they would become business partners.
And then we would figure it all out.
And it was just an interesting coincidence.
That's really funny.
Well, shout out again to Mark for connecting us.
All right, I wanted to talk to you about your work within the Wim Hof Method.
I want to get a good sense of even what the Wim Hof Method is for folks who don't know.
And then specifically, I really want to talk to you about stress and how the Wim Hof Method, how the things you teach, can be a way for us to deal with stress as stress comes up, if that makes sense.
So the first thing I'd love to do, and Ben, I know you've got some experience with Wim Hof.
I know what it is.
I have a very loose sense of what it is.
So please jump in if you've got more specific questions as we get into this.
But Brandon, I'd love for you to just give us a sense of what the Wim Hof method is.
And then I believe there are three pillars to it, breathwork, cold exposure, and mindset.
So maybe you can walk us through what each one of that means, or each one of those mean within the context of the Wim Hof method.
Well, you just named what the Wim Hof method is, which is breath work, cold exposure and mindset training.
And at that point it's about, you know, using these closed loop systems in an integrated way to benefit each other.
And then it's all about the work, man.
It's We're doing a specific type of breathing that trains the vascularity in order to get ready for stress.
And the stress that we use is the cold water.
And then from there, the mindset is always, I mean, consciousness is always there.
We're wrapped in it.
And so how do we use mindset work?
And this definitely brings us to my connection with Mark because I
I'm a big fan of the Unlifted work.
I've been involved in it pretty much since its inception.
And I use that type of training, story training, in order to help people with their mindset.
And then we're doing adaption work.
So that means how fast can we get into specific states and utilize this type of training?
Can you just define what you mean by a closed loop system?
Yeah, man.
So like breath work is breath work.
You don't need Wim Hof for it.
Cold water training is cold water training.
The Vikings didn't have Wim Hof, though they would have maybe done better if they had.
I don't know.
Ultimately, these are all just separate systems.
Wim had the presence of mind system. to connect these things because that's what he was doing.
Wim is a very accomplished yogi and had spent plenty of time with pranayama exercises and using breath work.
And then he recognized that the cold created a specific type of breathing pattern.
And then, using that insight, with his previous experience, he figured out a way to design a breath work practice around this exact type of stress, which we all come to find out that when in real stress situations, real anxiety, real problem solving in the moment, our breath definitely changes.
And so how do we take well, let's basically how, I hate to say take control, but how do we impress on on ourselves a way to really uh, manipulate our brief?
Let's just give people a little bit of, let them into the candy shop and kind of look around.
Like what is the benefits of this?
What is, why should we be focusing on breath?
Why should we focus on cold?
We talk about mindset a lot.
We've had Mark on the show a bunch of times, but what is the, the idea that changes in somebody?
There's a lot that William has done and shown, I think, which is really unique compared to a lot of Other breath work, pranayama or yogis.
There's actually like a lot of science and studies that show that like empirically, this changes people on a more so than just like, more than just like I feel better.
There's actually like true benefits that come this.
You've kind of lead into a couple of them in terms of like, the vascularity and the autonomic nervous system.
But can you just give people a little more of if somebody wanted, or kind of like explain why somebody should even think about partaking in this?
Well, first would be stress adaption.
So and that goes across the board with any type of stress.
And then at that point, it's do you enjoy this type of engagement?
Do you want to do breath work?
And the breath work has a myriad of effects.
And it simulates the stress training.
So we can actually gain the benefits from that.
Actually training in the cold by doing the breath work.
It's really interesting how that works.
But the as an overall.
For me, the reason that I do it and then I can explain why others or what others might find as well is the immediate change in the way that I feel, from a standpoint of like the dopamine that comes across in the cold water.
So there is an immediate transformation, let's say, from the moment you get into the cold and again going back to the closed loop system, the cold is in itself.
If you make the choice to get into the cold, you set the intention.
The body is going to start to understand, it's going to overcome the confusion for true cold adaption.
So, in other words, if i do the cold for a five to 10 days in succession, I'm going to become cold adapted.
And the body is no longer going to be confused about what it's doing.
So it knows that I plan on getting into the cold.
The nervous system is very much acting almost in the future.
It's setting me up.
And there's a massive shift from the moment I get in and I gain control of my breath.
I can really feel my body going from like a sympathetic state into a parasympathetic state, or the parasympathetic nervous system is ramped up.
And that allows me to relax and get calm and to actually experience that to me is tremendous.
And it really does work on the mindset.
But then ultimately, there is the reward system that comes up after you're done doing the cold, which is expressed in dopamine serotonin oxytocin, all these things.
