December 18, 2024 • 62 mins
Unlock the secrets of stress management with our special guest, Matt Soule, a senior instructor in the Wim Hof organization. Gain rare insights from Matt as he demystifies the Wim Hof Method, offering practical wisdom on managing stress and exploring the minimum effective dose of cold exposure. Discover how safe cold therapy practices and breathwork can revolutionize your stress response, enhancing your ability to adapt and thrive in our fast-paced world. As we discuss the nuances of the breathwork industry, Matt shares his efforts to maintain integrity and quality instruction amidst its growing popularity.
Venture into the personal journey of overcoming adversity with a moving narrative on the transformative power of martial arts in stress management. Matt brings to light how childhood trauma and personal challenges can be harnessed for growth, resilience, and empowerment. Hear the stories of individuals whose lives were changed by the Wim Hof Method, from a former special forces operative managing PTSD to a woman battling autoimmune disorders. Their experiences underscore the method's potential to foster a growth mindset and a sense of control over one’s well-being.
Explore the expanding world of cold therapy and breathwork instruction, as Matt discusses the evolution of the Wim Hof Method and breathwork standards. Learn about the structured curriculum developed for teaching this method and the importance of maintaining high teaching standards. We also delve into the accessibility of these practices, highlighting how you can incorporate the benefits of cold exposure and breathwork into your daily life. Matt shares his personal experiences with data-driven approaches to breathwork, revealing why continuous education and a curious mindset are crucial in this rapidly evolving field.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dr Richard L Blake.
What are people going to learnfrom this episode of laughing
through the pain?
Navigating wellness?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
They're going to learn from Matt Soule about the
Wim Hof method, and Matt is notjust a Wim Hof instructor, he
teaches the teachers.
He gives the tests forkliftdriver tests, not the forklift
driver test he is a real expertin the Wim Hof method and he's a
real expert in stress and wehear a lot about misconceptions
(00:28):
about stress, how people areframing stress wrong, why people
are so anxious these days andand how that's related to their
mindset yeah, from my point ofview, I think wim hof is almost
like a buzzword now and peoplejust conflate a lot of things
and they just chuck it in withwim hof, like being cold and
breathing in a particular way,without actually knowing much
about what it is or what it'sfor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So to actually speak to someone on the inside of the
organization who is prettysenior in that organization is
really helpful, I think, because, as with anything, when an idea
runs away you get a lot of kindof offshoots that are probably
not particularly healthy orhelpful.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, absolutely, and you're going to learn some of
the basics, if this is new toyou.
You know what a minimumeffective dose of cold is, how
to do cold exposure safely, allthe way up to the best ice baths
on the market.
And you're also going to hearabout breathwork and how it can
affect your stress response.
And also we go behind thescenes of the breathwork
industry and talk a little bitabout the wild west the wild
(01:33):
west of breathwork, teachertrainings and what Wim Hof and
their organization are doing toroot out the inevitable bad
actors in the breathwork spacethe inevitable bad actors in the
breathwork space, exactly, andthere's also some very useful
day-to-day practices that youcan get involved with to help
get some of these benefits ofWim Hof without leaving your
(01:54):
home.
All right, enjoy, listener.
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Speaker 1 (03:48):
Matt, welcome to the show.
It's great to have you on.
Could you please start bytelling us about your childhood
experiences and how they?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
motivated you to explore stress management?
Yeah, absolutely so.
There were two incidences thatreally shaped my view about
stress from an early age.
One was a lot of the domesticviolence that I encountered as a
kid through an alcoholicstepfather, you know.
I can recall a time, onespecific one, where my mom had a
(04:19):
disturbance, a common fightthat would happen in the middle
of the night, and we were usedto this kind of thing.
We moved a lot as kids.
We had police over at our houseall the time, one of those
kinds of things, and in thisparticular incident we were
trying to run away from himbeing an attacker.
This stepfather and I'd held thedoor open for my mom and my
(04:42):
little brother, who was a babyat the time, rushing through the
door to try to get to the carsafely in the garage and my
sister and I were lagging a bitbehind and my sister, you know,
pulled a knife from the butcherblock to kind of hold him back
at a distance and it worked.
And I can recall holding thedoor open to the garage and
(05:02):
everything started to narrow andgo black, which is common in an
extreme stress response.
And what motivated me to getout of that was a voice, it
propelled me.
I said come on, let's go, andeverything kind of came back
online and my sister and I gotout of there safely and that was
(05:24):
a pretty strong memory thatheld with me through any number
of years.
I actually detail it quite abit in my book on Stronger
Through Stress, because it wasincidents like that and others
that really shaped myunderstanding of how extreme
stress can play a giant roleeven ones that were happening
years ago in terms of how theyshow up with anxiety and
(05:47):
depression and any number ofthings that many people
experience after encounteringthese and other like incidents.
So that was one that reallyshaped it early on.
Another was the death of myfather as a teenager.
So my father was a wonderful man, very respected within the
community, and he died kind ofunexpectedly of cancer and that
(06:10):
was quite hard, and so that kindof sent me into my early 20s
with just a lot of grief, a lotof depression, and I didn't
really see a way out of it.
My youth was really comprised ofpouring myself into sports to
try to build confidence andconnection, and that worked
quite well actually.
It was a wonderful outlet, butit didn't resolve a lot of the
(06:34):
anxiety that underlines sweatyhands going into any sort of
difficult or challengingsituation, and the feelings of
sort of depression were alwayspresent and the feelings of sort
of depression were alwayspresent.
And so really, what I waslooking for is a way to get
beyond that, right To get to thepoint where I could have actual
resolution, and what I found inmy early 20s was actually
(07:00):
martial arts.
That was the first time, as Ireally delved into many of those
practices, that I felt peace,that I felt that restored
confidence, and it started togive me a lot of hope and
inspiration that a new lenscould be possible and it started
to frame my understanding aboutstress.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Wow Well, thank you for sharing that, Matt.
It sounds.
Wow Well, thank you for sharingthat, Matt.
It sounds, yeah, awful, and Ireally appreciate that story you
(07:41):
shared and I love how youreframed the trauma.
As sort of you know part ofyour they've had traumatic
things is whether or not theycan use that as fuel, as you've
done, or if they can just use itto feel like a victim.
So well done for that.
I was really interested by thefact that you said there was a
voice that came to you when youhad that blackout.
What do you think that voicewas?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I think it's probably a survival instinct.
It's like you can't afford topass out now.
So, whatever it is like, let itcome from the gut and you know
and pull it forward.
And so the voice that cameinside of me that knew it had to
get out, it caused a lot ofrelief actually in that moment
(08:23):
and steered me back to an actionstate, instead of getting to
that point where you just freezeand you shut down.
Because I was very close tothat.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And we haven't actually spoken much about
martial arts on this podcast.
What do you think it was aboutmartial arts that particularly
resonated for you and gave yousuch a sense of hope?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Well, I think, coming out of the early days of
experiencing a lot of thatdomestic violence as a young
child, I felt helpless, right.
I felt incapable and I had alot of anger and resentment as a
result.
And trying to just do sports orthese other things didn't
necessarily make me feel lesshelpless, right.
(09:06):
But martial arts is all abouttapping into that fight or
flight response in a very strongway.
You have to negotiate a hundredboundaries with different
training partners in order to doit safely and to push the
bounds of development you haveto you really learn.
You know actually how to fightand how to fight well, and you
understand limitations and youunderstand your own capacity and
(09:28):
capability.
You understand how to grapplewith these base elements that
are so central to our being,which is self and other harm,
right.
And so tapping into all of that, it was no longer a mystery.
I knew what I was capable of.
I could see it day in and dayout.
I also knew what thelimitations are for most people.
(09:49):
I understand how skill made adifference versus the
non-skilled.
I also understood thelimitations of that right.
All of those pieces sort of playa role to provide perspective
and give sort of trueunderstanding of that field and
as a young man, I really had alot of questions If I fought
(10:11):
back, would I be able to controlmyself, or did I have so much
anger that I wouldn't?
That scared me, right.
So that means I've got to justpush everything down because I
don't want to let myself explode, like that was a very
disruptive thing and causes agreat deal of anxiety and
depression in its own right.
So by having a positive outletwhere you actually get to test
(10:34):
these things and put yourselfout there and contend with
another human being wow, soinformative and so stress
relieving where it just givesyou a sense of peace and
empowerment and I took that andI said, okay, this is something
that I'm going to study for therest of my life, and I know
martial arts is a giant category, so I shaped it very
(10:56):
specifically over time, but atthe beginning I was just looking
for something that would helpme find that sort of deeper
meaning, both the spiritual sideas well as the very practical
nuts and bolts of how to defendyourself.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, Matt, that was really interesting what you were
sharing about grief, because Ihad a lot of grief around my
sort of teenage years andtwenties.
I lost my father or mygrandparents in a relatively
short amount of time.
And I remember going to a Reikisession.
I was at like a group Reikishare and there was one lady
(11:32):
there who was working on me andat the end she was like do you
mind if I share some things thatI picked up from doing Reiki on
you?
And she was just like I spent alot of time around your chest
and around your lungs because itjust feels like there's so much
grief there and I don't know ifyou've lost people, but it
seems like you're holding a lotof stuff there and it makes me
(11:53):
want to, it makes me tear up alittle bit just to share it
right now.
But that was about the timethat I became a breath worker,
became really interested in thebreath.
So I'm wondering if, similarly,if this grief process that you
went through was connected toyour Wim Hof instructor
experience.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Certainly, breath work is such a big component
within the grief domain, justwithin anything that requires
sort of that big acceptancepiece.
And specifically the Wim Hofmethod comprises really two
tools.
I mean, we can also talk aboutthe mindset, that's the third
(12:33):
one but the two I'm speaking ofis the breathing exercises and
the cold right, the cold therapy.
So because your question wasdirected specifically around
breath work, let's start there.
So the one of the mostimpactful things that I've seen
is finding that consciousconnection deep through the
(12:53):
breath and tapping into parts ofthe brain that allow us to
really let go right, physicallylet go.
So the w Hof method, forexample, is comprised of a very
strong inhale and a very passiveexhale and you do that through
a series of cycles.
(13:13):
You know, 40 cycles usually ismaybe a basic protocol.
And so through those 40 cyclesyou're practicing the physical
act of stimulating an actionresponse from the body, followed
by a very passive letting go.
So many times in our liveswe're told, ah, just let it go,
let it go.
But pairing that with an actualphysical action, cyclically, is
(13:38):
extremely powerful.
And the inhale which stimulatesthe action-oriented side of
ourselves and the inhale whichstimulates the action-oriented
side of ourselves is veryimpactful because it starts to
interface with the limbic partof our brain that's the emotion
center, and when you tie lungsand brain together in that way,
it can be truly profound.
And so yes is the answer toyour question.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I think it's really impactful, and especially around
things that are very difficult,that people have contended with
, and grief being one of them,and so, in terms of like linking
Wim Hof to stress management,can you maybe describe a bit
about what's going on there andhow it does that?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes, the easiest way to think about it is that it's
got two practices basicallywithin the method that help us
reframe our relationship tostress.
