Le livre

Suite aux baignades en eaux froides tous les mercredis, suite a ma progression dans le domaine de la méditations et aux différents travaux de développement personnel, il me semble que je ne peux que profiter de la lecture de la méthode Wim Hof. Au mieux cela peut m'apporter une meilleur résistance au froid pour mes sorties en ski, au pire, cela m'aura fait perdre quelques heures de lecture.

Ce qui est intéressant avec ce livre est que Wim Hof est vraiment convaincu et convainquant vis a vis de se méthode. Il prends du temps pour expliquer son parcours, son cheminement et essaie tant bien que mal d'expliquer les raisons de chaque élément de sa méthode, en les illustrant par des expériences personnelles. La première moitie du livre est très enivrante car il présente les records qu'il a battu, tout en expliquant que les trois piliers principaux sont:

• prendre une douche froide par jour
• faire des exercices de respiration
• développer son mental (croire en soi et en ses capacités)

Le cout est minime, voir quasi nul (sauf peut-être en temps pour les exercices de respirations) et les bénéfices semblent incroyables:

• résistance au froid
• amélioration du système immunitaire
• réduction du stress et des dépressions
• amélioration des performances sportives

Dans cette première moitié du livre, il présente aussi les expériences scientifiques pour lesquels il a été volontaire. Chaque expérience servant a donner un poids scientifique aux propos de sa méthode. Il semble tellement sur de sa méthode qu'il souhaite faire le plus possible reconnaitre scientifiquement ses techniques et souhaiterait que le domaine médical s'intéresse encore d'avantage a ce sujet. On est loin du guru qui cherche a tout embrouiller: Wim Hof est plutôt clair, transparent et cite ses sources, contacts, études, records, etc

Le livre pourrait s'arrête a cette première partie. J'ai trouve la seconde moitié beaucoup moins intéressante. Sa méthode est tellement simple, qu'une seule page suffirait presque a la décrire. Le reste du livre part un peu plus en free-style. Il perd son cote rationnel et scientifique et se disperse un peu. Cela le rends un peu plus proche du guru qui cherche a vendre sa méthode et a montrer qu'elle va résoudre les problèmes dans le monde.

La méthode

A cold shower a day keeps the doctor away

La douche froide sert à solliciter un léger stress au corps pour re-déclencher les mécanismes de défense dont il est pourvu. L'idée est que notre environnement est tellement confortable qu'il nous affaiblit. Sortir de notre zone de confort nous rends plus fort. Il explique aussi que le froid sollicite la création de certains substance qui relaxent ou font du bien au corps.

ICE-WATER BATH FOR WARMER HANDS AND FEET

Are you someone who suffers from cold hands or feet? If so, try this exercise.

1. Fill a bucket with one-third ice and two-thirds water.

2. Redirect your mental focus to your hands (or feet).

3. Place your hands or feet into the ice bucket.

4. Hold your hands or feet in the bucket for two minutes. At some point, they should start to feel warm instead of cold.

5. Remove your hands or feet from the ice bucket, but keep your mental focus on them.

6. Shake them out several times to encourage the blood flow into your newly awakened extremities.

Your blood vessels constrict in the ice bucket at first. This is a natural protective mechanism. But then they open when your blood reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing warm blood to flood into them. You are resetting the physiology in your extremities. People who often complain of cold hands or feet suffer from poor vasoconstriction and dilation. The muscles around the veins in their hands and feet do not function well and need to be retrained. This ice-bucket exercise helps. If you typically have cold hands or feet, try doing this exercise daily. Adaptation occurs rather quickly. After a couple of days of this exercise, you will find that your extremities aren’t so cold anymore.

Breathing

Le deuxième pilier est base sur la respiration. Il présente les effets physiologiques de la sur respiration: alcalinisation du sang, re oxygénation des tissus, etc. Mais on sent que la méditation est aussi très présente pour lui, ainsi que la connections a la nature et a son corps. De ce point de vue la, cela ressemble aussi a de la méditation.

Il a un exercice de base qu'il décline ensuite selon certains cas.

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

1. Sit 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.

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.