And there's a true chemical shift.
So that shift can really benefit you, obviously, really all through the day.
But they say, one ice bath is about a week's worth of good, happy hormone sensations that you can receive.
And for me, I do it every day.
So I jump into the cold every morning.
And I get into that state every morning and it's just a high energy state.
It keeps you nice and relaxed.
You know, so if I'm looking at selling points, why do this stuff?
It's because it's going to change the way you feel internally.
And that's an actual chemical thing that we can measure.
That's what set Wim up, you know, was putting him in the laboratory and getting the real results.
And then with breath work.
Breathwork does everything from enhance athletic states if that's something that you're interested in to just making you more calm.
Obviously, training the breath all the time will familiarize you with it and it will bring that more front and center.
So each time that stress arises, you can start to regulate by getting a sense of where you are, using the breath as an indicator and then being able to settle once you can.
I mean, I've worked with athletes who told me I had an athlete that won golds in world's jujitsu championships.
And she told me she thought she was going to have an hour to prepare in the corral getting ready for a match, but she had five minutes.
They called her as soon as she got into the, into the arena.
And so her match was first and all she had was just about a minute of breath work and going into that space and was able to really regulate heart rate, regulate base stress factors that are going to show up right away.
So I think if you can calm your breathing, you can calm your heart, then that is going to have an immediate impact on the way you feel and your mindset.
And so bringing this all together quickly is what we want to do.
And that's what Wim has demonstrated.
I mean, in all of his records, he's done 20 minutes of breathwork prep, no matter what it is.
And I think that goes to speak volumes for how fast and effective the training can be.
I definitely want to dig into more of the breathwork stuff.
But for the cold.
You said that you do your cold every day.
It's part of your morning routine.
Maybe I'm putting words there.
No, that's right.
Five to 10 days to kind of get the cold exposure and you do it because you feel so good afterwards.
Can you just give a little bit of like truly mechanically, like walk us through it?
Like how close to when you wake up is it?
How cold is it?
How long are you in it?
Are you doing the breath work before?
What are you doing afterwards?
Are you still afraid of it?
All of that.
Cause I hate cold.
I don't hate what's weird is I don't hate cold.
I hate cold water.
Hmm.
I've done Wim Hof.
I've worked with a Wim Hof coach.
So it still fascinates me.
Well mechanically, what I go through first thing in the morning, the way that I approach it is honestly I try to make it miserable.
I want it to be uncomfortable.
For me, a true shift, I think I need discomfort.
So like, whether it's exercise in the morning, I'll pick things that I do not like, or I will, Or I should say I work on things that I do not like.
Same with the cold.
I want it to be a bit miserable.
That's not how it necessarily started for me, but I was definitely feeling like I was getting a little too comfortable with my cold work at one point.
So...
I try to put it in the morning first thing.
There are benefits of doing it first thing in the morning.
Our body really wants to heat up first thing in the morning.
So I think it's a good opportunity to take advantage of the thermogenesis that you will create in the morning time.
I like to do it if I can do it before the sun comes up.
In the wintertime, I will train outside.
That's my favorite way to train the cold.
Where are you?
Where do you live?
How cold is cold?
Well, for me it depends.
I mean, I have the ability to put a chiller into the water so I can keep the water down in the 30s no matter how warm it gets.
I'm in North Carolina, and we have cold snaps for sure.
Sometimes it gets good and cold, and sometimes not so cold.
So it just depends.
But I try to keep the water regulated.
Patrick lives in Maine, so cold is relative.
Yeah, yeah.
And I've been in some of the very coldest places that you can be.
If I was in Maine, I would definitely just have cold water in my backyard.
It would be something that was just easily accessible.
So for me, the water is going to always be somewhere between 35, 38 degrees for the most part.
That's cold.
Yeah, I like it as cold as I can get.
And I would even prefer there to be ice.
So breaking ice to get in is always I love the somatic experience with that.
I want to feel and touch the ice and really get a sense early.
Yeah.
And so the more the better, really.
And.
But that's again cultivated through a lot of years of experience with the cold and just finding out what I like.
But then I would do.
A general sit is between five and 10 minutes, usually leaning towards the ladder.
I like a longer sit.
And that's not because of any reason other than that's just the way I've always done it.
I got in when I started sitting with Wim.
He would stay in for about 10 minutes.
I would stay along with him.
And it's sort of a I'm just feeling out where I'm at.
And sometimes there's a time pressure.
I need to get it done.
I just want to get in, get out no less than say three minutes just for, and I like to hold my breath underwater for a period of time too.
So that could be anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute minute and a half of breath hold underwater and just really trying to get settled in that space.