One is the breathing cyclesthat I was just describing.
They are sending us into anactual stress response.
It's controlled, but it's onpurpose.
So we're sending ourselves intoa big stress and then followed
(14:41):
by a breath hold which sears usdown into a rest response.
So we're training the system tostress at a great deal and rest
immediately following it, andby doing that we get out of what
I call stress recoil.
That's where we put ourselvesinto this elevated stress state
(15:01):
but remain there for hours, days, weeks, months, years.
That break the body down overtime, and so that's one of the
best ways that it reframes it.
Now, breath holds in and ofthemselves can be more than just
a rest.
You know variation.
They can also be amplifiers incertain types of breath work,
and in the Wim Hof method theyare certainly playing a role as
(15:22):
amplifying the effects of boththe stress and the rest, and so
it becomes a very good practiceto learn how to manage a good
stress response and go deep,deep within a resting response
and finding that duality withina single exercise Within the
cold we're actually practicinggetting into a stress response.
(15:43):
Again, the cold water stimulatesa very specific stress response
.
Through the cold and in thepath of that we're trying to
practice acceptance, that deeperlayer of I'm not going to
change the environment around me, so I can only adapt and change
myself.
And that is extremely helpfulfor any number of circumstances
(16:03):
we find ourselves in that causeus stress, where we can't
control the circumstances, thestress that we don't choose.
But we learn how to show updifferently.
We learn to show up with calm,with peace, and learn to breathe
slowly amidst the stress.
And so the breath work withinthe cold practice is very slow
and controlled Inhale throughthe nose and long exhales
(16:24):
through the mouth, because weknow that long exhales help
stimulate that rest response inany given cycle.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So we've got these two duality things that are
happening where we're reframingstress with the body using these
practices yeah, I thinkreframing stress is such a
battle and I think the type ofpeople in the world who think
like we shouldn't have anystress are the people that need
this the most.
(16:52):
I feel like you know there aretypes of people who think that,
yeah, life should just be easy,or all times, and we should.
You know, there's that story ofthe king who wants to walk down
the beach and it's like apebbly beach, and so he decides
right, we're going to make thewhole, the whole of the beach,
leather so it's smooth for himto walk instead of just putting
(17:12):
some leather shoes on himself.
And then, you know, it's thatsaying of the prepare the child
for the road, not the road forthe child.
Yes, we can do some preparingof the road, but ultimately life
is always going to be stressfuland the more stress resilience
we can have, the better.
And you know, when you in myenvironment, academia, there are
people who think that, like you, should never hear a different
(17:33):
opinion, because a differentopinion is violence.
Or you know, they don'tunderstand that having
microaggressions and focusing onmicroaggressions is actually
making people more anxious.
And this mindset stuff is soimportant.
It's almost like people, it'slike it's too easy.
People like no, I don't want tojust switch my mindset because
that's too easy, it's too muchof a low-hanging fruit.
(17:54):
I want something, you know,bigger, grander.
I want structural change.
So I get quite frustrated atthat mentality.
But the wimim Hof method seemsto be changing that for a lot of
people.
So yeah, misconceptions aboutstress that's one example of a
misconception of stress.
We should just never experiencestress, I would say, as a
(18:14):
misconception.
So can you tell us more aboutcommon misconceptions?
Yeah, I mean just to piggybackon that.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It's not just the mental reframe that's necessary,
though it is.
That's a very powerful thing.
Just setting our mind andhaving that acceptance that
stress is guaranteed in life,right?
So you're going to choose it.
Which hard do you want tochoose?
Do you want to choose thedifficulty of, you know, not
being prepared to handledifficult times, or do you want
to put yourself in more of anempowered locus of control seat
(18:44):
and, you know, have somepreemptive practices that allow
you to weather any storm?
Personally, I would like tochoose the latter.
Right, I want to prepare myselfbecause it makes a difference.
But in terms of misconceptionsand this is a common one anybody
kind of thinking or hearingabout the cold for the first
time, they think I'm alreadycold.
Why do I want to go into thecold If I'm already cold?
(19:05):
How does that work?
And surprisingly, when you dothat, when you actually expose
yourself to these elements in apositive way, you're not cold
anymore.
Right, you end up building thebody, comes back stronger, it
builds resilience, it buildsvascular strength, if you will.
And now, all of a sudden, bloodflow is easier.
You physically don't feel coldnearly as much because you're
(19:28):
exposing yourself to theseelements in a dose that's
beneficial, and so I thinkthat's a big piece and a big
misconception as well.
It's like if I don't want that Ibetter avoid it.
It's probably the opposite.
It's like if I don't want that,I better dig into it and lean
into it.
I just need to make sure I'vegot I do it in a way that has a
(19:49):
proper dose right, and so thatbecomes sort of the driving
factor is what's the rightamount?
And trying to figure that outsometimes for new people can be
challenging, or even people thatare training it can be
challenging, and so I'm happy togive your listeners some advice
on how to do that.
What are good indicators todetermining if a stress practice
(20:12):
is actually working in yourfavor or working against you?
Because it'll go one way or theother right, and we want to
have some good informationaround that.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, carry on with that.
Yeah, tell us more about dose.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So there's basically four indicators for any practice
and you can use it for yourathletics that you enjoy, or
your cold practice, if you liketo expose yourself to the colder
heat, if you love sauna.
All of these things could bewonderful practices.
Or fasting, you know, that'sanother good stressor that's
very popular in today's world,whether that's intermittent
fasting or some of the longerduration fasts.
(20:47):
But if you want to know if apractice is working for you,
there's four times that you wantto check.
One is I love to do in themornings.
Well, I'm going to get in thereand I'm going to pay attention,
I'm going to make thetransition to a nice rest amidst
(21:08):
the stress and I'm going tocheck in.
How do I feel?
And I should be feeling good.
Right, I should feel that it'sexhilarating, maybe a little
challenging, that's all well andfine, but I should feel good.
I shouldn't feel that deep ache, chill, you know, trying to
keep everything together,shattering and that kind of
thing just to tough it through.
That's not the purpose of thepractice.
(21:29):
So I should feel good in thattime.
Number two is how do you feelabout 15 to 30 minutes after the
activity?
In the case of the cold, Ishould feel relatively warmed up
right.
So my hands and feet if I'm anew practitioner might still
feel a little bit cold, but byall means I should feel
basically recovered.
You know, I shouldn't againfeel that deep ache and chill.
(21:50):
I should feel pretty good, highenergy, ready to go about my
day.
The next check-in is four hourslater.
So after four to six hours iswhere the body basically goes
through a number of different,you know, positive arcs and in
this case we're going to have abig boost of adrenaline that
comes from the cold and it'sgoing to sustain for about four
(22:12):
hours or so.
So you should feel clear.
You know, mentally clear iswhat I mean.
You should feel energized, youshould feel, you know, all by
all means pretty good.
And then the last one is how doyou sleep at night?
So a practice like the cold orany really solid practice
martial arts practice, et ceterashould help you get enough of
(22:35):
that physical activity out ofthe way that you sleep well at
night.
If you've got sustainedadrenaline in the system or
you're feeling anxious or you'restill in a stress response
because you haven't fully warmedup yet in the case of this cold
practice, well, that tells youthat you probably overdid it, or
you need to support your bodybecause it should facilitate
sleep quite well.
And so if you've got thosemarkers, how do you feel in the
(22:56):
thing?
15 to 30 minutes after, fourhours later, and sleep at night.
You know if a practice isworking for you or not.
If you're not recovering,you're going to get up in the
morning, you're going to feellethargic, you're not going to
want to do it whatever it lookslike and you're going to need
extra rest time.
So people are bound to makemistakes, but if you keep those
(23:17):
things in mind, you can sustaina practice over time and have it
keep serving you.
And it gets us out of thismindset that more is always
better, which is just not true.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Interesting and if you could tell us a little bit
about why people are coming toWim Hof.
Is there kind of a pattern thatyou're seeing, or is it just
curiosity?
People have tried other thingsand it's not working.
What's going on for peoplethere?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well, I think you hit it on the head in terms of all
of those reasons.
So people are coming for theirown reasons.
Just to give you a quick makeup, from the groups that I trained
last week, I had one guy thatwas special forces, so he was a
pretty serious guy, had done alot of cold training as part of
his military training there, sohe had been sent to Norway to do
(24:04):
pretty deep cold stuff.
But he found, actually, thatthis practice totally reframed
how he looked at it.
He no longer had to use it asthis deep fight thing.
It was actually a much morestress relieving exercise than
simply this mindset of we've gotto build toughness in the body
and he said I can sustain thecold a lot longer, a lot easier,
(24:26):
a lot better.
And you add to that some of thebreathing exercises that go
along with it and he's able toget out of some of the PTSD and
other things that he experiencedin wartime.
So super powerful, and contrastthat for another lady.
Uh, this woman, sarah she's whata beautiful woman, this just
(24:47):
beautiful heart.
She had been battling sixdifferent autoimmune disorders
since she was a child, stuffthat ended up causing her limbs
to dislocate randomly and shewouldn't be able to walk at
times or do all kinds of stuff.
She at one point wrote down herlist of things that she would
(25:13):
love to do if she could, and oneof them at the top, was to do
her own laundry, like that washer aspirational goal.
And you can think about how lowyou have to be to make your
aspirational goal I wish I coulddo my own wash.
How low you have to be to makeyour aspirational goal I wish I
could do my own wash.
Right, so you can appreciatewhere this woman's coming from.
And she had found the Wim Hofmethod and it was the only thing
that put her on a path ofhigher energy.
It was the only thing.
(25:35):
And she was extremely skepticalwhen she was dragged to the
workshop the first time.
Fast forward now, a couple ofyears later, and she's trying to
be an instructor to share itwith others, right?
So people come from this fromall vantage points and so forth
for their own reasons, but it'sattractive, for I think one big
reason is that it's so simple,right, it's a very simple thing
(25:58):
to follow.
Cold water can be foundvirtually anywhere in the world.
I do spend a lot of time inMexico City.
So I will say it's noteverywhere, because you can't
find a cold shower there andwater is actually pretty scarce,
and so there's some challengesto contend with.
But for the most part you canfind cold water just about
anywhere, if nothing else, in ashower.
So it's accessible.
(26:20):
And the breathwork, of course,you don't even need that.
So the breath work alone issomething that can be done by
anybody and that's reallypowerful.
And then it's a shift in mindset.
It's this idea that we'rewilling to take more sort of
that internal locus of controlstep and say I can do something
about how I feel in a positiveway and I can have growth in my
mindset to say that I can dosomething about how I feel in a
(26:41):
positive way and I can havegrowth in my mindset to say that
I can do something right, Idon't have to just be bound by
limiting beliefs that I have nocontrol.
And so when people find hope inthat growth mindset, they're
willing to step in and give it ashot.
