User:Scarpy/Wim Hof

Wim Hof (born 20 April 1959) is a Dutch daredevil, commonly nicknamed "The Iceman" for his ability to withstand extreme cold.

Tragedy in Crimson
"After a short rest, I went exploring. Across the way, I discovered the expedition tent of Wim Hof, an affable bearded Dutchman. Known as 'the Iceman,' Hof had a knack for surviving extreme cold. He'd already run a half-marathon barefoot and in shorts above the Arctic Circle, chalked up a Guinness World Record for swimming eighty meters under arctic ice, and survived submerged in a tub of ice for more than one hour. His latest scheme was to climb Everest in shorts. It was madness, and there he was, glad to be interviewed."

Noo
They studied the body of Wim Hof, the famous Dutch Iceman known to resist extreme temperatures naked thanks to a zen-meditation technique he perfected himself, the man that claim we could all build ourselves a disease-immune body if we knew how to train our minds. The team measured his ex vivo cytokine response during meditation before and after an 80 min immersion in an ice bath while he was meditating, conclusions:

"The ex vivo pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine response was greatly attenuated by concentration/meditation during ice immersion, accompanied by high levels of cortisol. In the endotoxemia experiment, concentration/meditation resulted in increased circulating concentrations of catecholamines, and plasma cortisol concentrations were higher than in any of the previously studied subjects. The subject’s in vivo cytokine response and clinical symptoms following LPS administration were remarkably low compared with previously studied subjects. The concentration/meditation technique employed by the iceman volunteer appears to evoke a controlled stress response. This response is characterized by sympathetic nervous system activation and subsequent catecholamine/cortisol release, which appears to attenuate the innate immune response. (…) The iceman claims that he can teach others this technique within a relatively short time-frame (one week). Therefore, further investigations should establish whether the results obtained in the iceman can be reproduced in larger groups of individuals 19.

A full review of the experiment can be found on the article, and researches are in continuous process at the university of Nijmegen. But if the tone of the article is discreet, its political impact is huge. It might very much lead the industrial bioMafia to one day acknowledge that with proper preventive mind training, we don’t need them at all.

But such a renewed noo-medical paradigm that takes its primacy in consciousness and subjective emotions over drugs and dead matter won’t rise until studies of this kind are reproduced and stately financed. Yet Quantum mechanics has extensively demonstrated that a strictly materialist world-view is erroneous, as atoms and molecules do not solely exists by themselves but in interaction with an electro-magnetic energetic field, or The Unified Field which in Albert Einstein words constitutes the sole governing agency of the particle. Stress can then be theoretically seen as a negative force of the field –the stressful environment- exerted towards matter through perception, while a positive field enhance healing processes through promoting positive physiological change, which current discoveries on neuroplasticity radically confirms. Conscious thinking –through focused attention- and environmental influence do have profound influence in the way our neurogenesis is formed, as Fred Gage put it: “The connections between neurons can be increased or decreased based on experience, and even the total number of neurons can change in certain areas of the brain due to changes in experience and physical interaction with the environment."

Inner Pictures
When something is said to be "imaginary", it means it exists only in thought. The same applies to visualisations, yet, while the latter consist of familiar pictures from our memory, imaginings are new products of our fantasies that are not provided in real life.

It is not always that "visualisation" and "imagination" are so clearly detailed and differentiated; rather, it seems the two meanings are deemed to be equal. Even this book blurs their definitional boundaries from time to time, due to contextualisation.

Effective imaginings often detatch themselves from logical reasoning. They are much less a matter of the mind than of the emotions. Their powers tend to unfold best when they are joined by intense emotional experiences--most of all in a state of relaxation.

An example of this can be seen with the practitioners of Vajrayana Buddhism, who use a special meditation technique to control their body temperatures. With this technique, called Tummo (Tibetan for "innerfire"), also referred to as Heat Yoga, the person imagines two spheres of condensed energy, one red, the other white, chasing towards eachother along a the spinal cord; one starting from the top of the head and theo ther from the pelvic region. When they are imagined colliding, they create actual heat--not imaginary, but factual. The body temperature really does rise.

Using this method, the Dutch Yogi, Wim Hof, or "Iceman", swam eighty meters, naked, under floes in the Antarctic, and, in another performance in New York City, he sat inside a solid block of ice for more than an hour.

Imagination changing the way the body functions is also the subject of various laboratory researches. At the Michigan State university, sixteen students were instructed to mentally influence the behavior of their granulocytes, the blood cells that engulf bacteria. All of the students were able to change the amount of theirblood cells. Some even succeeded in improve the cells properties.