And so that my basic practice, I would say I get in, I go all the way under, I come up, I catch my breath.
I hold my, I, I try to regulate and hold the, what I'm looking for is non-shiver thermogenesis.
So there's nothing wrong with shivering.
Shivering is a is absolutely the way our body is going to respond to something like the cold, but we're going to shiver.
But at the same time, through the cultivated practice and when I am truly adapted, my body will just stop shivering and I can uh, Really focus on.
I do the Wim Hof method as a base, but I'm interested in other things and other practices as well.
And things that, let's say, the Wim Hof method has been packaged in this way where it's like we want everybody that can get into this to be involved in it.
And so there's not a lot of stuff that's out there that is speculation.
They want you to know exactly why you're doing this.
But for me, and having a lot of years in martial arts, I'm very interested in Eastern approaches to things in regards to the body.
So I do pay attention to the way I feel and I try to manipulate that for my own benefit.
What I'm after which, on a base level, is heat creation.
Heat creation and how can we generate as much heat as possible.
And you'll even hear people say when they get into the cold, oh, I feel warm.
And this sensation, I mean, this is all based in sensation.
Like you said, I hate the cold.
Well, that's an emotional response to the cold, right?
And what I'm definitely looking to do.
And yes, I mean, you asked if I was still scared of the cold.
I am still scared of the cold, and I think that's a healthy respect, but it's one of those things where I mean I'm scared of jujitsu, if you want to get down to it, but it's still something that I practice daily.
So it's with the cold, there is a respect for it, but there's not a lot of hesitation.
I have a, a real commitment to my intention.
I believe that that is the single thing.
Strongest aspect of your mindset is how you set your intention and your follow through.
Our nervous system is either going to move us forward, move us backward or freeze us right in the center.
Right.
So if we move forward, there's the stress.
There's the reward system.
We move back.
We live to fight another day.
And if we freeze that's that analysis by paralysis, type situation or paralysis by analysis, whatever it is.
And ultimately, we're stuck.
And that is something that the breathwork can really help you overcome that type of mental state.
The military uses it, for instance.
We've done a lot of work with military folks and under really high stress.
And they're under the most, really.
The breathwork is a crucial point of.
And you think about anything from like shooting or breath.
Work is intimately tied to all of these things.
So I lost track a little bit, but I just What I was basically saying is for my own practice.
I'm going to look to be very intent on getting into the cold first thing in the morning, going through my practice.
And then I like to end my practice with a workout.
So I'm going to, you know, at that point, start to train.
It used to be that we did cold in jujitsu.
That was how we did it all the time.
But now I tend to do strength training after the cold.
That's the best time, I think, to do strength training.
We can really get the most out of our bodies at that point.
It takes a little bit of time for adaption, but once you're in it man, it's the overheating that shuts us down when we're working out.
So the cold gives us lasting ability to stay in and work out.
I feel like longer.
There's a testosterone boost.
There's all these things that come along with training in the cold.
That's very real.
And then I feel like my day's ready at that point.
I'm ready to go, fired up and feeling good.
And I sort of do what Wim does in that regard, but I take it in my own direction for sure.
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There's such like these different levels to it.
There's, I'm sorry, the cold exposure.
Where brand is expanding is like, definitely the most, which is a lot of people get in, they go into about their chest and they keep their shoulders and their arms out.
And that's cool.
It's exposure, but it is nowhere near going into like your chin level with your hands underneath the water.
Similar.
It's really cool to get into like 45-degree water, but it's a whole different ballgame to get into 35-degree water.
Then there's another level, which is where you get with your head underneath.
And it's burly, man.
I'm impressed.
Well, there's always somebody that'll go further, I promise.
Yeah.
So, and then I think that, though like I find it in open water even more, because it's like moving around and there's wind.
And like when you're actually in, like a, you cracking a ice in a lake and you're getting in there, that's the craziest.
But I do want to maybe like move to the what you said, which is the breath aspect of it.
And I, the military and how much they use it.
This is what opened my eyes to breath work is I've shared this before.
I went out and worked with the seals in Coronado and we were talking about mental toughness and I was blown away by the amount of emphasis they put on breath work.
And what I came to realize was how bi-directional breath was, right?
You get stressed and your breath changes.
But if you change your breath, you can influence your stress.
It happens both ways.
I thought that was super powerful.
And you've kind of started this conversation off with how it is the thing that can create the calm.
I wonder if we've hinted at this a lot.
But can you just maybe I understand that you've done other practices and other breath work and pranayama at large has a whole bunch of different schools of thought but maybe give people a little bit insight into what the Wim Hof method is that you kind of you've been schooled in, and then maybe what you're doing now for breath work, if it's changed at all?