And when you get the resultsthat you thought you were going
to get which is the vastmajority of people stick with it
(27:02):
and they tell their friends,and their friends tell their
friends and you try to coachyour family and you coach
everybody you love because, damnit, this thing works.
It's pretty straightforward, soyou like that.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, and dose of cold.
What do you recommend prescribe?
What's a minimum effective dosefor people with cold exposure?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
a lot less than people think, so I'll start
there at least right it's a lotless than people think.
So a couple of things that I'lljust mention.
So if you've got water near,you know, let's say, near zero
or one degree celsius, or youknow 32 to 35 degrees, well then
even inside of 20 secondsyou're getting a cascade of
(27:47):
positive hormonal effects, right.
You get the boost in dopamine,you get the boost in
norepinephrine, you get theboost of adrenaline, all this
kind of good stuff that happens.
You get endorphins that arereleased so you feel happy and
pain-free, and all this kind ofgood stuff.
So that happens very, veryrapidly in super cold water.
And so the next question is didthe practice serve you
(28:09):
correctly in terms of, did yougo inside the water and make
this internal shift from astress to more of a rest amidst
the stress?
So if you've done that, yourpractice is basically you're
good.
So, typically for a newerpractitioner, in quite cold
water, even in water as much asyou know six or seven degrees
Celsius or 40, you know midforties or so for Fahrenheit,
(28:33):
you know, even inside of that,it's going to take newer
practitioners sometimes 30seconds or a minute or some even
two minutes to make that happen, right.
So that's really the practice.
Go in there and make the shift.
Once the shift is done, if youfeel good, get out, do it again,
like you know, do it again thenext day or whatever.
You don't need to stay in therefor 10, 15 minutes or something
(28:56):
like that, which will almostcertainly break the body down.
Okay, so that's one.
The other piece is that therewas a great study that was done
where a guy that hated cold hedidn't like cold, but he was a
good researcher and he wanted todetermine a minimal effective
dose, and so he set up a coupleof different groups and said
we're going to give for 30 days.
We're going to give one group ashower, a cold shower, for 30
(29:19):
seconds, another group for 60and a last group for 90 seconds,
and compare the groups, and,sure enough, all three groups
improved all the metrics and itdidn't really make a much
different big of a differencebetween the 30 and 90 seconds.
They all improved their mood,they felt less pain, they had
fewer sick days, they're morepositive overall.
So you look at that and you say, well, gosh, 30 or 90 seconds,
(29:42):
that's no big deal, right, I canmake that happen.
And the answer is yeah.
So you look at that and you say, well gosh, 30 or 90 seconds,
that's no big deal, right, I canmake that happen.
And the answer is yeah, so youcan make it happen.
So I would say, like, juststart there and just keep
playing with it.
I'm nearly a decade into thepractice and I've got a very,
very strong practice because Ilead people into some pretty
epic settings.
Like I've got a retreat that'scoming up where I'll take people
into the Alaska wilderness inwinter right, and it's an
(30:06):
extraordinary adventure retreatand I guide brand newcomers to
that practice as well as veryskilled and advanced
practitioners that come alongthat trip as well, and so I need
to be really in my element whenI guide people into that space,
and so I've got a very strongpractice.
But even me, most of the timeI'm in cold water for, let's say
, less than three minutes in agiven day, right, I'm not
(30:30):
spending eons in the cold water.
It's not necessary.
Now, if you ask me to go outfor an extended period or go
into deep cold, I can do it.
My body's ready to adapt.
But in terms of the baselinepractice day to day, I just try
to make it feel good.
That's the point, you know, andso I would just suggest that
you don't have to keep pushing,even if you're looking for a
(30:51):
long-term practice that'llcontinue to pay dividends.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And it sounds like this is very much a morning
practice to take the fullbenefit of the adrenaline and,
for hour, sustained adrenaline.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, so you can approach it two different ways.
The primary way is, yes, earlyin the morning it's typically
going to be best, and or earlyafternoon, depending on what
your training schedule is andwhat specific adaptations you're
looking for.
But usually first half of theday is going to be ideal and for
many people they're going tofind the best just to include it
(31:26):
in their morning cold shower.
You know, in the morning showerat the beginning of their day
it's going to be the easiest toinclude.
The exception to that is ifyou've got sauna present.
So if you can do contrasttherapy which is fantastic in
its own right for a hundreddifferent reasons you can do
that at night and what's goingto happen is actually going to
facilitate your body giving awayheat in a very good way.
(31:49):
That's going to help you sleepbetter at night.
That's going to work along withthe melatonin that we produce.
That's going to lower core bodytemperature in order to get us
into sleep.
It's going to help us withsleep pressure in the middle to
help us stay asleep.
So there's lots of good reasons, and so cold can be certainly
included along with heat in theevening.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
very few people can sort of get around that
exception, but I'll still bethere that's how I do it, yeah,
sort of end of the work day justbefore dinner, about you know
five, six o'clock, sauna ice,and that I find it really
relaxes me.
Um, if people want to getstarted, so going on to like
models of ice bars, you haveyour freezer.
(32:30):
What do you recommend to people?
Because I've just come acrossthis thing.
It's called the.
It's like a.
I'm looking at it on amazon.
It's called an ice shower andit's just an attachment that you
put on your shower head andit's like 20 bucks and I think
that's a way for people to start.
So people want to start withthat, or what other suggestions
do you have and what's yourfavorite model for people who
(32:51):
want to spend a bit of money onit?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah.
So there's a range of budgetsthat are available, a range of
products for every budget thatare available these days.
The ice shower that's a reallygood little thing.
You've also got some of thesenew chillers that'll pop right
into your bathtub that aren'tterribly expensive, so that can
be a really easy one as well.
If you prefer a bath rather thana shower, some people struggle
(33:14):
with, you know, feeling like theshower is constantly hitting
them and they're having troubleto adapt to it.
I'll tell you that if you canget past that initial discomfort
, you can get past that initialdiscomfort.
You can build sort of thatwetsuit effect that actually
feels pretty good.
But that's just my piece.
I know we're going to bedifferent, but so if you like a
bath, you can get one of thoseexternal chillers, and they're a
couple hundred bucks these days, is all, and so they're not
(33:36):
terribly expensive.
Other people I know that livein more cold areas.
They just set up their bathsand they put them outside and
they break through the ice, youknow, for the morning, and so
most of the year it's going tobe cold and at some points they
may have to actually heat it upa little bit.
So depending on that.
But those are cost-effectiveways and it can be even as
(33:57):
simple as like one of those sortof Japanese O'Furrow type tubs
that are vinyl, so less than ahundred dollars.
If you want to spend a littlebit more money than the chillers
that are on the market thesedays, there's a good range,
everything from some of theaquarium chillers that are going
to run, you know, about halfthe price of a more marketed
(34:20):
cold chiller for ice baths.
You're going to probably paydouble, triple or quadruple for
those and there's some reasonsfor that.
I'm not suggesting there's not.
Some of them will go heat orcold, which is nice, and they're
pretty robust.
But you can have options alongthose lines.
Some of the top brands that Ithink are doing a pretty darn
good job gosh Renew's got apretty good one.
(34:42):
I mean that bat's quiteexpensive though if I'm not
mistaken it's probably $14,000or $15,000, but it makes it so
nice and it's pretty remarkable.
You've got Plunge that product.
It runs anywhere from, I think,$6,000 to as much as $12,000,
depending on the unit.
So these can get quite pricey.
But if you're looking to spendmoney and you like the elegance
(35:05):
and the look and you want it tobe serviced for any number of
years and guaranteed.
These can be wonderful productsfor those that are interested.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, I have to give a shout out to Monk.
I don't know if you come acrossMonk ice bars.
I just invested in them,crowdfunded them and yeah, I
think they're doing a good job.
Uh, I think they're kind ofmid-range, sort of five grand,
and anthony joshua, theheavyweight champion or former
champion is, is an investor aswell, so he's sort of the front
man of them, but I really thinkmonk are gonna be pretty big
(35:36):
then it is big enough to fitanthony joshua in.
Yes so yeah, it is.
Um, yeah, okay, great.
Well, going on to breath work,so one of the things we I kind
of mentioned is like, uh, inwellness I think there's a kind
of idea that just more is alwaysbetter and you know, like if
(36:00):
the only tool you have is ahammer, everything looks like a
nail.
I, as part of my PhD, lookedinto sort of the dose response
of conscious connected breathingand found there was no
difference between people doingone 90 minute session per week
and people doing a 90 minutesession plus doing conscious
connected breathing every day.
(36:21):
In terms of anxiety, and assomeone who's just finished with
the Oxygen Advantages advancedtraining, I'm very interested in
CO2 tolerance.
So one rumor that comes out ofthe Wim Hof method is often when
people start with the breathwork, their breath hold time
goes up, but then they do itevery day for a year and then
(36:43):
their breath hold time goes waydown, their carbon dioxide
sensitivity goes way down andthey experience increased
breathlessness and some sort ofnegative effects.
Is that true to that rumor?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Well, yes and no.
So let's get into it, because Ithink that's a wonderful
question.
One of the things, as wementioned before, about the Wim
Hof Method breathing is that itdoes steer us into a stress
response.
So you can imagine that if youoverstress your body, if you're
doing that too often, you'regoing to steer yourself into a
more action-dominant state, onand on, and that in and of
(37:19):
itself is going to reduce thetime that you're able to hold
your breath.
It's going to elevate yourheart.
That you're able to hold yourbreath right, it's going to
elevate your heart rate and dosome negative impact.
And so the ideal practicewithin the Wim Hof method is one
that allows you to stayconnected, that allows you to
raise the ceiling of tolerancewithin oxygen saturation but
(37:39):
simultaneously lowers the floor,which allows you to get into
that more hypoxemic state andhelps you deal with oxygen
deprivation and, ideally, co2tolerance as well.
So I think it depends on anindividual practice, and I think
the second reason that peoplestruggle with that is, as you do
(38:02):
something over and over, yourbody's going to adapt to
whatever it is.
So that's a piece, and thenmentally we tend to check out
right.
We're no longer as connected toa practice over time.
So I think there's a variety ofreasons why people experience
that, but what I'll say is thatas I work with people to slow
their breathing rate down, as Iwork with people to slow their
(38:37):
breathing rate down and theystart to get reconnected to a
practice and include somevariations that are helpful to
restore connection that thosebreath holds come and to the
point that I don't even think isnecessary in order to get the
benefits of a practice.
But for all sake, I just wantto recognize that.
So we're seeing a lot ofdifferent things and I think
there's a few different reasonsthat we see that, but what you
mentioned can actually happen.
(38:58):
So, yes, that could be the casein some cases interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Um, I think you said you've been practicing for 10
years, matt, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, and in that time I'm sureyou've seen the wim hof name
and brand grow almostexponentially.
Does that come with a few kindof, I guess, rogue practitioners
or people kind of trying topiggyback off that name?
Um, uh, I don't need you toname names, but is that
(39:26):
something we're seeing?
