Note: While reading a book whenever I come across something interesting, I highlight it on my Kindle. Later I turn those highlights into a blogpost. It is not a complete summary of the book. These are my notes which I intend to go back to later. Let’s start!

  • As humanity has evolved and developed technology that has made us more and more comfortable, we have lost our innate ability not only to survive but to thrive in extreme environments. In the absence of environmental stress, the things we have built to make our lives easier have actually made us weaker. But what if we could reawaken the dormant physiological processes that made our ancestors so strong? My method, which I have developed and refined over the course of nearly forty years, is based on three simple, natural pillars: cold exposure, conscious breathing, and the power of the mind.

  • Because we really loved being outdoors, my twin brother and I would venture, whenever we had time, into nature, into the forest. We’d be gone all day making cabins, climbing trees, digging under-ground, and baking potatoes in the little fire we’d build. To this day I believe those potatoes were the best food I’ve ever eaten. With just a little bit of salt, they were so delicious, so exquisite. They represented our freedom, and no restaurant could ever match their flavor because we ate them in connection with nature. Being outdoors heightened all of our senses. I think nowadays many children miss out on that. They’re so involved with their computers and games and virtual realities that they lose sight of the true reality: nature, which stimulates, develops, and sharpens their senses. This disconnection from nature contributes, I think, to depression and other problems, which is unfortunate.

  • When you take a cold shower, all of those little muscles in your vascular system — millions of them — are activated and exercised. Within ten days of taking these showers, you will notice that your heart rate has decreased significantly, as much as fifteen to thirty beats per minute, and that it remains that way twenty-four hours a day. That translates to a lot less stress. It’s important to understand that your heart rate increases whenever your body experiences stress. That sends a primordial signal to the body to activate adrenaline and cortisol, which sets off a series of biochemical processes that exhaust your adrenal axis, your energy, because you’re in poor vascular condition. Your heart needs to pump more, work harder.

  • Cold showers are the gateway to flow and energy and peace. I’m not exaggerating. It’s the entry point from which you will learn the power of the mind over the body. If you do just ten days of cold showers after warm showers, meaning that you end your regular, warm showers with a minute or so of cold water, then you will be able to command your vascular system to close up when you go into the cold. It’s amazing what your body can do at will, and all it takes is ten days of these showers to regain your optimal vascular tone and achieve this control. As your vascular system awakens and its muscles begin to tone up, it forges a connection with your brain, with your will.

  • WHM PROTOCOL: COLD EXPOSURE FOR BEGINNERS Going into the ice water can be quite shocking, so you’d better learn to prepare your body if you want to try it. But how do you do that? We wear clothes all the time, which de-stimulates our bodies, leaving our vascular systems in poor condition. So what can we do to reduce the impact of the shock and instead allow the ice water to optimize our cardiovascular system? Most of us who live in the West take showers every day, and most of those are warm or hot showers, because we don’t like the cold. But if you end your warm or hot shower with just thirty seconds of cold water—just thirty seconds—you will begin to see results. Anybody is able to endure thirty seconds of cold water, especially after spending several minutes under the warm or hot water, collecting heat. The warm water opens up your veins, aiding your blood flow. So while the cold water might cause you some discomfort at first, thirty seconds is no great hardship. What happens inside your body when you shift the temperature from warm to cold is that all the little muscles in your vascular system begin to awaken. They close up and then open, close up and open, and this repetitive process establishes the vascular muscle tone that, with repeated exposure, develops into its optimal condition. Start slowly at the beginning, with just fifteen seconds at the end of your shower every day. In a week, you will feel able to endure thirty seconds, or more. This is because the tone of your vascular muscles is improving, developing. Your core body temperature remains just fine. And the result is that you experience better blood flow throughout the day, which gives you a lot more energy. Once you are able to go longer than thirty seconds, you begin to develop an ability to consciously resist the shock of the cold water. You suppress the shiver response, the gasp. Suddenly, the water’s not cold anymore. Instead, it’s a force, and you, standing there, are a counterforce. You’re in control. You’re awakening to the physiological power and the neural activity of your own body. Amazing. WEEK 1 Thirty seconds of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 2 One minute of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 3 A minute and a half of cold water at the end of a warm shower WEEK 4 Two minutes of cold water at the end of a warm shower Do this gradually and work your way up, at least five days a week. Follow the feeling. Don’t force anything. It’s also fine to start with fifteen seconds and build up more slowly, as we do in our 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge.

  • THE WIM HOF WAY TO GET WARM Are you one of those people who feels cold all the time? Would you like to be able to warm your body even when you don’t have access to an external heat source? If so, the following exercise can be done to activate brown fat tissue (or brown adipose tissue — BAT), which is capable of energy combustion, and your intercostal muscles. The intercostal muscles are several groups of muscles that run between the ribs and help move the chest wall during respiration. Activating them also generates heat. Do as follows: 1  Sit down. 2  Inhale slowly and deeply five or six times, letting your breath go naturally each time. 3  Inhale fully. 4  Relax to exhale. 5  Inhale fully. 6  Hold your breath, for no more than five seconds. 7  Tense your upper-back muscles and chest while you hold your breath — but don’t tense the head. Keep your jaw relaxed. 8  Let go. With practice, you will feel the heat flowing down from your neck to your whole body. Everybody is different, but with practice, you will feel the heat coming from inside your body. This is what I did to maintain my core body temperature during the experiments at Wayne State — but please do not try such experiments at home!