Well, the Wim Hof practice is definitely my favorite.
No question.
I have trained in a lot of different practices and there are Different aspects of the training.
What people think of as the primary Wim Hof training is the elevated inhale breath with a quick exhale.
Okay, so it's a full deep inhale followed by a fast exhale.
What we're doing is blowing off CO2.
And by blowing off the CO2, we essentially are able to suspend our breathing at a certain point.
You know, that's why we go into the breath holds.
And that is the practice.
We do 30 to 40 breaths.
Let's say this is just a basic idea of the Wim Hof practice, but 30 to 40 breaths.
And then we'll follow that with a breath hold.
And then after the breath hold, we do a recovery breath.
That recovery breath just settles us again.
And then we start the breathing process again.
The recovery breath we hold for on the inhale for about 10 seconds.
And that's the practice.
So It's breath, work, breath, hold, recovery, breath.
And then we just keep those cycles going for anybody who's interested in that.
And then what the breathing is doing is lowering the CO2 in relation.
We have the raising of our pH.
Right.
And so I should say, actually it's lowering the pH in the sense that we're becoming more base breathing.
So the numbers change.
I say raising because of the numbers actually going up, but it's really lowering in the sense of becoming more alkaline.
So our pH level does raise up.
We've gotten it as high.
Base pH is 7.3.
We've gotten our pH as high as 8 or a little bit above 8, which might not sound like much, but it is significant.
And that's just all in demonstration of what the breathing does.
So it does raise the pH.
That doesn't stay like that for very long.
And people talk about being alkaline as a healthy thing.
And really, I don't think you want to be alkaline or acidic.
You want to be in a good, strong homeostatic place so that you're right there and not so easily move.
And this is what we're doing.
We're stretching these systems so that we're more resilient at the core. if that makes sense.
And changing the alkalinity can create kind of a cascade of an effect.
And one of the big ones is taking advantage of adrenaline.
And this is something that we've demonstrated.
Doing over the course of say, 20 to 30 minutes is peaking our adrenaline, as much as say like a skydive right.
Though we're doing it from a long-term effect.
We're not jumping out of the plane and having this adrenaline experience.
We're raising our adrenaline consciously okay, through the breath work, and then we can escape things like adrenaline dumps.
You know.
So this is why it's super beneficial for athletes or people ready to take on stress, whatever that stress is.
Could be public speaking for that matter.
Just anything where there's going to be a stress induced, maybe almost momentarily.
We want to raise that system up so that we don't have that effect.
And this is why it's great for the military or anyone, like I said, in any form of stress, but in athletic endeavors we really feel like it really shines.
Yeah.
I had all my athletes when my professional athletes start off every session with breath work.
And as you said, it's this ability to sort of deregulate stress.
We're coming out of the holidays right now.
And people that listen to this podcast, the show, know a little bit that one of my triggers for some reason something must happen in a past life to me is trying to leave with the family on a trip and packing for whatever reason that's like.
It gets to me so much that we just can't leave the house.
And there's so much.
This is like the days after Christmas is.
I think it's a day after Christmas which is like your happy time.
And I just got so triggered by the this that at one point i went into the closet in my bedroom while everyone else is trying to trying to pack i'm trying and i went in there and sat in the dark and closed the door and i i breathed for five minutes within the dark with my eyes closed, came out, and came out a totally different person.
It is such a that bi-directional aspect of like you can change the autonomic nervous system from fight or flight.
You can throw yourself right back into that kind of calm, rest and relaxed state, which is such a tool that I'm so grateful that I have that I was exposed to because otherwise a family family don't like Ben when we're trying to leave the house.
Yeah.
Well, what's interesting is, Wim recognized that there was an elevation in our breath work through fight and flight.
So this was something that's very obvious, right?
You get into the cold water and most people become hyperventilators.
It's not always the case, but most people will start to breathe rapidly or out of sync.
There's no real true rhyme or reason to exactly how they're breathing.
Some it's really fast and the exhale could be long, or back and forth, you know, and what happens is in that state you become very disoriented.
And so it's hard to make rational, good conscious decisions, right?
So the first thing we want to do is actually slow our breath in the cold water.
But we, we train consciously raising our the breath work, let's say outside of the cold.
So it's not a great idea to hyperventilate in the cold, but outside of the cold, if you train a controlled hyperventilation right.
We call it super oxygenation or some type of breath work that's elevated.
This like breath of fire, there's different names for it.
That type of breathing actually does have a lot of benefits, especially when done cold.