Name names.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, no names.
Yes, of course, certainly thathappens.
The Wim Hof Method it's grownvery substantially over the last
10 years.
When Wim was first starting totake people to Poland, there was
four or maybe six people thatwould attend a retreat.
(39:52):
So now there's multiple weeksof 80 to 100 per week and then
most recently they started toput them back into one week, but
at a new hotel, and it's hugefor that particular week.
So a lot of people arepracticing and it's a very it's
a growing practice and you knowthat that's going to cause any
number of people to eitherpiggyback on, latch on to it,
(40:18):
shift, how it's talked about andyou know, even the Wim Hof
method itself has grown quite abit and changed its view on
several things over the courseof the decade.
So I think that's important torecognize as well, because what
was taught?
When I first joined, I was partof the first group of US
instructors.
I began to train people in theacademy in 2018.
(40:39):
And so I've trained, you know,six, seven years.
I'm going into my seventh yearof training instructors.
Seven years.
I'm going into my seventh yearof training instructors and you
know, at the beginning we didn'thave the same curriculum or
even close to it, in the samepractices that we do today, and
so a lot has shifted over timeand, I believe, for the most
part very positive direction.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Can you say more about what's changed in the Wim
Hof method?
What do they?
Speaker 3 (41:06):
they changed their mind on but very much a
(41:27):
practitioner and not so much ateacher, right?
So I wouldn't call Wim Hof ateacher per se in the
traditional sense.
His teaching style is bydemonstration and encouraging
people to explore their ownpersonal limits and sort of
breaks that inside, thatlimiting belief inside many
people that allows them toreally access the deepest parts
of themselves and get curiousabout what they're capable of.
And in that sense he's ateacher.
(41:48):
But in terms of like nuts andbolts and describing many of the
different aspects, that's nothis skillset, I would say.
And so some of the things thatwe had tried early on were at
you know, we're pushing ourbodies in any number of ways
pretty hard, a lot morebreathing perhaps than we needed
to do.
Right, in terms of the nuancesof how to breathe, we're not.
(42:11):
Then we're really talked about.
You know, whim is kind of famousfor saying I don't care if you
use your, your nose or your,your any hole, just get it in.
I'll just put it that way.
It's kind of how he puts itright, kind of crass and crude,
and that's not necessarily fullyaccurate.
What what he's trying to do issimplify it so that people don't
get in their own way, right,but that's not terribly helpful
(42:33):
if we're actually talking abouthow to instruct people to
breathe, both for that exercisebut, more importantly, breathe
throughout your life, becausethe Wim Hof method says nothing
about how to breathe through therest of your day.
It's only a specific set ofexercises, and I think people
conflate those two things.
They're like ah oh, you shouldalways breathe like this.
(42:54):
That would be insane, likeyou're.
That's not good for you tobreathe as we do in the Wim Hof
Method, breathing exercisesthroughout the course of the day
.
But if you do your exercisesproperly, then you're going to
actually improve your breathinga lot down the road.
And so over the years we'vereally tried to instruct people
how do I show up in life better,or at least that's been what
(43:15):
I've tried to do as a teacherI'm one teacher out of several
and obviously there's a lot ofpeople that practice throughout
the world but just trying tohelp people really understand
the difference betweenparticular exercises that should
be done in a part of the dayand how to breathe throughout
the rest of your day and throughthe rest of your performance or
any other things that require,you know, sort of a shift in
(43:38):
breathing.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, and so I guess what are you doing to ensure
that the high standards are metand maintained during your
teaching instructors?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah, only that I can do on my weeks, you know.
So I'll take thatresponsibility to the extent
that I can do myself.
What I try to do is reallyunderstand all the different
parts of breathing breathing.
So the most common problemsthat I see in today's world
(44:10):
where we discuss this topic isthat most are taking a very thin
slice and trying to suggestthat's the whole, and that's not
really the case.
And so I've really tried toread as many studies as possible
about breathing, about oxygensaturation in both tissues and
in the blood, why things changethe difference between conscious
(44:31):
, active breathing andpathologies.
Right, because most of thestudies that are done are
actually pathological based,meaning they're trying to
address a specific condition ina hospital setting or an acute
care setting, or for nurses tounderstand how and when to
intervene on a patient's behalfif they're in distress, even
(44:51):
though they may not present assuch.
So a lot of studies are aroundthat, and I think we sometimes
will also cause a lot ofconfusion around the differences
between internal and externalrespiration.
And so my job over the lastdecade has been to dive into as
(45:12):
much of the literature aspossible, as much into the
medical information as possible,the physiology and so forth,
and just do that to the extentthat I can and then back it up
and also do applied breathingstuff.
So I had some of the earlydevices that were reading SMO2,
(45:33):
for example that's musclesaturation, oxygen saturation in
the muscle, as well as yourblood saturation oximeters, and
I was performing any number ofexperiments.
So, for example, I did thesethings at sea level, I did them
during martial arts classes, Idid them at rest, I did them on
extreme altitude as I ascendedKilimanjaro in 33 hours and
(45:55):
change right, so adapting fromsea level with no other means
other than a breathing method tosupport me and track the data,
while I did it right For me andsix other guys.
And so I'm a very data drivenperson and I would say in that
sense I'm quite unique in myposition because I don't steer
(46:18):
into some of the discussions orideas that are always purported
from the Wim Hof method.
I would say I steer away fromsome of that because I like to
see data and have it supportedvery clearly and also understand
that like what are the actualmechanisms behind each of these
things and why they may work?
(46:38):
I want to know the reason why,and so that's been my deep dive,
and then I carry thatinformation forward and try to
do my best to train theinstructors to really understand
it.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
From that point of view, I would say that's the
responsibility I carry yeah,yeah, that's great because, yeah
, I'm affiliated with the gbpa Idon't know if you know them,
but they're more well, it's theglobal breathwork practitioners
alliance is more to do withconscious connected breathing
and they're trying to maintainstandards of practitioners and
(47:11):
facilitators.
And, as you said, wild Westthat I think everyone gets
thinks that all breathwork isthe Wild West and it is because
it's so hard to monitorpractitioners and it's so hard
to monitor people who are noteven practitioners.
You know, then they've justdone the wim hof method from the
app and then they go out andteach people.
Same with conscious connectedbreathing.
(47:32):
Yeah, yeah, face palmabsolutely drives me mental.
So the gbpa is obviously doingsomething.
Wim hof is, you know the wholemethod, I guess is the biggest
breath work organization in theworld, certainly bigger than the
gbpa and breath guru, who Iteach for.
So you say you you're trying tomonitor for your week, but is
there scope for the wim hofmethods to really be policing
(47:54):
its own, its own staff, raisingthose standards?
Because you mentioned you wereteaching 73 people at once and
I'm teaching on the breath guruconscious connected thing and
we've decided six is the maximumwe can teach at once.
Conscious connected breathingis more about you know.
It's more like a therapy, soyou do need to go more into to
holding space for people.
But yeah, can you say moreabout what wim hof and the
(48:18):
organization are doing on thestandards?
Speaker 3 (48:21):
yeah, I think what they've done that's a positive
is that they've they continue toadd to their programming and
change their curriculum and makeit more robust.
And if you were to ask me howdo I personally feel have they
met the highest standard thatthey should?
(48:42):
No, that would be the shortanswer, but they're on their,
they're making improvements on aregular basis and so I have to
commend them on that side, right?
I think that when we look at 73practitioners and again that
was just for two weeks I had 40in one week and 36 in the next,
so I think total of 76 actuallythis last couple of weeks.
But those people have beenworking and training for close
(49:06):
to most of them close to ninemonths, right?
So it's not something thathappens just in the last week
and the rest of theresponsibility is through their
other modules that they gothrough to learn some of the
(49:30):
material, to learn about thestudies, to learn how the breath
practice, how it's impactful,what's the actual protocol and
why we do it, and so forth.
And then my week is reallyabout clarifying a lot of that
and pushing them forward, andwhat I see in five days of their
master module is prettyremarkable and I feel like
(49:52):
that's about the best I can dowithin the framework that's
offered there.
Do I wish that I had thosepeople for nine months myself?
A hundred percent, right?
Do I feel like we could do more?
Yes, a hundred percent.
And, as I mentioned, I feellike what I do is I give the
notes back to the organizationabout what I see and how I feel,
(50:15):
and I've seen them make reallypositive changes as they go
forward, so that's a good thing.
Many of the top teachers, thelead teachers, are certified in
more than one type of breathwork.
I think that's helpful becauseit gives them a little bit more
perspective outside of a singlepractice, which is good, and so
(50:36):
I think that's a benefit.
But I think we can only do whatwe can do, and that's what
we're doing right now.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yes, well, I don't want to grill you too hard.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
No, it's good.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I know you have I love it, have good intentions,
but um, what we're doing atbreath guru and my, my wife, is
doing her master's inpsychotherapy and, as you
probably know, psychotherapistshave to have supervision.
You know she's coming towardsthe end of her master's.
She'll be let out into theworld with practitioners and
she'll have to go to regularsupervision whilst until she
gets sort of 3000 hours worth oftraining.
(51:08):
So I think for breathworksupervision from the schools is
something that maybe we shouldlook at.
But is there any anysupervisors out there for Wim
Hof method instructors?
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah, I think there is.
I mean, there's a lot of peoplethat are trying to do their
best in terms of looking atinstructors that are out there
and there's a large communitythat people can ask questions if
something's not going well.
We try to have a number ofresources to continue to educate
people within that frameworkand so I think within that side
(51:42):
of things there is a help and ifpeople are doing something
reckless or sort of off thebounds, as soon as we hear about
it or the organization, Ishould say because that's really
their responsibility does tryto intervene and help people to
pull back.
What does happen, I will say,is that not everybody continues
to renew their certification andcarry on.
Not everybody continues theireducation.
(52:04):
Some people are looking for acertification to really do their
own thing, but they want tohave a piece of paper that
allows them to get business, andso maybe the intent is a little
bit different in some cases andthose people are really looking
to do and explore their ownpractices and their own styles.
That really has nothing to dowith the Wim Hof method.
So I think that happens as welland that's pretty hard to police
(52:25):
, if you will, but I think forthe vast majority of people that
are part of it.
Nobody's really looking to doharm.
Everybody's looking to do theirbest and to hold space for
people and guide them in apositive experience.
I would say that's theoverarching goal.
In most cases, the vastmajority right the people are
(52:46):
well-intentioned.
It's like with anything, thoughif you don't remain curious, if
you don't have a broaderperspective, if you don't
continue to build and reinforcea strong foundation within your
own practices, you don't knowwhat you don't know right, and
you'll never know what you don'tknow, but you're going to be
limited in your ability toassess potential issues or to
(53:08):
really understand and how tocare for people throughout an
arc of a breathing practice, andbreathing is extremely profound
, right.
