If there was something you could do everyday to instantly feel better, improve your immune system and tap into your autonomic nervous system. This would be it.
Wim Hof, also known as, The Ice Man, is a Dutch extreme athlete who has set World records for swimming under ice and for prolonged body contact with ice, Barefoot marathon on ice and many more.
The Wim Hof method involves three core components:
1 - Breathing.
2 - Exercise/Yoga
3 - Cold Exposure
What’s so interesting about this method is what it does to the human physiology and how good of a cure it is for things like depression and anxiety. You can use this method to heal yourself without using drugs but by simply using your own Neuro and Bio Chemistry.
It stimulates the endocrine system and taps into the autonomic nervous system.
How to do :
Phase 1 - Breathing
Step 1 - Make yourself comfortable
As soon as you wake up in the morning, either sit down or lie down comfortably.
(You should not do this while standing)
Step 2 - Hyperventilation
Begin to take deep breaths, the deepest you can. Take around 30-40 breaths continuously without a break, until you feel lightheaded. You might even feel tingling sensations but do not stop.
Breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth and create a flow.
Step 3 : Breath hold
Then, Empty out your lungs by breathing all the air out at the end of 30-40 breaths and hold your breath for as long as possible. Use a timer to note down how long you can hold your breath.
Step 4 : Breath Hold (With air in lungs)
Once you reach a point where you cant hold your breath any longer, take a deep breath and hold your breath again for 10-20 seconds.
Step 5 : After you’ve completed the previous steps, Breathe normally for another 10-20 seconds and repeat the whole process again for 3-4 times.
Phase 2 : Exercise
After all the breathing, Wim Hof recommends physical activity like pushups or something like Yoga. For starters, let’s keep it simple and do Push ups.
Note : If you can’t do proper pushups, you can do knee pushups.
Step 6 - Take a deep breath and hold your breath and do as many push ups as you can. You’ll notice that you last quite a while and this is because your muscles are breathing properly.
Step 7 - You can do some exercise/yoga of your choice here but this is completely optional.
Phase 3 : Cold Exposure
Step 8 - Ideally, people immerse themselves in Ice baths in the proper wim hof program. But for convenience, Cold showers for 3-4 minutes would do.
That’s it for now.
In the next article, we’ll dive deep into the science of how the Wim Hof method works.
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