And like from a hormesis standpoint, to where we're taking advantage of the stress which can be very beneficial, just like lifting weights, right.
I mean, you're taking full advantage of the stress and doing it in a way where it's controlled.
And on the flip side, when we get into the cold, to be able to regulate we have to slow our breathing.
We have to extend our exhale.
We want to get into a normal breathing pattern, right?
So we want to flip from doing mouth breathing, let's say, into nasal breath.
And using those tools in that order will really help you regulate relatively quickly.
I try with my advanced students to have them regulated with five breaths.
And so the intention has to really be there.
You can jump in cold water and it'll spit you back out if you're not ready for it.
Right.
But if you really want to take it on and your plan is to get calm within that stress, there needs to be that intention that drives it.
So with a good focus, stepping in and you mentioned people stopping in different places.
We want to always get the water over our hearts.
This is a key for the chemical responses that we're looking for.
So we get the water over our hearts best if we can.
And I think to bring the water all the way up to your chin so that your neck is submerged.
And even the back of your head is submerged a little bit and hands in, because Our nervous system will react way better if everything is in the cold.
That's why I go under initially and don't even stop just at the head, but go all the way down, so that the nervous system knows what's doing, you know, knows what's happening.
And then we have a much faster way to regulate, believe it or not.
Wim almost passed out one time from doing an experiment where he just had one finger in the cold water and he.
This goes to show how the nervous system will react when it feels like something you know it felt like maybe to the body.
It felt like his finger was being cut off.
You know something like that.
And that disruption in the circulation and in the nervous system.
It caused him to really feel faint, like he was about to pass out.
And that was after holding his finger in the cold water for a few minutes.
But, having his whole body submerged in the cold water is a totally different thing.
And he was able to demonstrate.
I believe it's 2018 Michigan study a really interesting science.
You know about the Wim Hof on their site.
I recommend to anybody that wants to look deep into the science.
They get in there and do the research.
But In that particular study he immersed his whole body in a suit that circulated 50-degree water around the surface skin.
And he was able to demonstrate being able to maintain surface skin temperature for over 30 minutes while that 50-degree water was circulating.
They even said that the reservoir where the water was pumping out of through the chiller that was keeping the suit cold, they had to keep adding ice to it because he was heating up the reservoir inside that water.
And this is all put out by the scientists.
I just find that stuff fascinating.
And again, it goes back to the heat generation and what we're doing in the cold.
So if you want to be able to actually get into that, that's another level, another step.
And you have to learn how to regulate with the breathing.
First, like you were saying, deescalate all the stress.
And that's really just the first step.
And then, at that point, you can sustain your hold, which is again getting used to the body and how it's going to respond to the cold.
The beauty about the cold is it's always going to give you the same thing right up front.
So there's always going to be the need for the intention.
There's always going to be the need for the breath regulation.
There's always going to be those things.
And it's setting the stage then, to dig deeper into our bodies, and our bodies have some pretty amazing potential.
You know that was always Wim's big.
Again, his big selling point was there's a lot more to us than we know.
And by using these stresses, we will be introduced to those aspects of ourselves.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
I like the body being able to do more than we probably know.
And we talked about how you can sort of control the autonomic nervous system in terms of stress, inoculation and moving from parasympathetic to sympathetic and back and forth.
And you sort of alluded to a little bit like these other autonomic features, right?
Your heart rate, your core body temperature.
Wim's also shown, like even with not even with himself, but with students the ability to boost immune system.
Can you speak a little bit to that?
Like the aspect that like this doesn't stop with sort of like just being able to handle stress.
There's actually this ability to truly tap into.
I believe it's like the pineal gland or something where you actually gain access to these what was once thought unaccessible features of the body.
Well, that would be more probably like hypothalamus, the aspect of regulating the temperature in the body and various things.
But I will say that just up front, the Wim Hof Method is not a panacea.
There's definitely great benefits from it.
I think it's a great thing to add to make a complete system.
But I will say what Wim demonstrated was phenomenal.
And something that really drew me in was Basically, Wim took injections of endotoxin.
The endotoxin is like an inert bacteria that when it hits the systems it sets off all the bells and whistles for food poisoning, a sickness similar to that like E coli poisoning, basically.
So he joined an ongoing study where They were studying basically inoculating people with the endotoxin and then studying how the systems respond, how the body autonomically responded to the endotoxin.
Oh, my God.
Imagine volunteering for that.
Raise your hand.
Who wants to get food poisoning?
Yeah, exactly.
And I guess they had the ability to bring them out of that state too.
I don't really know that one way or the other, but I know with Wim, he joined the study.