After I'm Gone
Some people just aren't visual, and that's okay. You don't have to see energy in order to work with it. In fact, perceiving energy as a feeling can be very powerful. Tibetan Buddhist monks have been able to meditate perfectly still in freezing temperatures without experiencing hypothermia using the same energy that we draw up during ground to raise their cord body temperatures. A man named Wim Hof, using similar techniques, has tun around the Arctic Circle barefoot and nearly nude, and he hiked on Mount Everest similarly unequipped against the cold. He has set twenty world records for miracles such as meditating in the baths of ice water, and now he teaches his method for and wide in an effort to share the magic. here is the method, which requires no visualization:

Rest and close your eyes, either in a seated position or lying down. Begin taking deep breaths. (The Wim Hof method uses several deep breathing techniques, so you should make sure you are seated or lying down somewhere safe in case you feel light headed.) These breaths should be deep, from your diaphragm, and they should fill your whole lungs. Take your time, breathe slowly, and hold for an instant before exhaling. You should take about fifteen of these deep, slow breaths to warm up for the grounding.

When you feel relaxed, you will change your breathing pattern to a series of about thirty power breaths. Power breaths are also deep, but more forceful, as if you are blowing up a balloon, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. You can perform these more quickly and without pause, but you might feel light headed and tingly, so make sure you are lying down or seated somewhere safe. As you perform these power breaths, take an inventory of your body sensations to feel for negative energy to be purged with these power breaths. Such energy might feel like tiredness, coldness, constriction, or another negative feeling. Let the power breaths push it all away and try to replace those sensations with warm energy.

Next, to draw in more warm energy, you will return to taking a couple of deep, slow breaths. Fill your lungs as much as you can, breathe out, and then hold your breath for a bit. When your lungs tell you they need to breathe take another deep breath and this time hold your breath with the air filling your lungs, hopefully for about ten to fifteen seconds if you can (less is okay if you are unable to do so.) As you perform this last hold, take another inventory of your body and send energy in them form of heat to any places that seem to need it. the process is meant to be repeated, so if you feel like you need to do it again, try a second round or more.

Just think about it
In the recent decade, it has become increasingly clear that there is considerable interplay between the autonomic nervous system and the immune system. Both the parasympathetic (via the vagus nerve) as well as the sympathetic nervous system exert a regulatory function on the immune response. Animal studies have shown that electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve dampens inflammation via the release of the vagal neurotransmitter acetylcholine and subsequent activation of the alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor present on macrophages and other immune cells. Furthermore, several alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists have been shown exert similar anti-inflammatory effects in vitro and in animals. This socalled "cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway" could therefore represents a possible novel therapeutic modality to limit inflammation in various conditions. However, human data is very scarce. In this talk I will give an short introduction of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway and discuss several animal and human studies we have performed in the recent years. In the second part of my talk, I will address sympathetic nervous system-immune system interactions. Previous work has shown that infusion of the sympathetic neurotransmitter adrenaline attenuates the inflammatory response via beta-receptor stimulation. Therefore, it might be envisioned that endogenous activation of the sympathetic nervous system exerts immunosuppressive effects as well. However, it is generally accepted that the sympathetic nervous system, being part of the autonomic nervous system cannot be influenced voluntarily. In contrast, we have recently shown that through practicing techniques developed by “iceman” Wim Hof, it is indeed possible to voluntarily activate the sympathetic nervous system and that this is results in a ‘Immunity and Science fiction: The next 50 years in Immunology’ 8 profound suppression of the immune response in humans in vivo. I will address our studies into the techniques of the iceman and discuss future plans and perspectives regarding this extraordinary manner of influencing the immune system.

Brain Cooling
Emotional and mental states, whilst not quantifiable, take as much share as the biological and physical states. And since stress is as much physiological as it is psychological, there is a valid case to be made for the self-evaluation of stress: you are as stressed as you think you are.

The phenomenal power of the mind is clearly manifest in Wim Hof, the Iceman (Fig. 4.11), Guinness record holder for immersing himself almost naked in ice for over an hour. Dr Ken Kamler who specialises in treating hypothermia believes that Hof’s ability lies in the wiring of his brain. ‘It’s very easy to speculate that the same mind control that you use to control your heart when you’re scared also can be called upon to control the other organs in the body. And maybe that’s how Wim Hof does this,’ said Kamler (ABC News 2008).

The Man Who Never Gets Cold
Wim Hof, 49, of the Netherlands, possesses such a strong resistance to cold that scientists remain baffled as to how he endures many of the tests to which he exposes his body.

The Guinness world record holder has immersed himself, nearly naked, in ice for one hour and 12 minutes.

In January 1999 he traveled 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle to run a half marathon in his bare feet. Three years later, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dived under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness world record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice: 80 meters, almost twice the length of an Olympic-size pool.