  • The breathing protocol, which is composed of three to four rounds, takes about twenty minutes to complete. The best time to do these breathing exercises is before breakfast because when your stomach is full, all the metabolic activity and all the oxygen are directed to the stomach and block the way.

  • WHM PROTOCOL: BASIC BREATHING EXERCISE Before engaging with this breathing technique, remember to be mindful. Listen to your body and learn from the signals your body and mind send you while you are doing the exercises. Use those signals as personal feedback about the effect of the exercises on your body and mind, and adjust them as needed to find what works best for you.3  STEP 1Sit in a meditation posture, lying down, or whichever way is most comfortable for you, in a quiet and safe environment. Make sure you can expand your lungs freely without feeling any constriction. STEP 2 Close your eyes and try to clear your mind. Be conscious about your breath and try to fully connect with it. Take thirty to forty deep breaths in through the nose or mouth. Fill up your belly, your chest, all the way up to your head. Don’t force the exhale. Just relax and let the air out. Fully in, letting go. STEP 3At the end of the last breath, draw the breath in once more and fill the lungs to maximum capacity without using any force. Then relax to let the air out. Hold the breath until you feel the urge to breathe again. This is called the retention phase. STEP 4When you feel the urge to breathe, take one deep breath in and hold it for ten to fifteen seconds. This is called the recovery breath. STEP 5Let your breath go and start with a new round. Fully in, letting go. Repeat the full cycle three to four times. After having completed this breathing exercise, take your time to enjoy the feeling. With repeated practice, this protocol becomes more and more like a meditation. Once you have a little experience with the basic breathing exercise, try this additional technique: In round 2, step 4, try “squeezing” the breath to your head when you take your recovery breath. You do this by tensing your pelvic floor and directing that sense of tension to the core of your body and up to your head, while keeping the rest of your body relaxed. You should feel a sense of pressure in your head. Then relax everything when you exhale.

  • IN CASE OF ALTITUDE HEADACHES Headaches are the first sign of altitude sickness; a headache indicates that the brain is being deprived of oxygen. This exercise fuels your brain with oxygen again and should bring instant relief. 1  Slow down your pace. 2  Breathe in fully and relax to exhale ten times. 3  Stand still or sit. Make sure you are in a secure position. 4  Breathe in fully, hold your breath for five seconds, and try squeezing or redirecting the breath to your head. 5  Let go. 6  Repeat these steps until you sense that the headache has disappeared. BREATHING EXERCISE WHILE WALKING AT HIGH ALTITUDE 1  Consciously breathe more than you feel you need to. 2  Focus on your breath. Feel yourself breathing as you move. 3  Synchronize your breath and your pace so you can get into a cadence. Find your own rhythm without forcing it. 

  • RESTING BREATHING EXERCISE TO ADJUST TO AN ALTITUDE GREATER THAN THIRTEEN THOUSAND FEET This exercise can help you to forestall the potentially dangerous symptoms caused by a low oxygen level in your body that you may encounter if climbing or visiting somewhere where the altitude exceeds thirteen thousand feet. Please do not rely on this exercise to prevent altitude sickness symptoms without the proper supervision or experience. The best way to safely learn it is to participate in one of our expeditions. See “Further Reading” for more information. It is helpful to use a saturation meter to measure your blood oxygen level when doing this. 1  Wake up four to four-and-a-half hours after you went to sleep. 2  Do the Basic Breathing Exercise until your saturation meter reads a minimum of 95 to 100 percent saturation. 3  Practice the breathing exercises for at least a half hour. 4  Go back to sleep.

  • WIM HOF METHOD EXPERIMENT # 2 EXTENDING YOUR RETENTION TIME You can control your biochemistry with your breath. Don’t believe me? Well try this: STEP 1Breathe normally, then exhale fully, hold your breath out, and time how long you can hold it for. STEP 2Do the same thing after taking thirty deep breaths, relaxing the air out on the exhale. Big difference, huh? The reason why you can hold your breath for so much longer after taking thirty deep breaths is because the deep breathing temporarily changes the ratio between carbon dioxide and oxygen in your blood. Because your breathing reflex is correlated to the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood and you just exhaled a lot of carbon dioxide, you can hold your breath for longer. Carbon dioxide is an acid, and the breathing causes your pH level to increase, bringing your body into a temporarily alkaline state. Within twenty or twenty-five minutes of doing these breathing exercises, you will be able to experience the unlimited power of the breath within your mind, and you will not only feel its intensity but see real, tangible results. When we consciously change our biochemistry through breathing, we make our bodies happier, stronger, and healthier. How simple! Do you see how simple it all is? All of these complicated matters that clutter our minds are meaningless. All of that stress just takes us further away from nature, but the breath will take you back. It will forge that deeper connection we have lost. Is that not what you want for yourself, your kids, and everybody around you?