And then what he demonstrated was being able to reduce the inflammatory markers by like up to 80%.
So it was pretty phenomenal.
And he didn't experience any of the sickness.
He was able to suppress that really by creating an agent that worked against the inflammation right.
So by doing the breath work, you're generating these anti-inflammatory responses that fight against the inflammation that was being brought on by the endotoxin.
And this was so tremendous. that the scientists were like, well, you're an anomaly.
And he promised that he could train people who had no prior experience.
They did four days of training with him and four days on their own.
And then those 12 people went back in and basically recreated Wim's results.
So those people volunteered twice for that study?
No, no.
Well, there was a control group of people who there was people who did the work and people who didn't do the work.
Right.
Same.
So and they did it side by side, 12 people who didn't do the work.
And then the 12 that did the 12 that did had never been a part of that study before.
This was their first time.
They just had never trained with WIM before.
They did four days of training with WIM without any prior experience with WIM, and then four days on their own.
And this is what created the Wim Hof Method and this idea that you could gain these abilities or potentials relatively quickly.
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I'd love to move into a little bit more of your advice on.
If folks aren't there listening, chances are they've heard about Wim Hof.
Chances are they have a decent sense.
If they see somebody doing the breath work, they're like, okay, I recognize that as Wim Hof.
But if somebody didn't have a place to go, didn't have a place to start, couldn't get to one of your workshops.
Brandon, like what is the like?
Can you give us a few start here?
Do this.
You can do this at home.
You don't need a cold plunge.
Like can you just get us like the, the starter package of moving towards this place that we've been talking about today?
Yeah.
The easiest way, I mean, learning the Wim Hof practice is not hard.
It's all over YouTube.
So if you want to, You know, I have videos out there, too.
So I mean, if you want to learn, you can easily find the breathing practice, or you can just find Wim doing it.
Wim's doing it on YouTube.
If you go to his page, he's doing it there.
So you can learn directly from him on YouTube.
That would probably be the simplest way to learn the breathing.
And then cold showers.
Get in the cold shower and start to cultivate.
Do 15 seconds.
Try to put it at the end of your shower.
That would be the best way.
End with the cold.
That way you can have the response from the body.
If you heat yourself back up right away, let's say, with something external, or maybe drinking tea or whatever.
This isn't the process of whim.
The process would be, and there's nothing wrong with oscillation.
If you want to go back and forth, hot, cold, hot, cold, all that's great.
But the idea is to take advantage of the energy that it creates.
And so we end with the cold always.
And then if we're going to heat ourselves, it's best to do that through various processes.
You can start with some pushups and, some squats and things like that if you want to.
But then we start to try and use minimal amounts of energy to generate maximal heat.
And so we're going to get back into deeper breathing processes.
So like when I teach my workshops, I do two different workshops.
I have a fundamentals workshop and an advanced workshop.
And I'm still really squeezing things in there, but it gives more of the holistic effect of the practices to do both and really to come to the advanced and to understand what we're doing post cold.
To me, the post cold training is the real gold, because you're going to turn on systems that you may have never even felt before.
And so that's really unique to me in this training.
And again it's more advanced, but as a basic practice, learn the breath work and then realize that That breathwork is something that's meant to be done out of the water, never in the water, fully as safe as possible.
Do it laying down.
Definitely don't do it in a car.
Don't do it walking around.
Don't do it standing up.
Just lay down and do the breathwork, because most people won't realize how powerful that practice can be.
It absolutely has the potential to knock you unconscious.
If that was to happen, it would be far better for you to be laying down, because you would just think you fell asleep for a second.
So hyperventilating, especially without you asked me, what should people do?
And I always think, get to a workshop if you really want to understand it, because we don't need any lawsuits.
But the best way is to do it without any force.
Don't try to blow a head gasket immediately.
People do like to really dive into that breathing and have these almost like out-of-body experiences, right.
And so in order to get there which I think can be beneficial from time to time, for sure, you need a little cultivation in the practice.
But just by doing the practice right away, you're going to feel something.
And so it's best to do it laying down, try to be relaxed.
Then if you want to approach the cold, when you approach the cold, I would say again, put it at the end of your shower.
Do 15 seconds.
Build it up to a minute.
Build it up to five minutes.
Build it up to 10 minutes.
And use the breath for de-escalation.
Focus on your exhale.
Try to relax.
When I say relax, I usually start with people with their shoulders.
Most people are like this when they're tense.
We get people to drop their shoulders, try to get into their you know, their abdomen with their breathing, so that they feel the breath expand in the abdomen, in the lower back.