3. At 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.

4. When 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.

5. Let 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.

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!

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.

WHM PROTOCOL: POWER BREATHING FOR ENDURANCE

This exercise is an adaptation of the Basic Breathing Exercise to enhance athletic performance. You can delay the deprivation of oxygen in the muscle tissue, thereby postponing the point of lactic acidification, which leads to fatigue and failure. The breathing exercise causes a release of adrenaline and glucose that your body can absorb immediately and achieve better performance.

Before you begin an endurance exercise, such as long distance running or cycling, do three to four rounds of power breathing:

1. Breathe in deeply and relax to let your breath go sixty times.

2. On the last breath, inhale fully and then hold the breath for at least fifteen seconds (or as long as feels comfortable), squeeze your entire body toward the head by tensing your pelvic floor and allowing that pressurized feeling to move up your spine to the top of your head.

3. Relax to let your breath go and start a new round.

4. Start each new round with your regular WHM breathing rhythm, and then increase the speed and intensity of your breathing as the round proceeds. This increase is what makes this power breathing.

5. Wait a couple of minutes to ground yourself again and then begin your endurance exercise.

6. Breathe more than you feel is necessary and stay aware of your breath during the endurance exercise.

BREATHING FOR PAIN REGULATION

When practicing the WHM for pain regulation, you’re consciously manipulating your body and the pain you feel through the use of the breathing techniques.

1. Begin by sitting or lying down in a comfortable position. Once you are relaxed, direct your attention to the spot where you feel the pain. Then take five calm, deep breaths.

2. Now take twenty more deep breaths. Fully in, and letting go. Do not force your breath.

3. Exhale the last breath fully out, then inhale fully in once more, and hold it for ten seconds.

4. While holding the breath, focus your attention on the point of pain, and press your held breath toward it. Tense the muscles around the pain area as well.

5. Release your breath and all tension.

Think of the painful sensation as a signal. Motivate yourself to listen to this signal and become attuned to it. This signal tells you that the chemistry in this area needs to change, or is changing. A positive train of thought or mindset influences the perception of pain. The purpose is not to suppress the pain signal, but to change the internal chemistry that causes the pain in the first place.

BREATHING FOR MOOD REGULATION

This exercise uses and trains neurostimulative brain control to help alleviate moodiness or depression. Supplying oxygen to the brain improves a person’s well-being. We have seen in fMRIs that the whole brain dances when subjects do the breathing exercises. You can do this exercise whenever you feel like it, but it can be an especially powerful exercise to try if you are feeling melancholy, moody, or depressed. Do not force it — feel it!

1. Sit or lie down in a safe, comfortable place.

2. Feel and try to relax every part of your body. Observe and be aware of what you are feeling, seeing, and hearing, without judgment. Just be present.

3. Take twenty deep breaths. Fully in and letting go.

4. On the last breath, breathe in deeply, hold it, press your chin toward your chest, tense your pelvic floor, and direct that tension up your core toward your head.

5. If you are experiencing any physical discomfort, focus your attention there and observe. Tense the muscles in that area. Hold the breath for a maximum of ten seconds.

6. Release the breath and all tension.

7. Repeat two or three times or until you feel better.

BREATHING FOR STRESS CONTROL

Stress is the killer in our Western society — all that thinking, going into overdrive, making deadlines. They really are dead lines! Stress deregulates our system. You can tell if you are stressed by counting how many times you breathe in a minute. Try it now with a timer. If you’re breathing between fifteen to twenty times a minute, you are stressed.

What I do for stress is one minute of humming and breathing. This always works for me. It taps into your parasympathetic nervous system — where the peace is inside — and calms down your hectic sympathetic nervous system. And it’s like a massage for your spine from within — all the way up to your brain stem and to the center of your head. It brings you directly inside your body.

1. Set a timer for one minute.

2. Settle yourself somewhere comfortable.

3. Breathe in deeply.

4. Breathe out with a sound like “Hum,” “Ah,” or “Om.” Make whatever sounds make you happy.

5. When you run out of air, breathe in deeply and let it out with another “Hum.”

6. Continue until the timer stops.

How many times did you breathe in a minute of humming? Maybe four, five, six times? Nice.