It can be life-altering,life-changing both in the moment
and going forward, and so theresponsibility that we have as
breath workers, as people thatare helping people in this way,
is tremendous, and to look at itotherwise, I think, is a grave
(53:30):
mistake, and so one of thethings that I try to do is just
communicate that for the peoplethat I am specifically in
contact with and to say keepcurious about your practice,
keep curious about it in general.
Let's not try to just glub ontosomething to assume it's the
end all be all truth.
(53:50):
And how can we actually knowthat we're caring for people in
a proper way to make surethey're not getting damaged from
the work that we're doing, thatwe're actually facilitating a
positive, life-changingexperience, that it can be?
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Wow.
So what's next for you then,Matt?
That it can be.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Wow.
So what's next for you then,matt?
So what's next?
Oh well, I've got.
I've got some things that areon the horizon that I've been
working on.
So typically I would be holdingany number of events.
I do a number of different typesof events as a as my personal
brand.
I guide people in the cold.
Of course.
I run a martial arts school tohelp people in that sort of area
, and then I do a variety ofbreathing events, and one of
(54:32):
which is the vibrationalbreathing experience.
So that's always been a lot offun and that steers people to
the psychedelic using theirbreath, and so that's really
powerful and positive that I'vebeen playing with the last
couple of years.
But I've actually been workingon a new project that I hope to
be international with startingin the new year.
(54:53):
So if you look on my websiteright now, you'll only see
Alaska posted, and that's onpurpose.
So if you want to joinsomething, come to Alaska.
I'll guide you through there.
It's a wonderful deal.
We get four days of reallybeautiful, intense breath work.
We'll eat some of the finestfood made by private chefs,
we'll get into the Alaskanwaters both the frozen
(55:15):
waterfalls and we'll cut holesin the ice and be in the sauna.
I backpack saunas on site, wesleep in a great Airbnb group
home and we just community andit's fantastic right, four days
of just wonder.
But that's all that's up thereright now, instead of the
typical month to month events.
But I hope to launch my newproject in the first of the year
(55:37):
and I look forward to that.
Okay, when is the Alaska trip?
Alaska is February 5th throughthe 9th this year, february 5th
through the 9th.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Exciting yeah, so this is a secret.
The next thing yeah, I got tohold it back for now.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
It'll be a big project, but it has to do with a
lot of the things that I'vebeen working on within the
stress tools that I share withpeople to manage their stress
and to leverage it to live theirbest lives.
But I got to hold that back fornow because I've got one or two
things that are still on thehorizon that I have to button up
before I can announce that.
Fair enough, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
But stay in contact.
You can go on and get a freemembership on my website and you
can be privy to theannouncement as soon as it's
made.
And the website name is Mattsoulcom, so my last name is
s-o-u-l-e, so matt soulcom, andyou can find all the information
there awesome, all right well.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Thank you very much, matt.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
Thank you, andy yeah, thanks, matt, and
congratulations by being mykilimanjaro time by seven days.
It's pretty impressive, ifnothing else wait.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
How long did you do it?
I think it's like eight days.
Eight days, okay I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
That was great scenery.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
I did it in five days , three like three and a half up
, one and a half down.
You were six up two down.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah, yeah, okay, wow , 33 hours is serious it was
pretty fast.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
It was pretty fast were you running the way up?
No, on the way down I ran, Iran pretty fast, but on the way
up, no, we just hiked and wespent one overnight as part of
that.
So you go up midway and thenone overnight and then we push
to the top to get our time there.
It's pretty fast.
(57:24):
A wonderful experiment to getour time there.
It's pretty, pretty fast.
A wonderful experiment, really.
I was motivated by breathingand how it was impacting.
You know different breathingprotocols, different breathing
styles whether we were using thenose or the mouth, how we use
that, to what extent is eachrelevant and really tried to
inform my understanding ofbreathing physiology in real
(57:45):
time.
Especially as we steered intoextreme altitude, it becomes
pretty important.
I document all of this andstronger through stress.
There's a great story that goesalong with it.
That's my book that's out onamazon, so if you're interested
in learning more, you coulddefinitely read there.
Awesome it's been a greatpleasure having you on.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, you're obviously so knowledgeable and
clear on your, on your mission.
It's that's great to talk toyou yeah, all right um, I don't
know about you, but I wastotally blown away by the
introduction there um such amoving story and um so
(58:24):
eloquently spoke.
But what a what a example ofturning some serious um
adversity and traumatic eventsinto something so positive yeah,
I think that's such animportant reframe.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
I think there's a lot of the idea that if something
bad happens to you in a child,childhood you know childhood
trauma then you're just yourlife's over, you know you're,
you're a dud, you've, you've gotno chance.
But actually there are so manypeople who recover from trauma
and actually it fuels them, itpropels them to things that
perhaps they wouldn't have doneif they did have just, a very,
(58:59):
um, safe, normal, uneventfullife.
And uh, I think it was maybe itwas Bessel van de Kolk one of
the trauma people says you, Iworry less about the people who
have had childhood trauma thanthe people who have never
experienced any adversity.
And there's some amazingstatistics like in Encyclopedia
Britannica 90, I think it's like97% of the Encyclopedia
(59:23):
Britannica's most notable peopleof all time lost one or both
parents before the age of 14.
So certainly there are positiveconsequences to having
tragedies such as losing aparent or other terrible things.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I really enjoyed his story through, you know, martial
arts and really kind of goinginto the dissonance of it and
finding that peace withinmartial arts and then within
breathwork.
And it's very clear that hemaintains such high standards,
which is encouraging for anyonewho wants to get involved in Wim
Hof.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Yes, the standards in the breathwork industry are a
recurring theme on this podcast,but, yeah, it's first time
we've had someone from wim hof adifferent methodology to the
one that I teach, but a greatone nonetheless.
By the way, listen, I love wimhof.
I've done a lot of it.
I've met wim and uh, I reallylike their technique and what
they're doing for the world.
Just one disclaimer that weshould throw in here you never
(01:00:27):
want to do breath work, uh,breath holds, hyperventilation
in water because you can passout and people have died from
doing wim hof, breath in ice andin swimming pools and things
like that.
So, yeah, it's really importantthat if you're doing breath
work, it's it's not theconscious connected, it's not
SOMA, it's not voluntaryhyperventilation or Wim Hof.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
And to end on a slightly lighter note, were you
surprised by how much he'dbeaten my Kilimanjaro time?
What does that feel about,right it?
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
seemed probably right Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
No, that is amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Because when I did Kilimanjaroaro, willimanjaro, uh
, they were really like tryingto slow us down.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
We the same.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
I think that was partly like you paid for six
days and maybe we could get youto seven and then we get by the
day.
So can you just slow down?
Um, whereas we were, we weretrying to walk quite quickly.
I was.
I was like 19.
I was doing it with my frienduh moley shout out to him, he's
a listener and yeah, we were.
We were walking fast and theywere trying to walk quite
quickly.
I was like 19.
I was doing it with my friendMoley Shout out to him, he's a
listener.
And yeah, we were walking fastand they were trying to go slow.
So I think we probably couldhave done it quicker if we
(01:01:35):
wanted to, but yeah, 33 hours isoutrageous though.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah, it is, that's silly money.
So where do they find us Rich?
Yeah, it is that's silly money.
Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
So where do they find us Rich?
They find us at AndyEsam onInstagram, at TheBreathGeek on
(01:02:10):
Instagram and on my website,richardlblakecom and
TheBreathGeekcom, where you canfind out more about me, the
podcast, my breathwork practice,which you can now sign up for
sessions with me one-to-oneonline or, if you're in walnut
creek area you can come forin-person sessions as well
awesome, thank you rich thankyou addy, thank you listener,
bye.
Dr Richard L Blake.
What are people going to learnfrom this episode of laughing
through the pain?
Navigating wellness?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
They're going to learn from Matt Soule about the
Wim Hof method, and Matt is notjust a Wim Hof instructor, he
teaches the teachers.
He gives the tests forkliftdriver tests, not the forklift
driver test he is a real expertin the Wim Hof method and he's a
real expert in stress and wehear a lot about misconceptions
(00:28):
about stress, how people areframing stress wrong, why people
are so anxious these days andand how that's related to their
mindset yeah, from my point ofview, I think wim hof is almost
like a buzzword now and peoplejust conflate a lot of things
and they just chuck it in withwim hof, like being cold and
breathing in a particular way,without actually knowing much
about what it is or what it'sfor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So to actually speak to someone on the inside of the
organization who is prettysenior in that organization is
really helpful, I think, because, as with anything, when an idea
runs away you get a lot of kindof offshoots that are probably
not particularly healthy orhelpful.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, absolutely, and you're going to learn some of
the basics, if this is new toyou.
You know what a minimumeffective dose of cold is, how
to do cold exposure safely, allthe way up to the best ice baths
on the market.
And you're also going to hearabout breathwork and how it can
affect your stress response.
And also we go behind thescenes of the breathwork
industry and talk a little bitabout the wild west the wild
(01:33):
west of breathwork, teachertrainings and what Wim Hof and
their organization are doing toroot out the inevitable bad
actors in the breathwork spacethe inevitable bad actors in the
breathwork space, exactly, andthere's also some very useful
day-to-day practices that youcan get involved with to help
get some of these benefits ofWim Hof without leaving your
(01:54):
home.
All right, enjoy, listener.
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Speaker 1 (03:48):
Matt, welcome to the show.
It's great to have you on.
Could you please start bytelling us about your childhood
experiences and how they?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
motivated you to explore stress management?
Yeah, absolutely so.
There were two incidences thatreally shaped my view about
stress from an early age.
One was a lot of the domesticviolence that I encountered as a
kid through an alcoholicstepfather, you know.
I can recall a time, onespecific one, where my mom had a
(04:19):
disturbance, a common fightthat would happen in the middle
of the night, and we were usedto this kind of thing.
We moved a lot as kids.
We had police over at our houseall the time, one of those
kinds of things, and in thisparticular incident we were
trying to run away from himbeing an attacker.
This stepfather and I'd held thedoor open for my mom and my
(04:42):
little brother, who was a babyat the time, rushing through the
door to try to get to the carsafely in the garage and my
sister and I were lagging a bitbehind and my sister, you know,
pulled a knife from the butcherblock to kind of hold him back
at a distance and it worked.
And I can recall holding thedoor open to the garage and
(05:02):
everything started to narrow andgo black, which is common in an
extreme stress response.
And what motivated me to getout of that was a voice, it
propelled me.
I said come on, let's go, andeverything kind of came back
online and my sister and I gotout of there safely and that was
(05:24):
a pretty strong memory thatheld with me through any number
of years.
I actually detail it quite abit in my book on Stronger
Through Stress, because it wasincidents like that and others
that really shaped myunderstanding of how extreme
stress can play a giant roleeven ones that were happening
years ago in terms of how theyshow up with anxiety and
(05:47):
depression and any number ofthings that many people
experience after encounteringthese and other like incidents.
So that was one that reallyshaped it early on.
Another was the death of myfather as a teenager.