And then ultimately from there, You're going to want to dive deeper because you're going to like it.
And so if you really get into it, then it's worth seeking out better instruction.
There's a lot around.
There's a lot of people doing the Wim Hof Method these days.
There's workshops all over the place.
When I first started, I was part of the very first 25 instructors.
We trained with Wim.
We were the first group of international instructors that came out.
Started off as 50 people and then we weeded it down to 25.
And at that point, you know, I think, since that point I should say, we're at now like over 1500 instructors.
And so there's people around doing the thing and.
It's a practice that you can have a novel experience with it.
Go in, do it, say I did it.
I took an ice bath, great.
But if you really want the most out of it, it will become part of your lifestyle.
It's like martial arts to me.
People talk about learning martial arts on a weekend at a workshop or something.
I mean, that doesn't exist.
It's a lifestyle choice that you're going to be doing these practices for as long as you can.
And Wim will be doing ice baths till he's done.
That's just the way it goes, man.
And it does make you feel younger, stronger, better.
I mean, it's one of those things where when you do it, you feel your energy.
So I recommend absolutely cultivating starting slow, like you were saying, making it easy in the beginning.
But that's what I did.
I took Wim's course.
He put out a course and I'm, I was like one of the very first people to jump on that course.
And I loved it.
So it would.
Instruction would come every week.
They made you wait week to week to week.
They didn't give it to you all to stream at once, right?
So you know it was cool man, I get the new instruction.
I was super stoked to do it.
I mean, I had a lot of background.
It was easy for me to jump in.
But I think it's so simple, it's really anybody can do it, and that would be what I would keep in mind.
It is really easy.
Just lay down and do the breathing.
And then when you choose to do the cold, do it.
Most of the time.
Most people will say they do 20 minutes of breathing and then they go and get into the cold.
And that's fine.
That's the basic idea of the WIM practice.
You could do five minutes of breathing and go get into the cold.
But if you want to prime yourself with the breathing first, that's what a lot of people do.
I don't do that.
I get into the cold.
I mean, I take a few breaths and it's usually on my way out just gritting my teeth knowing what I'm about to do.
And then I go and jump in the cold.
And then post-cold, I work my breath work.
Got it.
I so appreciated, Brandon, I like rules and I like to know if doing things the right way.
The idea of getting submersed all the way below your heart, submersed, and then ideally your neck.
Above your heart.
That's correct, yes.
And then ideally your, correct, thanks. your head.
If someone's to do a shower, is there specific, is there similar suggestions?
Should you have the water hitting your chest?
Should you have it hitting your head?
Should you be facing so it's hitting your upper shoulders and back and you're turned away from it?
Does it matter in the shower?
Because when I've taken cold showers, I always feel like I'm only getting it on one spot of me.
I'm not doing it right.
Do you have any suggestions there?
Absolutely.
Well, anytime that the water is moving, there's going to be like this wicking away of heat.
And so a lot of times for a full submersion.
You know you're taking it all at once and then you can regulate.
So when you move around in the cold, you're readapted.
But who's to really say where that adaption point should end?
To me, if you're trying to gain strength, push that adaption point, right?
So I love, like a waterfall or moving water, where I can submerge my body and then have the water constantly moving.
Right.
And a lot of ice baths will offer that so you can get in them and they circulate.
Right.
Well, the shower is the same.
So when I get into the shower, I mean, I'll get in.
And a lot of times if I'm you can see my hair.
I take the razor to the hair.
So I'll do that in the shower.
First thing, maybe with a little bit of a warmer shower.
And then when I go into the cold, I just flip it.
There's no slowly lowering the water.
Some people do that, though.
And I don't think there's anything.
It's gradual exposure, gradual exposure to the cold.
I just like to get to the point.
I know where this is going, so let's just do the damn thing.
I'll save the foreplay for other things, but I just want to get there.
So I flip the cold, and then I really like for my hands and my feet to go in cold water.
One of my favorite things to do is when I'm done doing workshops, I'll be flipping tubs and getting rid of cold water.
I love just having my feet up to my ankles in the cold.
Feels really good to me, man.
So I'll start with my feet and my hands.
And then the coldest part of the body that's going to give you the most impact is going to be on the back of your neck.
And there is a acupressure point or acupuncture point right there at the base of the skull and say the brainstem.
And this area is going to give you a big impact effect, right?
So you can work your way up to that.
But what I think is the most intense part of the cold water is going to be where it's hitting the back of your neck and running over your shoulders and down your chest.
So it's kind of the water splitting.
It's going over the back, cascading over the back and over the chest.