The power of the mind

Le troisieme pilier de la methode est la puissance de l'esprit. L'idee est de croire en soit et de se reconnecter avec son corps. Nous avons evolue en nous dotant de tout un tas de capacite pour nous aider a resister et a survivre. Il faut apprendre a faire confiance a son corps a nouveau et a reactiver tout ces mechanismes.

INTEROCEPTION WITH THE BREATH

How would you like to train your sense of interoception and sharpen your interoceptive focus? If you are already practicing the Basic Breathing Exercise, you are on your way. This visualization practice will take you to the next level.

1. Sit or lie down in a safe, comfortable space and close your eyes.

2. Breathe normally, but focus on your breathing. Fully in and letting go.

3. Now consciously take a deep breath in through the nose, and exhale through the mouth. Do not force it.

4. Visualize your lungs, and consciously feel the oxygen entering your lungs. Interoception is now beginning.

5. Take some more deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Nice and easy.

6. After a few more breaths, visualize the exchange of gases in your body. Visualize the oxygen going from the lungs, through the capillaries and into the blood, and visualize the excretion of carbon dioxide upon exhalation.

7. If you notice that your mind has started to wander, simply reset your focus to your breath. Over time, you will learn to become more mindful and gain more control over your mind and be less consumed by your thoughts.

8. Practice this exercise for several minutes.

INTEROCEPTION OF THE HEARTBEAT

In this exercise we are going to forge a conscious connection with the heart and circulatory system. Because the heartbeat is involuntary, few of us pay much attention to it or to the circulatory system it serves. But if we channel our interoceptive focus to it, we can decrease our heart rate during times of stress, which not only serves to relieve that stress but also to improve the absorption of oxygen and nutrients within our cells. Here’s how:

1. Sit or lie down in a safe, comfortable space.

2. Relax.

3. Feel and visualize your heartbeat.

4. Connect with your heartbeat and try to synchronize your breath with it so that you can feel it everywhere.

5. Now visualize your circulatory system. Visualize that with every inhalation, oxygen-rich blood is flowing from your lungs to your heart, to every part in your body, through a network of blood vessels that could wrap around the earth two and a half times. Imagine how your blood provides oxygen and nutrients to organs and muscles, and transports waste products (like carbon dioxide) to your liver, kidneys, and lungs.

6. Reconnect with your heartbeat and try to synchronize your breath with it again.

7. Make a journey through your body and try to feel the heartbeat in different parts of it. If you focus on your hand, feel the heartbeat there, and if you focus on your feet, feel the blood flow from your ankles to your toes.

This is connecting your mind and your body. This is interoceptive focus. A couple of minutes per day is enough to help you deepen this connection and reap the benefits of it.

UNITE WITH THE LIGHT: THE “STROBOSCOPE” EXERCISE

Beautiful being, beautiful soul, would you like to illuminate your consciousness? Come, just lie here on the sofa. Are you comfortable? Do you feel good? Hey, what did you do this morning? You say you woke up? I did the same thing! Wow, parallel universe. You say you have stress, tension, all that mental shit? Whatever you are thinking, I don’t care. Let it go. Let it go. Now all there is for you to do is relax and breathe. Just drop everything and get into this breathing. We are all lightworkers. Work with the light and get free.

1. Sit in a relaxed, comfortable position.

2. Close your eyes, follow your breath, witness yourself calming down.

3. Just look at what you see with your eyes closed. Don’t try to see anything in particular. Be patient. In this way, your energy is able to disconnect from the external perception of the visual cortex and go into the deeper realms of the brain.

4. Keep following your breath, and turn your inner focus to the center of your forehead, the “third eye.” You may see a luminous halo that pulses with your breath — in, out, in, out, like the flashing light from a stroboscope. You might feel you want to look more directly at it, but then you will take away the intensity. Learn to let it be. This is a phenomenal way to subtly observe the neural activity of your brain.

Once you have some experience with this meditation, try adding the focus on the center of your forehead to the Basic Breathing Exercise. You may start to have spontaneous experiences of your inner light.