So my father was a wonderful man, very respected within the
community, and he died kind ofunexpectedly of cancer and that
(06:10):
was quite hard, and so that kindof sent me into my early 20s
with just a lot of grief, a lotof depression, and I didn't
really see a way out of it.
My youth was really comprised ofpouring myself into sports to
try to build confidence andconnection, and that worked
quite well actually.
It was a wonderful outlet, butit didn't resolve a lot of the
(06:34):
anxiety that underlines sweatyhands going into any sort of
difficult or challengingsituation, and the feelings of
sort of depression were alwayspresent and the feelings of sort
of depression were alwayspresent.
And so really, what I waslooking for is a way to get
beyond that, right To get to thepoint where I could have actual
resolution, and what I found inmy early 20s was actually
(07:00):
martial arts.
That was the first time, as Ireally delved into many of those
practices, that I felt peace,that I felt that restored
confidence, and it started togive me a lot of hope and
inspiration that a new lenscould be possible and it started
to frame my understanding aboutstress.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Wow Well, thank you for sharing that, Matt.
It sounds.
Wow Well, thank you for sharingthat, Matt.
It sounds, yeah, awful, and Ireally appreciate that story you
(07:41):
shared and I love how youreframed the trauma.
As sort of you know part ofyour they've had traumatic
things is whether or not theycan use that as fuel, as you've
done, or if they can just use itto feel like a victim.
So well done for that.
I was really interested by thefact that you said there was a
voice that came to you when youhad that blackout.
What do you think that voicewas?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I think it's probably a survival instinct.
It's like you can't afford topass out now.
So, whatever it is like, let itcome from the gut and you know
and pull it forward.
And so the voice that cameinside of me that knew it had to
get out, it caused a lot ofrelief actually in that moment
(08:23):
and steered me back to an actionstate, instead of getting to
that point where you just freezeand you shut down.
Because I was very close tothat.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And we haven't actually spoken much about
martial arts on this podcast.
What do you think it was aboutmartial arts that particularly
resonated for you and gave yousuch a sense of hope?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Well, I think, coming out of the early days of
experiencing a lot of thatdomestic violence as a young
child, I felt helpless, right.
I felt incapable and I had alot of anger and resentment as a
result.
And trying to just do sports orthese other things didn't
necessarily make me feel lesshelpless, right.
(09:06):
But martial arts is all abouttapping into that fight or
flight response in a very strongway.
You have to negotiate a hundredboundaries with different
training partners in order to doit safely and to push the
bounds of development you haveto you really learn.
You know actually how to fightand how to fight well, and you
understand limitations and youunderstand your own capacity and
(09:28):
capability.
You understand how to grapplewith these base elements that
are so central to our being,which is self and other harm,
right.
And so tapping into all of that, it was no longer a mystery.
I knew what I was capable of.
I could see it day in and dayout.
I also knew what thelimitations are for most people.
(09:49):
I understand how skill made adifference versus the
non-skilled.
I also understood thelimitations of that right.
All of those pieces sort of playa role to provide perspective
and give sort of trueunderstanding of that field and
as a young man, I really had alot of questions If I fought
(10:11):
back, would I be able to controlmyself, or did I have so much
anger that I wouldn't?
That scared me, right.
So that means I've got to justpush everything down because I
don't want to let myself explode, like that was a very
disruptive thing and causes agreat deal of anxiety and
depression in its own right.
So by having a positive outletwhere you actually get to test
(10:34):
these things and put yourselfout there and contend with
another human being wow, soinformative and so stress
relieving where it just givesyou a sense of peace and
empowerment and I took that andI said, okay, this is something
that I'm going to study for therest of my life, and I know
martial arts is a giant category, so I shaped it very
(10:56):
specifically over time, but atthe beginning I was just looking
for something that would helpme find that sort of deeper
meaning, both the spiritual sideas well as the very practical
nuts and bolts of how to defendyourself.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, Matt, that was really interesting what you were
sharing about grief, because Ihad a lot of grief around my
sort of teenage years andtwenties.
I lost my father or mygrandparents in a relatively
short amount of time.
And I remember going to a Reikisession.
I was at like a group Reikishare and there was one lady
(11:32):
there who was working on me andat the end she was like do you
mind if I share some things thatI picked up from doing Reiki on
you?
And she was just like I spent alot of time around your chest
and around your lungs because itjust feels like there's so much
grief there and I don't know ifyou've lost people, but it
seems like you're holding a lotof stuff there and it makes me
(11:53):
want to, it makes me tear up alittle bit just to share it
right now.
But that was about the timethat I became a breath worker,
became really interested in thebreath.
So I'm wondering if, similarly,if this grief process that you
went through was connected toyour Wim Hof instructor
experience.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Certainly, breath work is such a big component
within the grief domain, justwithin anything that requires
sort of that big acceptancepiece.
And specifically the Wim Hofmethod comprises really two
tools.
I mean, we can also talk aboutthe mindset, that's the third
(12:33):
one but the two I'm speaking ofis the breathing exercises and
the cold right, the cold therapy.
So because your question wasdirected specifically around
breath work, let's start there.
So the one of the mostimpactful things that I've seen
is finding that consciousconnection deep through the
(12:53):
breath and tapping into parts ofthe brain that allow us to
really let go right, physicallylet go.
So the w Hof method, forexample, is comprised of a very
strong inhale and a very passiveexhale and you do that through
a series of cycles.
(13:13):
You know, 40 cycles usually ismaybe a basic protocol.
And so through those 40 cyclesyou're practicing the physical
act of stimulating an actionresponse from the body, followed
by a very passive letting go.
So many times in our liveswe're told, ah, just let it go,
let it go.
But pairing that with an actualphysical action, cyclically, is
(13:38):
extremely powerful.
And the inhale which stimulatesthe action-oriented side of
ourselves and the inhale whichstimulates the action-oriented
side of ourselves is veryimpactful because it starts to
interface with the limbic partof our brain that's the emotion
center, and when you tie lungsand brain together in that way,
it can be truly profound.
And so yes is the answer toyour question.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I think it's really impactful, and especially around
things that are very difficult,that people have contended with
, and grief being one of them,and so, in terms of like linking
Wim Hof to stress management,can you maybe describe a bit
about what's going on there andhow it does that?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes, the easiest way to think about it is that it's
got two practices basicallywithin the method that help us
reframe our relationship tostress.
One is the breathing cyclesthat I was just describing.
They are sending us into anactual stress response.
It's controlled, but it's onpurpose.
So we're sending ourselves intoa big stress and then followed
(14:41):
by a breath hold which sears usdown into a rest response.
So we're training the system tostress at a great deal and rest
immediately following it, andby doing that we get out of what
I call stress recoil.
That's where we put ourselvesinto this elevated stress state
(15:01):
but remain there for hours, days, weeks, months, years.
That break the body down overtime, and so that's one of the
best ways that it reframes it.
Now, breath holds in and ofthemselves can be more than just
a rest.
You know variation.
They can also be amplifiers incertain types of breath work,
and in the Wim Hof method theyare certainly playing a role as
(15:22):
amplifying the effects of boththe stress and the rest, and so
it becomes a very good practiceto learn how to manage a good
stress response and go deep,deep within a resting response
and finding that duality withina single exercise Within the
cold we're actually practicinggetting into a stress response.
(15:43):
Again, the cold water stimulatesa very specific stress response
.
Through the cold and in thepath of that we're trying to
practice acceptance, that deeperlayer of I'm not going to
change the environment around me, so I can only adapt and change
myself.
And that is extremely helpfulfor any number of circumstances
(16:03):
we find ourselves in that causeus stress, where we can't
control the circumstances, thestress that we don't choose.
But we learn how to show updifferently.
We learn to show up with calm,with peace, and learn to breathe
slowly amidst the stress.
And so the breath work withinthe cold practice is very slow
and controlled Inhale throughthe nose and long exhales
(16:24):
through the mouth, because weknow that long exhales help
stimulate that rest response inany given cycle.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So we've got these two duality things that are
happening where we're reframingstress with the body using these
practices yeah, I thinkreframing stress is such a
battle and I think the type ofpeople in the world who think
like we shouldn't have anystress are the people that need
this the most.
(16:52):
I feel like you know there aretypes of people who think that,
yeah, life should just be easy,or all times, and we should.
You know, there's that story ofthe king who wants to walk down
the beach and it's like apebbly beach, and so he decides
right, we're going to make thewhole, the whole of the beach,
leather so it's smooth for himto walk instead of just putting
(17:12):
some leather shoes on himself.
And then, you know, it's thatsaying of the prepare the child
for the road, not the road forthe child.
Yes, we can do some preparingof the road, but ultimately life
is always going to be stressfuland the more stress resilience
we can have, the better.
And you know, when you in myenvironment, academia, there are
people who think that, like you, should never hear a different
(17:33):
opinion, because a differentopinion is violence.
Or you know, they don'tunderstand that having
microaggressions and focusing onmicroaggressions is actually
making people more anxious.
And this mindset stuff is soimportant.
It's almost like people, it'slike it's too easy.
People like no, I don't want tojust switch my mindset because
that's too easy, it's too muchof a low-hanging fruit.
(17:54):
I want something, you know,bigger, grander.
I want structural change.
So I get quite frustrated atthat mentality.
But the wimim Hof method seemsto be changing that for a lot of
people.
So yeah, misconceptions aboutstress that's one example of a
misconception of stress.
We should just never experiencestress, I would say, as a
(18:14):
misconception.
So can you tell us more aboutcommon misconceptions?
Yeah, I mean just to piggybackon that.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It's not just the mental reframe that's necessary,
though it is.
That's a very powerful thing.
Just setting our mind andhaving that acceptance that
stress is guaranteed in life,right?
So you're going to choose it.
Which hard do you want tochoose?
Do you want to choose thedifficulty of, you know, not
being prepared to handledifficult times, or do you want
to put yourself in more of anempowered locus of control seat
(18:44):
and, you know, have somepreemptive practices that allow
you to weather any storm?
Personally, I would like tochoose the latter.
Right, I want to prepare myselfbecause it makes a difference.
But in terms of misconceptionsand this is a common one anybody
kind of thinking or hearingabout the cold for the first
time, they think I'm alreadycold.
Why do I want to go into thecold If I'm already cold?
(19:05):
How does that work?
And surprisingly, when you dothat, when you actually expose
yourself to these elements in apositive way, you're not cold
anymore.
Right, you end up building thebody, comes back stronger, it
builds resilience, it buildsvascular strength, if you will.
And now, all of a sudden, bloodflow is easier.
You physically don't feel coldnearly as much because you're
(19:28):
exposing yourself to theseelements in a dose that's
beneficial, and so I thinkthat's a big piece and a big
misconception as well.
It's like if I don't want that Ibetter avoid it.
It's probably the opposite.
It's like if I don't want that,I better dig into it and lean
into it.
I just need to make sure I'vegot I do it in a way that has a
(19:49):
proper dose right, and so thatbecomes sort of the driving
factor is what's the rightamount?
