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Comment by shanemlk | Hacker News Reader

Was laying in a park this weekend on a below freezing night with a friend who's been doing TM. I meditate pretty regularly, but never tried a mantra. Anyways, I feeling very cold and ready to go inside, but after a few minutes of meditation, I felt warm again. Meditation definitely increases my tolerance of uncomfortable conditions.

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While meditation in general tends to help one manage pain/discomfort, the Wim Hof method deals specifically with coping with cold temperatures.

Wim Hof is not a normal human, it’s not clear that there is anything about his “method” so much as that he has remarkable physiology.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E

That's one of the first thing they tested (granted the tests have been thorough), his tricks do affect other random people positively.

I'd love to see more theories and tests on his habits though.

The very video you link to concludes that his method does in fact have real effects on physiology.

Yikes. My memory is faulty then. I will have to rewatch it. (He’s still a bit of a freak of nature though, that much I’m sure about. (At least I think I am.))

Drying cold, wet sheets with body heat is a standard monk thing that even a non meditator like me has heard of:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-ch...

He's taken on people and trained them. You're right in some respect... no students have surpassed the master yet.

I wish I had the link of this BBC video journalist from years ago who wanted to bust the myth of the Himalayan swamis in India who meditate for days without eating food in freezing temperatures. He came back a convert when he witnessed with his own eyes how they do it with so much ease while not wearing much cloth on their bodies.

Every single session when I sit to meditate I have to take off enough clothes to be cold because if I don't I will burn up. No one has ever been able to tell me why that is or if I was alone: it's nice to know there's someone else out there for who experiences a similar affect.

You are not alone :-) Many meditators experience this.

This is true for any meditation with or without mantra. Mantra meditation with audible chanting creates enough vibrations to heat up body cells. Meditation also raises the internal energy and hence many experience the heating effect.

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