Hof earned more recent renown for scaling Mount Everest in his shorts.

Hof told ABC News' "20/20" that his ability to withstand cold temperatures was something he discovered more than two decades ago.

"I had a stroll like this in the park with somebody, and I saw the ice and I thought, 'what would happen if I go in there?' I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in," Hof said. "Tremendous good feeling when I came out, and since then, I repeated it every day."

Dr. Ken Kamler, author of "Surviving the Extremes," has treated dozens of people who tried to climb Mount Everest, and instead nearly died from the frigid temperatures. When he heard that Hof had ascended the mountain wearing shorts, he became intrigued and began to study the Dutchman. He believes that Hof's ability lies in the wiring of his brain.

"It's very easy to speculate that the same mind control that you use to control your heart when you're scared also can be called upon to control the other organs in the body. And maybe that's how Wim Hof does this," said Kamler. "That's… it's speculation, but it sort of makes sense, and a lot of scientists are working very hard to try to figure this out now." ABC News. (2008). 10 Baffling medical conditions. ABC News. Retrieved March 30, 2012, from http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/story?id=6378009&page=1#.T3UIto6Ggao

RAMS
Wim Hof was given the task to train carefully chosen healthy young men his techniques in the cold areas of Poland. Wim Hof trained them in 3 techniques: third eye meditation (relaxation technique), cold exposure (lying in snow, swimming in ice water and climbing a mountain at -27 degrees Celsius while only wearing shorts and some shoes) and lastly breathing techniques which causes a controlled hyperventilation followed by a respiratory arrest for minutes. This training lasted 10 days.

News Archive

 * https://www.google.com/search?cf=all&hl=en&pz=1&ned=us&tbm=nws&gl=us&as_epq=Wim%20Hof&as_occt=any&as_qdr=a&authuser=0

Early life
Hof was born in Sittard, Limburg. He has six brothers and two sisters.

Feats
Hof holds 20 world records, including a world record for longest ice bath. Wim describes his ability to withstand extreme cold temperatures as being able to "turn his own thermostat up" through breathing exercises.

2000 "187 Feet (57 M) Record distance for an under-ice swim, set by Wim Hof in 2000 at the Finnish village of Kolari."

2007: He climbed to 6.7 km altitude at Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts and shoes, but failed to reach the summit due to a recurring foot injury.

2008: He broke his previous world record by staying immersed in ice for 1 hour, 13 minutes and 48 seconds at Guinness World Records 2008. The night before, he performed the feat on the Today Show.

2009: In February Hof reached the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in his shorts within two days. Hof completed a full marathon (42.195 km), above the arctic circle in Finland, in temperatures close to −20 °C (−4 °F). Dressed in nothing but shorts, Hof finished in 5 hours and 25 minutes. The challenge was filmed by Firecrackerfilms, who make productions for BBC, Channel 4 and National Geographic.

2010: Hof again broke the ice endurance record by standing fully immersed in ice for 1 hour and 44 minutes in Tokyo, Japan.

2011: Hof broke the ice endurance record twice, in Inzell in February and in New York City in November. The Guinness World Record is now set for 1 hour and 52 minutes and 42 seconds by Hof. In September, Hof also ran a full marathon in the Namib Desert without water. The run was performed under the supervision of Dr. Thijs Eijsvogels.

NEW YORK — A man who calls himself a tantric master broke his own world record by standing engulfed in ice for 72 minutes. Wim Hof, 48, stood on a Manhattan street in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes Saturday. Hof said he survives by controlling his body temperature through tantric meditation. Tantra is an Eastern tradition of ritual and meditation said to bring followers closer to their chosen deities. Hof set the world record for full body ice contact endurance in 2004. when he immersed himself in ice for an hour and eight minutes. Hot's feat kicked off BRAINWAVE, a five-month series of events in New York exploring how art. music and meditation affect the brain.

Films
Daredevils: The Ice Man �2009 Firecracker Films

Personal life
Hof has five children: four from a prior marriage, and a son (born in 2003) with his current wife.

Fact or Faked
On 28 January 2012, an episode of the US television program Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, featuring Hof, was broadcast. Hof was tested against a member of the team named Austin, both sitting in a tank full of ice. Austin sat in the tank for about 20 minutes. When he got out of the water, the other two team members used a heat camera to reveal that his surface body temperature was at about four degrees Celsius. Hof's core body temperature stayed the same for the entire twenty minutes, as did his heart rate. He managed to stay submerged for over ninety minutes.

Criticism
In 2016, the Wim Hof Method was blamed for the deaths of four men who drowned when practising this breathing exercise. Hof, however, had warned to practice his method in a safe environment, and not in the water.