And trying to figure that outsometimes for new people can be
challenging, or even people thatare training it can be
challenging, and so I'm happy togive your listeners some advice
on how to do that.
What are good indicators todetermining if a stress practice
(20:12):
is actually working in yourfavor or working against you?
Because it'll go one way or theother right, and we want to
have some good informationaround that.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, carry on with that.
Yeah, tell us more about dose.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So there's basically four indicators for any practice
and you can use it for yourathletics that you enjoy, or
your cold practice, if you liketo expose yourself to the colder
heat, if you love sauna.
All of these things could bewonderful practices.
Or fasting, you know, that'sanother good stressor that's
very popular in today's world,whether that's intermittent
fasting or some of the longerduration fasts.
(20:47):
But if you want to know if apractice is working for you,
there's four times that you wantto check.
One is I love to do in themornings.
Well, I'm going to get in thereand I'm going to pay attention,
I'm going to make thetransition to a nice rest amidst
(21:08):
the stress and I'm going tocheck in.
How do I feel?
And I should be feeling good.
Right, I should feel that it'sexhilarating, maybe a little
challenging, that's all well andfine, but I should feel good.
I shouldn't feel that deep ache, chill, you know, trying to
keep everything together,shattering and that kind of
thing just to tough it through.
That's not the purpose of thepractice.
(21:29):
So I should feel good in thattime.
Number two is how do you feelabout 15 to 30 minutes after the
activity?
In the case of the cold, Ishould feel relatively warmed up
right.
So my hands and feet if I'm anew practitioner might still
feel a little bit cold, but byall means I should feel
basically recovered.
You know, I shouldn't againfeel that deep ache and chill.
(21:50):
I should feel pretty good, highenergy, ready to go about my
day.
The next check-in is four hourslater.
So after four to six hours iswhere the body basically goes
through a number of different,you know, positive arcs and in
this case we're going to have abig boost of adrenaline that
comes from the cold and it'sgoing to sustain for about four
(22:12):
hours or so.
So you should feel clear.
You know, mentally clear iswhat I mean.
You should feel energized, youshould feel, you know, all by
all means pretty good.
And then the last one is how doyou sleep at night?
So a practice like the cold orany really solid practice
martial arts practice, et ceterashould help you get enough of
(22:35):
that physical activity out ofthe way that you sleep well at
night.
If you've got sustainedadrenaline in the system or
you're feeling anxious or you'restill in a stress response
because you haven't fully warmedup yet in the case of this cold
practice, well, that tells youthat you probably overdid it, or
you need to support your bodybecause it should facilitate
sleep quite well.
And so if you've got thosemarkers, how do you feel in the
(22:56):
thing?
15 to 30 minutes after, fourhours later, and sleep at night.
You know if a practice isworking for you or not.
If you're not recovering,you're going to get up in the
morning, you're going to feellethargic, you're not going to
want to do it whatever it lookslike and you're going to need
extra rest time.
So people are bound to makemistakes, but if you keep those
(23:17):
things in mind, you can sustaina practice over time and have it
keep serving you.
And it gets us out of thismindset that more is always
better, which is just not true.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Interesting and if you could tell us a little bit
about why people are coming toWim Hof.
Is there kind of a pattern thatyou're seeing, or is it just
curiosity?
People have tried other thingsand it's not working.
What's going on for peoplethere?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well, I think you hit it on the head in terms of all
of those reasons.
So people are coming for theirown reasons.
Just to give you a quick makeup, from the groups that I trained
last week, I had one guy thatwas special forces, so he was a
pretty serious guy, had done alot of cold training as part of
his military training there, sohe had been sent to Norway to do
(24:04):
pretty deep cold stuff.
But he found, actually, thatthis practice totally reframed
how he looked at it.
He no longer had to use it asthis deep fight thing.
It was actually a much morestress relieving exercise than
simply this mindset of we've gotto build toughness in the body
and he said I can sustain thecold a lot longer, a lot easier,
(24:26):
a lot better.
And you add to that some of thebreathing exercises that go
along with it and he's able toget out of some of the PTSD and
other things that he experiencedin wartime.
So super powerful, and contrastthat for another lady.
Uh, this woman, sarah she's whata beautiful woman, this just
(24:47):
beautiful heart.
She had been battling sixdifferent autoimmune disorders
since she was a child, stuffthat ended up causing her limbs
to dislocate randomly and shewouldn't be able to walk at
times or do all kinds of stuff.
She at one point wrote down herlist of things that she would
(25:13):
love to do if she could, and oneof them at the top, was to do
her own laundry, like that washer aspirational goal.
And you can think about how lowyou have to be to make your
aspirational goal I wish I coulddo my own wash.
How low you have to be to makeyour aspirational goal I wish I
could do my own wash.
Right, so you can appreciatewhere this woman's coming from.
And she had found the Wim Hofmethod and it was the only thing
that put her on a path ofhigher energy.
It was the only thing.
(25:35):
And she was extremely skepticalwhen she was dragged to the
workshop the first time.
Fast forward now, a couple ofyears later, and she's trying to
be an instructor to share itwith others, right?
So people come from this fromall vantage points and so forth
for their own reasons, but it'sattractive, for I think one big
reason is that it's so simple,right, it's a very simple thing
(25:58):
to follow.
Cold water can be foundvirtually anywhere in the world.
I do spend a lot of time inMexico City.
So I will say it's noteverywhere, because you can't
find a cold shower there andwater is actually pretty scarce,
and so there's some challengesto contend with.
But for the most part you canfind cold water just about
anywhere, if nothing else, in ashower.
So it's accessible.
(26:20):
And the breathwork, of course,you don't even need that.
So the breath work alone issomething that can be done by
anybody and that's reallypowerful.
And then it's a shift in mindset.
It's this idea that we'rewilling to take more sort of
that internal locus of controlstep and say I can do something
about how I feel in a positiveway and I can have growth in my
mindset to say that I can dosomething about how I feel in a
(26:41):
positive way and I can havegrowth in my mindset to say that
I can do something right, Idon't have to just be bound by
limiting beliefs that I have nocontrol.
And so when people find hope inthat growth mindset, they're
willing to step in and give it ashot.
And when you get the resultsthat you thought you were going
to get which is the vastmajority of people stick with it
(27:02):
and they tell their friends,and their friends tell their
friends and you try to coachyour family and you coach
everybody you love because, damnit, this thing works.
It's pretty straightforward, soyou like that.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, and dose of cold.
What do you recommend prescribe?
What's a minimum effective dosefor people with cold exposure?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
a lot less than people think, so I'll start
there at least right it's a lotless than people think.
So a couple of things that I'lljust mention.
So if you've got water near,you know, let's say, near zero
or one degree celsius, or youknow 32 to 35 degrees, well then
even inside of 20 secondsyou're getting a cascade of
(27:47):
positive hormonal effects, right.
You get the boost in dopamine,you get the boost in
norepinephrine, you get theboost of adrenaline, all this
kind of good stuff that happens.
You get endorphins that arereleased so you feel happy and
pain-free, and all this kind ofgood stuff.
So that happens very, veryrapidly in super cold water.
And so the next question is didthe practice serve you
(28:09):
correctly in terms of, did yougo inside the water and make
this internal shift from astress to more of a rest amidst
the stress?
So if you've done that, yourpractice is basically you're
good.
So, typically for a newerpractitioner, in quite cold
water, even in water as much asyou know six or seven degrees
Celsius or 40, you know midforties or so for Fahrenheit,
(28:33):
you know, even inside of that,it's going to take newer
practitioners sometimes 30seconds or a minute or some even
two minutes to make that happen, right.
So that's really the practice.
Go in there and make the shift.
Once the shift is done, if youfeel good, get out, do it again,
like you know, do it again thenext day or whatever.
You don't need to stay in therefor 10, 15 minutes or something
(28:56):
like that, which will almostcertainly break the body down.
Okay, so that's one.
The other piece is that therewas a great study that was done
where a guy that hated cold hedidn't like cold, but he was a
good researcher and he wanted todetermine a minimal effective
dose, and so he set up a coupleof different groups and said
we're going to give for 30 days.
We're going to give one group ashower, a cold shower, for 30
(29:19):
seconds, another group for 60and a last group for 90 seconds,
and compare the groups, and,sure enough, all three groups
improved all the metrics and itdidn't really make a much
different big of a differencebetween the 30 and 90 seconds.
They all improved their mood,they felt less pain, they had
fewer sick days, they're morepositive overall.
So you look at that and you say, well, gosh, 30 or 90 seconds,
(29:42):
that's no big deal, right, I canmake that happen.
And the answer is yeah.
So you look at that and you say, well gosh, 30 or 90 seconds,
that's no big deal, right, I canmake that happen.
And the answer is yeah, so youcan make it happen.
So I would say, like, juststart there and just keep
playing with it.
I'm nearly a decade into thepractice and I've got a very,
very strong practice because Ilead people into some pretty
epic settings.
Like I've got a retreat that'scoming up where I'll take people
into the Alaska wilderness inwinter right, and it's an
(30:06):
extraordinary adventure retreatand I guide brand newcomers to
that practice as well as veryskilled and advanced
practitioners that come alongthat trip as well, and so I need
to be really in my element whenI guide people into that space,
and so I've got a very strongpractice.
But even me, most of the timeI'm in cold water for, let's say
, less than three minutes in agiven day, right, I'm not
(30:30):
spending eons in the cold water.
It's not necessary.
Now, if you ask me to go outfor an extended period or go
into deep cold, I can do it.
My body's ready to adapt.
But in terms of the baselinepractice day to day, I just try
to make it feel good.
That's the point, you know, andso I would just suggest that
you don't have to keep pushing,even if you're looking for a
(30:51):
long-term practice that'llcontinue to pay dividends.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And it sounds like this is very much a morning
practice to take the fullbenefit of the adrenaline and,
for hour, sustained adrenaline.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, so you can approach it two different ways.
The primary way is, yes, earlyin the morning it's typically
going to be best, and or earlyafternoon, depending on what
your training schedule is andwhat specific adaptations you're
looking for.
But usually first half of theday is going to be ideal and for
many people they're going tofind the best just to include it
(31:26):
in their morning cold shower.
You know, in the morning showerat the beginning of their day
it's going to be the easiest toinclude.
The exception to that is ifyou've got sauna present.
So if you can do contrasttherapy which is fantastic in
its own right for a hundreddifferent reasons you can do
that at night and what's goingto happen is actually going to
facilitate your body giving awayheat in a very good way.
(31:49):
That's going to help you sleepbetter at night.
That's going to work along withthe melatonin that we produce.
That's going to lower core bodytemperature in order to get us
into sleep.
It's going to help us withsleep pressure in the middle to
help us stay asleep.
So there's lots of good reasons, and so cold can be certainly
included along with heat in theevening.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
very few people can sort of get around that
exception, but I'll still bethere that's how I do it, yeah,
sort of end of the work day justbefore dinner, about you know
five, six o'clock, sauna ice,and that I find it really
relaxes me.