So there are times where I'll just jump right into that and then use my breath, because you're going to feel, especially if the water's cold, you're going to feel the need to regulate your breathing.
That over the shoulders, it's cascade.
Are you facing the shower or facing away?
Which facing away, letting the water hit me, hit me in the back.
Yeah.
That to me is the most intense.
Now somebody might say it's something else.
Yeah, no, it's helpful.
I've heard different things from different people, right?
I will Once I regulate the breathing.
And there are advanced practices that I'm probably not going to talk about a whole lot because I don't want anybody hurting themselves.
But there are practices with the breath and you just have to take my word on this but there are practices with the breath where you can completely disassociate from any type of sensation, like any type of sensation, while maintaining consciousness.
You know the famous picture from Vietnam with the Buddhist monk who's burning himself in protest.
Right
I think this is a high demonstration of what I'm talking about, right?
Because they maintain their seated lotus posture while being engulfed in flames.
It's unbelievable.
Right before they sort of drop out of existence and turn into ash, they will raise their arm up into the air, show everybody that they were still there the whole time.
And this is an extreme example of what I'm talking about.
But there's definitely things that I've learned in this practice, things that I've learned inadvertently, like just by doing it.
Oh man, I didn't know I could do that.
There are ways to control systems in the body.
I mean, I've even heard, and I do believe this, I forget who I heard say this.
It was somebody like I don't want to misquote anybody, but somebody out there usually like with a podcast or that are talking about things like a Hoover man or somebody like that.
That said, I believe you could probably this actually might've come from Scott Carney, another guy who was a long time whim guy.
He wrote the book.
What doesn't kill us.
Hmm.
So they've expressed that you could probably stop your own heart with this practice if you really wanted to.
And this would be a conscious type of thing, not an unconscious thing.
It's not like we're doing this and we're, but there's a lot of crazy potential man with our breath, work and tapping into these systems like I do feel like I have learned to separate myself from the cold.
Again, this is something that might've even given birth to this practice a little bit, but it is definitely something that is there.
And it's not something you're going to jump into in the beginning, but it's fascinating what you will learn like, what you'll uncover training, breath work.
It doesn't necessarily have to be the Wim Hof practice, but man Wim sort of took the governor off of breathwork practice.
You don't need the mystic in the cave or anything like that.
You train it a certain way.
And look, we have science behind us and blah, blah.
I do feel like there is something there that, within the breath, that even on a very small scale, very base level, will immediately help you start to disassociate with that cold feeling.
And actually, to me, the flip was that in perspective was that I really started to enjoy it.
I mean, cold water repels anybody.
It's nice and passive.
It's just sitting there not bothering you.
But if you you know you stick your toe in, then it starts to change things right away.
So it's like when I first got into the Wim Hof method.
I was really interested in the breathing at first.
And then I was like, oh yeah, we got to do this cold thing too.
Okay.
And it was, it's a very matter of fact with Wim.
My first time training with Wim, real training, was in Colorado.
We were almost in December.
It was very cold.
It's a lot of snow.
And you know we're up in the mountains and we went to a lake and it was the whole groups, all 25 of us were there.
And Wim is, he's giving us a little bit of a talk before we're getting into the water.
We're going to walk into this lake and he's just looking around at everybody.
And he just kind of turns around and just drops trowel.
In front of everybody, man.
And we're all looking at each other like, do we got to do that?
And then he just marches off into the water just in his birthday suit, man.
Just as happy as can be.
And honestly, that's the thing about him.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily like a face of joy.
But with Wim, you don't see any transition.
There's just into the water.
And I'm the same guy that I was just outside of the water.
And there's no change.
You don't see it in the breathing.
He might take a breath and blow it out.
But most of the time that I've gotten in with him, it's just he's in and he's there.
That's it.
When I'm in my birthday suit and I walk in the water, there's change.
You see it.
Brandon, this has been great.
Before we started recording, you said you were starting to get back into hosting workshops.
Where, if somebody wanted to find figure out if they can get to one of your workshops, what's the best place to point them towards?
The Wim Hof site.
If you go there, I'm still listed as an instructor in North America.
So every year we do a recertification.
We have to retest and go through the process again.
There's always additional information coming out.
There's always good stuff.
There's a lot of really good studies.
So we always have to know what's up and coming with everything.
And then, so for me, it's going to be, you can find me on social media at on fire.
We'll always have our listed stuff there, but then the easiest way would be through the Wim Hof site.
Cause I post all my workshops there.
Awesome.
So it's just Wim Hof method.com.
Brandon, this was great.
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Hope we can have you on again soon, somewhere down the road to keep talking about breath.
Yeah.
Thank you, man.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
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