  • There are three pillars to the Wim Hof Method. The first two are the cold and the breath. The third pillar of the method is mindset. We call this pillar “commitment” in our training programs because you must have the right mindset to make the commitment to go against your ego and take the damn shower, to just breathe. You could also call this pillar the power of the mind. It includes the idea of will and the power to imagine, to meditate, to visualize — the power to send your attention to any part of your body, to observe any bodily process.

  • Tune out distractions. Turn off your television and leave your phone in another room when you begin the breathing exercises each morning. Give yourself enough time that time doesn’t factor into your thoughts at all. These twenty to twenty-five minutes a day require your complete attention. The mind is a neurological muscle that is able to influence your body’s molecular systems and aid its absorption of oxygen, which creates the energy you want. And if you want this muscle to function optimally, you’ve got to surrender unconditionally to the experience. You have to really go for it. You have to have the third pillar: confidence, mindset.

  • WHM PROTOCOL: BASIC MINDSET EXERCISE The greatest accomplishment you can achieve is stillness of the mind. It is only when your mind is still that you can go from external to internal programming. In the absence of thoughts, this stillness brings your feelings into alignment with your innermost being, reflecting the true self in a direct mirror. This is how I was able to set all of my records, and you can do it too. First, take a step away and find a comfortable place to sit down. Then begin to follow the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. Peacefully following the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. A sense of calm will begin to settle over you, and it is in this moment that you can set your mind. Begin to scan your body while visualizing what it is you are going to do. Perhaps you want to stay longer in the cold shower or achieve a new personal record for push-ups. Maybe you want to hold a particularly challenging yoga pose or take a longer bike ride than you ever have before. Now is the time to scan your body and set your intention. Take your time with it. Tell your body what you expect it to do. Scan yourself for how you feel. You will be able to detect any misalignment of your intention and your body’s feeling. Just remain calm, keep breathing, and wait for the moment in which there is a sense of trust, of centered energy, of alignment. Give power to that feeling with your breath and then go and do what you intend to do. Success.

  • WHM MEDITATION The origins of meditation date back to 5000–3500 BCE, yet it’s constantly evolving. When you do the conscious breathing protocol, you are already doing a form of meditation, training your mind and connecting with your innermost depths. The principle of meditation is to follow something that does not excite the thinking brain. We take something very simple and follow it until deep peace comes over us. Here is one way to get acquainted with this peace. 1  Sit down in a safe, comfortable place and clear your mind. 2  Start connecting to your breath. Let yourself breathe naturally. 3  Start counting your breaths. Each inhale and exhale is one count. Count your breaths up to seven, and then from seven back to one. If you find yourself suddenly thinking about your daily life and your to-do list, return to counting the breaths. You will eventually find yourself able to just count the breaths, up to seven and back down again. The blood flow will go into the deeper areas of your brain, awakening feeling, not thoughts. Let the feeling become stronger. Follow the feeling and go as deep as you want. As you go along, the counting will fade away, like a song fading out. Follow the feeling and go deep into yourself, deep into peace.

  • WHM AT-A-GLANCE THREE PILLARS OF A DAILY PRACTICE BREATH 1  While seated or lying down, take 30 to 40 full conscious breaths: Breathe fully in to the belly and the chest, then letting go, without force. 2  On your final exhale, let the air out and hold it out for as long as you can without discomfort. Listen to your body and don’t force it! 3  When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Then release and relax. 4  Repeat the steps above two or three more times, paying attention to how you feel and adjusting your breath as needed. 5  Rest in this elevated state until you are ready to move on with your day. Alternatively, use the energy you just generated for your morning workout or yoga practice. Experiment with what feels right for you. Congratulations! You just influenced key drivers of your health, increased your vitality and focus, busted your stress, reduced inflammation factors, and optimized your immune system. 4. MIND Your post-breathing practice state is the perfect time to program your mindset. Try this: 1  Before you get up from your breathing practice, bring up a thought in your mind like “Today I’m going to stay in the cold shower for 15 more seconds than yesterday,” or “I feel happy, healthy, and strong.” 2  Reflect on this thought and notice how your body feels. 3  If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, just keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and mind. With practice, your sense of your inner experience, or interoception, will sharpen, allowing you to more consciously observe and control your body and mind. COLD 1  At the end of your warm shower, turn the water to cold. 2  If you like you can start by first putting your feet and legs, than your arms, then your full torso under the water. 3  Do NOT do the WHM Basic Breathing Exercise while standing in the shower. 4  Gradually extend your exposure every day until you can handle two minutes in the cold. 5  If you are shivering when you get out, try the horse stance exercise. (See page 118 for details.) Success! You just improved your metabolic efficiency, regulated your hormones, further reduced inflammation, and are enjoying the endorphins and endocannabinoids released in response to the cold.