Most Replayed Moment: Wim Hof's Simple Breathing Technique For Focus, Tranquility and Resilience

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

What is that first step to... Because there's so many people that are going through different forms of grief, or they have that trauma that you've described, that goes back a long way. If they're listening to this now, and they've stumbled this far into the conversation, and they're thinking, I'm so far away from that, Wim. I'm so far away. I've got my shirt and tie on. I'm in the city. I know I'm unhappy. I can feel it in my bones, but I know no other way. What is the first step?

Wim Hof (0:25)

Absolutely the breathing exercises. These breathing exercises in 2014 were capable to show, just like scientifically, hormonally, looking at the nervous system. The depth which we entered with these breathing exercises in this comparative study showed that we were able to tap into the autonomic nervous system and innate immune system, which was considered to be impossible in science. And now it is there. It's not only the autonomic nervous system and the innate immune system, it's also the ability naturally to solve what is deeply stored up in our tissue, which could not be processed in the moment when it happened. Trauma.

Steven Bartlett (1:21)

Wim, I've got some of those studies in front of me. I read through all of them ahead of our conversation, and they are quite frankly remarkable. They're quite frankly remarkable. They are peer-reviewed studies that have been published, went through very sort of scientifically rigorous processes to make sure that they were valid. And in these studies, we see breakthroughs that I think in the past, people thought were impossible. But if we just focus in then on that breathing, because you described that as the first step. If I have never breathed in my life, I've never done it, I've never heard about it, I'm sceptical to it, I think breathing is just something we don't think about.

What do you mean by breathing? And what kind of breathing? And can you explain to me, like I'm an idiot, what it's doing?

Wim Hof (2:16)

Yeah, what it is doing. For example, I'm now busy with cardiologists, and they saw in heart films that if you stop breathing after exhalation for one and a half minutes, five times more blood flows into the brain and to the heart. This one has never been shown. And now it has been shown through these breathing techniques. I mean, this really goes so deep, we are able to make these, through these breathing techniques, change our blood chemistry, bring up the pH levels way up by which the breathing trigger is not happening because it's depending on the CO2 level in our blood. We breathe.

Like 30 times like this, you become a little bit woozy, be a little bit dizzy. Why? Because the CO2 levels go way down. You blow it off, carbon dioxide.

Steven Bartlett (3:25)

Have we forgotten how to breathe like that? Is that the natural way of breathing?

Wim Hof (3:29)

No, not exactly.

Steven Bartlett (3:31)

Okay.

Wim Hof (3:32)

What is exactly is that we have forgotten to feel deep emotions, to be in connection with danger. The danger is the deep emotion.

Steven Bartlett (3:49)

Or the cold.

Wim Hof (3:53)

It's deep. We avoid these emotions, but we are built to receive it, to express it. And with that comes alive the deeper mechanisms in our body.

And if that long-term is not exercised, those deeper mechanisms, and among that is not only the emotion, it's also the immune system. It becomes weaker. We become more flaccid. We become insensitive. Look at the insensitivity in our society. Gaza is happening.

Yeah, protest here. We should stop that shit. We should stop those wars, because kids, little kids, are here, jeopardized, and we cannot even feel it anymore. You know, this insensitivity in us is a plague. It's a plague because we serve a system that runs well on people being obedient and being flaccid, not really sensitive. Because if you are really sensitive, you don't go to a slave job every day and come back stressed. And the other day you do it again and again and again. What we should do within ourselves is learning how to connect into the depth. And this is what I give through the cold, we bring these deeper emotions alive, and then you will not abide to that what makes you weak, to that what kills your purpose. We got to stand up as humanity more now than ever. And here we are. And Wim, how do you do that? Very simple. Do this breathing techniques, do it on your bed, on a sofa, or very controlled because you will go past your conditioned mind and body. The shallow breathing we do, we say that is breathing. That's not breathing. That is automatic reflex of your body doing something.