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Comment by JSeymourATL | Hacker News Reader

Surprisingly, no mention of Wim Hoff - The Ice Man > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XKcsm3dKs

That stuff actually works... basically if, like me, you're overweight... you've got a ruddy big log to burn strapped to your middle.

The trick is to get enough air in and bump your metabolism to start burning it.

Wim Hoff doesn't carry a log, though :)

All the videos I've seen about Wim are incredibly frustrating - none of them are remotely technical and none of them go into any kind of depth as to how to actually practice the method - just a bunch of montages of Wim doing Wim stuff and talking about his magic breathing.

Granted, I haven't searched in a few years now, perhaps things have changed....

I want to believe but I don't have enough information to try anything and I don't want to pay for his retreat to find out.

> none of them go into any kind of depth as to how to actually practice the method

Wim is selling his technique (https://www.wimhofmethod.com/experience-wim-hof), so that's probably why he doesn't go into much detail. Turns out even the transcendence of human boundaries has a well specified monetary value ;))

This is not true, the breathing technique is pretty simple.

You just breathe very deep and just relax and breathe out (not fully, just as much as comfortable). You breathe with a rhythm, faster or slower, anyway you like.

After breathing for a while you'll feel tingles or warm/cold sensations all over and then you breathe out and hold. After about 90-180 seconds (some people do more) you inhale, hold the breath for 15 seconds and start breathing normally.

You can immediatelly start another round of breathing.

That's it.

I dunno...I was doubtful at first but I had a thought that perhaps what the doctor said about raising adrenaline while lowering cortisol has something to do with activation of the vagus nerve.

Breathing techniques are of course used in various relaxation techniques, this could be an extremely refined version. Perhaps each person has a particularly optimum frequency of breath that must be discovered.

I've noticed that if I hold my breath and flex my core muscles to send blood pressure to my head, while relaxing my upper body, if I breath out after holding that for a few seconds I get a euphoric light headedness on exhaling. But I feel like I'm going to pass out and it's terrifying every time.

Maybe I should try it while jumping into an ice cold lake.

The breathing technique is a no BS technique. You just need to get the air in. You have to keep inhaling until you start feeling the effects of raised blood ph levels (dizziness, passing out, tingles etc.). You can breathe through nose or mouth, you can take as many breaths as you want, they have to be deep inhale, not that much of an exhale and that is it.

Optimum frequency is mostly just finding the breath rhythm that will get you to the state you need. You can experiment and try to go further and see what happens (worst case you pass out or start having some seizures).

I also experience a euphoric light headedness after one round. Sometimes I need to do a second round to experience it.

A lot of his techniques come from Tummo(Inner Fire Breathing)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo

I didn't read further, but there is some mention of science on his page, with references:

https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science

Search gives other articles with links to studies e.g https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-explai...

I felt the same until I realized that is all it is- a breathing technique, coupled with gradually adapting yourself to cold over time. The breathing mostly just serves to keep you calm while your body activates it's natural cold responses such as uncoupling the mitochondria in brown fat.

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