#151 Benefits of Cold Exposure and Breathing with Leigh Ewin

Leigh Ewin (0:00)

I think that mindset thing is what people are a little bit missing. It's quite easy to go again to that default mode of, it's more comfortable to have a warm shower.

It's kind of the least talked about. People are always wondering, what's the health benefit? But getting your mind, kind of getting into the zone or the flow state or whatever you want to call it, that's kind of the thing that many of us have a hard time with sometimes. So, yeah, waking up in the morning and giving yourself that opportunity is like it's a very powerful thing and it can set your day off on the right foot, so to say.

SPEAKER_2 (0:37)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:41)

Body Mind Empowerment.

SPEAKER_2 (0:42)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:48)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_2 (0:50)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:54)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land and our guest today is Leigh Ewin.

Leigh is a Wim Hof instructor, bulletproof coach and breathwork specialist. Before we begin the conversation with Leigh, I want to let you know that me and Leigh are having an awesome biohacking bootcamp this coming January in 2020 and it's going to be a two-day experience with workshops, lectures, cooking food, taking ice baths, taking a sauna and yeah, me and Leigh are going to share cutting-edge information about optimizing your health with diet, breathing, training, circadian rhythm optimization, sleep and yeah, everything included. So yeah, definitely, if you're interested and you want to learn from me and Leigh, then head over to siimland.co forward slash biohacking bootcamp and you're going to find all the details from there. But for now, let's talk with Leigh Ewin, Leigh, welcome to the show.

Leigh Ewin (1:50)

Thanks, Siim. Thanks for having me, mate.

Siim Land (1:53)

Yeah, I'm really glad to have you on the podcast, because yeah, we've met face to face several times and we've also done some workshops together. So I'm glad to have you on the show.

Leigh Ewin (2:03)

Absolutely. And looking forward to the next one too.

Siim Land (2:05)

Yeah, yeah, like the biohacking bootcamp, which is going to be in January 2020

And the last time we did it, it was like last year, which was really awesome to do some ice swimming and taking saunas in the middle of the winter in Estonia. So yeah, it was a fun time. And it's going to be even better this time.

Leigh Ewin (2:24)

Yep. Can't wait for that one, mate.

Siim Land (2:27)

So you're basically an Australian guy who lives in Finland. So how did that happen? And can you tell us about like your background?

Leigh Ewin (2:35)

Oh, look, the short version of the story is came here for love and stayed for the weather, you could say.

I think that's I think every every foreigners like that, aren't they? They all come and stay for the weather.

Yeah, obviously, there's huge differences in the in the of course, the climate is different, but then also culturally, there's a lot of different things to get used to. But I met a I met a Finnish girl ended up in Finland because she's she you know, she's she's Finnish, we wanted to come back here and give it a give it a go and I wanted to experience the culture. And after a short time, the whole relationship sort of disintegrated, but I decided to stay and give it a go. And yeah, I couldn't be happier 12 years later. I'm still here, mate. It's possible.

Siim Land (3:25)

That's pretty cool. Yeah.

So how did you become like a Wim Hof instructor then?

Leigh Ewin (3:31)

Well, as you can imagine the well, I mean, you know, because you're you're you're living over this way as well in this part of the world, but the winter time here, you could say that maybe eight or nine months of the year is what I would consider wintertime temperatures back home in Australia. So there was a lot to get used to. And I wasn't the kind of person, you know, I tried though, I tried living inside my apartment like a little bit like a bear hibernating and all that. But I'm not the sort of person that wanted to watch everything pass by and, you know, wait for something else to happen, wait for this summer that may or may not really come.

So I kind of like forced myself to get out there and, you know, I tried cross country skiing and there were some nice parts about that, but that wasn't really for me in a way. And it wasn't until people started to invite me to the sauna, sauna, we say sauna, but of course it's a Finnish word, it's the only Finnish word in the English dictionary, so it's pronounced sauna. Yeah, it wasn't until people started inviting me to hang out in the sauna that I understood that there's always a body of water next to the sauna. And that means that these Finnish people want to get in the water, even if it's winter time, even when there's ice there, there's usually some sort of hole there and you can kind of jump in.