Experienced views on Wim Hof method

[Starjumper]

Lot's of loose ends to tie up here, eh?

 

On 6/19/2019 at 4:18 PM, Cheshire Cat said:

In my personal experience with the practice, I started to have hairloss after a few weeks of 1+ hrs of daily exercise. So, I stopped the routine and went back to normal. 

 

On 6/19/2019 at 12:01 PM, freeform said:

It’s basically a method of quickly tapping the energy reserves of your kidneys to strengthen your Wei Qi...

 

On 6/19/2019 at 6:08 PM, thelerner said:

Haven't experienced hair loss, matter of fact I think the cold showers have my hair & scalp at there healthiest. 

 

I feel these different experiences are related to adrenal exhaustion.  Wim Hoff mentions it activates the adrenals, and there's no doubt that the drowning response does just that.  It is also why people feel hot after dipping in cold water. The shock of the cold water makes your adrenals produce more, which them makes you feel warm.  Nothing special there, the same thing happens to most vertebrates.

 

The potential problem is due to adrenal exhaustion, which most people who live in big shities have some degree of.  Severe cases of adrenal exhaustion can lead to death.

 

If a person already has adrenal exhaustion it is ill advised to add more adrenal stress.  On the other hand, those who don't have adrenal exhaustion can stand to do a little work on the adrenals.  In TCM adrenals are known as kidneys.

 

The Holotropic breathing method, which is similar but a lot softer, does not induce the drowning response or cause adrenal stress.

[joeblast]

I think doing these things without a good foundation of breathwork/anapanasati/achieving regular samhadi, then they have more potential for danger.  because a lot of these long duration things, if you have some gung as a capacitor to use, then these things can be brought to their full potential and its no big deal to do those long duration holds, because the body's base needs are energetic.  without gung, therein lies the risk of burnup.

[Walker]

Environment might be a factor, too. I had two friends get into this in Beijing during a year with several "airpocalypses" (pm2.5>800 sorta days, where you can't see clearly past three meters indoors) and they both ended up sick as hell and stayed that way a surprisingly long time. All the intense breathing practice when your air is toxic, your food is cooked in reused oil or sewer oil, and daily life contains a steady stream of stressful extremes might work against this method pretty badly, at least for beginners. Note where Wim takes his classes in documentaries (e.g. beautiful mountains in rural Poland, not a tract of factory yards and coal fire power plants in Warsaw) and look at forest bathing research into what simply sitting in the woods without even practicing anything does for your body. Being in nature provides a significant, measurable boost to your physiology that may mitigate the challenges beginners without a good foundation face when playing with this stuff. Conversely, lots of environments tax your immune system, drain your adrenals like SJ said, fill you with cortisol, etc, unless you're already pretty fucking sagely already.

 

Another thing my friends in Beijing considered was simply heating. They lived in poorly heated old buildings, so after their cold showers in the winter it was hard to ever fully warm back up. My strong guess having lived in western Europe is that Wim is teaching mostly people whose indoor heating keeps their homes pretty toasty in the winter. That way you once you're done with your cold shower you're back into a 25-30 degree C environment, instead of a 15-20 degree environment, which is a big  difference if you've just intentionally frozen your balls off (or in, as it were) and your body is trying to return to normal.