Um, if people want to getstarted, so going on to like
models of ice bars, you haveyour freezer.
(32:30):
What do you recommend to people?
Because I've just come acrossthis thing.
It's called the.
It's like a.
I'm looking at it on amazon.
It's called an ice shower andit's just an attachment that you
put on your shower head andit's like 20 bucks and I think
that's a way for people to start.
So people want to start withthat, or what other suggestions
do you have and what's yourfavorite model for people who
(32:51):
want to spend a bit of money onit?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah.
So there's a range of budgetsthat are available, a range of
products for every budget thatare available these days.
The ice shower that's a reallygood little thing.
You've also got some of thesenew chillers that'll pop right
into your bathtub that aren'tterribly expensive, so that can
be a really easy one as well.
If you prefer a bath rather thana shower, some people struggle
(33:14):
with, you know, feeling like theshower is constantly hitting
them and they're having troubleto adapt to it.
I'll tell you that if you canget past that initial discomfort
, you can get past that initialdiscomfort.
You can build sort of thatwetsuit effect that actually
feels pretty good.
But that's just my piece.
I know we're going to bedifferent, but so if you like a
bath, you can get one of thoseexternal chillers, and they're a
couple hundred bucks these days, is all, and so they're not
(33:36):
terribly expensive.
Other people I know that livein more cold areas.
They just set up their bathsand they put them outside and
they break through the ice, youknow, for the morning, and so
most of the year it's going tobe cold and at some points they
may have to actually heat it upa little bit.
So depending on that.
But those are cost-effectiveways and it can be even as
(33:57):
simple as like one of those sortof Japanese O'Furrow type tubs
that are vinyl, so less than ahundred dollars.
If you want to spend a littlebit more money than the chillers
that are on the market thesedays, there's a good range,
everything from some of theaquarium chillers that are going
to run, you know, about halfthe price of a more marketed
(34:20):
cold chiller for ice baths.
You're going to probably paydouble, triple or quadruple for
those and there's some reasonsfor that.
I'm not suggesting there's not.
Some of them will go heat orcold, which is nice, and they're
pretty robust.
But you can have options alongthose lines.
Some of the top brands that Ithink are doing a pretty darn
good job gosh Renew's got apretty good one.
(34:42):
I mean that bat's quiteexpensive though if I'm not
mistaken it's probably $14,000or $15,000, but it makes it so
nice and it's pretty remarkable.
You've got Plunge that product.
It runs anywhere from, I think,$6,000 to as much as $12,000,
depending on the unit.
So these can get quite pricey.
But if you're looking to spendmoney and you like the elegance
(35:05):
and the look and you want it tobe serviced for any number of
years and guaranteed.
These can be wonderful productsfor those that are interested.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, I have to give a shout out to Monk.
I don't know if you come acrossMonk ice bars.
I just invested in them,crowdfunded them and yeah, I
think they're doing a good job.
Uh, I think they're kind ofmid-range, sort of five grand,
and anthony joshua, theheavyweight champion or former
champion is, is an investor aswell, so he's sort of the front
man of them, but I really thinkmonk are gonna be pretty big
(35:36):
then it is big enough to fitanthony joshua in.
Yes so yeah, it is.
Um, yeah, okay, great.
Well, going on to breath work,so one of the things we I kind
of mentioned is like, uh, inwellness I think there's a kind
of idea that just more is alwaysbetter and you know, like if
(36:00):
the only tool you have is ahammer, everything looks like a
nail.
I, as part of my PhD, lookedinto sort of the dose response
of conscious connected breathingand found there was no
difference between people doingone 90 minute session per week
and people doing a 90 minutesession plus doing conscious
connected breathing every day.
(36:21):
In terms of anxiety, and assomeone who's just finished with
the Oxygen Advantages advancedtraining, I'm very interested in
CO2 tolerance.
So one rumor that comes out ofthe Wim Hof method is often when
people start with the breathwork, their breath hold time
goes up, but then they do itevery day for a year and then
(36:43):
their breath hold time goes waydown, their carbon dioxide
sensitivity goes way down andthey experience increased
breathlessness and some sort ofnegative effects.
Is that true to that rumor?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Well, yes and no.
So let's get into it, because Ithink that's a wonderful
question.
One of the things, as wementioned before, about the Wim
Hof Method breathing is that itdoes steer us into a stress
response.
So you can imagine that if youoverstress your body, if you're
doing that too often, you'regoing to steer yourself into a
more action-dominant state, onand on, and that in and of
(37:19):
itself is going to reduce thetime that you're able to hold
your breath.
It's going to elevate yourheart.
That you're able to hold yourbreath right, it's going to
elevate your heart rate and dosome negative impact.
And so the ideal practicewithin the Wim Hof method is one
that allows you to stayconnected, that allows you to
raise the ceiling of tolerancewithin oxygen saturation but
(37:39):
simultaneously lowers the floor,which allows you to get into
that more hypoxemic state andhelps you deal with oxygen
deprivation and, ideally, co2tolerance as well.
So I think it depends on anindividual practice, and I think
the second reason that peoplestruggle with that is, as you do
(38:02):
something over and over, yourbody's going to adapt to
whatever it is.
So that's a piece, and thenmentally we tend to check out
right.
We're no longer as connected toa practice over time.
So I think there's a variety ofreasons why people experience
that, but what I'll say is thatas I work with people to slow
their breathing rate down, as Iwork with people to slow their
(38:37):
breathing rate down and theystart to get reconnected to a
practice and include somevariations that are helpful to
restore connection that thosebreath holds come and to the
point that I don't even think isnecessary in order to get the
benefits of a practice.
But for all sake, I just wantto recognize that.
So we're seeing a lot ofdifferent things and I think
there's a few different reasonsthat we see that, but what you
mentioned can actually happen.
(38:58):
So, yes, that could be the casein some cases interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Um, I think you said you've been practicing for 10
years, matt, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, and in that time I'm sureyou've seen the wim hof name
and brand grow almostexponentially.
Does that come with a few kindof, I guess, rogue practitioners
or people kind of trying topiggyback off that name?
Um, uh, I don't need you toname names, but is that
(39:26):
something we're seeing?
Name names.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, no names.
Yes, of course, certainly thathappens.
The Wim Hof Method it's grownvery substantially over the last
10 years.
When Wim was first starting totake people to Poland, there was
four or maybe six people thatwould attend a retreat.
(39:52):
So now there's multiple weeksof 80 to 100 per week and then
most recently they started toput them back into one week, but
at a new hotel, and it's hugefor that particular week.
So a lot of people arepracticing and it's a very it's
a growing practice and you knowthat that's going to cause any
number of people to eitherpiggyback on, latch on to it,
(40:18):
shift, how it's talked about andyou know, even the Wim Hof
method itself has grown quite abit and changed its view on
several things over the courseof the decade.
So I think that's important torecognize as well, because what
was taught?
When I first joined, I was partof the first group of US
instructors.
I began to train people in theacademy in 2018.
(40:39):
And so I've trained, you know,six, seven years.
I'm going into my seventh yearof training instructors.
Seven years.
I'm going into my seventh yearof training instructors and you
know, at the beginning we didn'thave the same curriculum or
even close to it, in the samepractices that we do today, and
so a lot has shifted over timeand, I believe, for the most
part very positive direction.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Can you say more about what's changed in the Wim
Hof method?
What do they?
Speaker 3 (41:06):
they changed their mind on but very much a
(41:27):
practitioner and not so much ateacher, right?
So I wouldn't call Wim Hof ateacher per se in the
traditional sense.
His teaching style is bydemonstration and encouraging
people to explore their ownpersonal limits and sort of
breaks that inside, thatlimiting belief inside many
people that allows them toreally access the deepest parts
of themselves and get curiousabout what they're capable of.
And in that sense he's ateacher.
(41:48):
But in terms of like nuts andbolts and describing many of the
different aspects, that's nothis skillset, I would say.
And so some of the things thatwe had tried early on were at
you know, we're pushing ourbodies in any number of ways
pretty hard, a lot morebreathing perhaps than we needed
to do.
Right, in terms of the nuancesof how to breathe, we're not.
(42:11):
Then we're really talked about.
You know, whim is kind of famousfor saying I don't care if you
use your, your nose or your,your any hole, just get it in.
I'll just put it that way.
It's kind of how he puts itright, kind of crass and crude,
and that's not necessarily fullyaccurate.
What what he's trying to do issimplify it so that people don't
get in their own way, right,but that's not terribly helpful
(42:33):
if we're actually talking abouthow to instruct people to
breathe, both for that exercisebut, more importantly, breathe
throughout your life, becausethe Wim Hof method says nothing
about how to breathe through therest of your day.
It's only a specific set ofexercises, and I think people
conflate those two things.
They're like ah oh, you shouldalways breathe like this.
(42:54):
That would be insane, likeyou're.
That's not good for you tobreathe as we do in the Wim Hof
Method, breathing exercisesthroughout the course of the day
.
But if you do your exercisesproperly, then you're going to
actually improve your breathinga lot down the road.
And so over the years we'vereally tried to instruct people
how do I show up in life better,or at least that's been what
(43:15):
I've tried to do as a teacherI'm one teacher out of several
and obviously there's a lot ofpeople that practice throughout
the world but just trying tohelp people really understand
the difference betweenparticular exercises that should
be done in a part of the dayand how to breathe throughout
the rest of your day and throughthe rest of your performance or
any other things that require,you know, sort of a shift in
(43:38):
breathing.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, and so I guess what are you doing to ensure
that the high standards are metand maintained during your
teaching instructors?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah, only that I can do on my weeks, you know.
So I'll take thatresponsibility to the extent
that I can do myself.
What I try to do is reallyunderstand all the different
parts of breathing breathing.
So the most common problemsthat I see in today's world
(44:10):
where we discuss this topic isthat most are taking a very thin
slice and trying to suggestthat's the whole, and that's not
really the case.
And so I've really tried toread as many studies as possible
about breathing, about oxygensaturation in both tissues and
in the blood, why things changethe difference between conscious
(44:31):
, active breathing andpathologies.
Right, because most of thestudies that are done are
actually pathological based,meaning they're trying to
address a specific condition ina hospital setting or an acute
care setting, or for nurses tounderstand how and when to
intervene on a patient's behalfif they're in distress, even
(44:51):
though they may not present assuch.
So a lot of studies are aroundthat, and I think we sometimes
will also cause a lot ofconfusion around the differences
between internal and externalrespiration.
And so my job over the lastdecade has been to dive into as
(45:12):
much of the literature aspossible, as much into the
medical information as possible,the physiology and so forth,
and just do that to the extentthat I can and then back it up
and also do applied breathingstuff.
So I had some of the earlydevices that were reading SMO2,
(45:33):
for example that's musclesaturation, oxygen saturation in
the muscle, as well as yourblood saturation oximeters, and
I was performing any number ofexperiments.
So, for example, I did thesethings at sea level, I did them
during martial arts classes, Idid them at rest, I did them on
extreme altitude as I ascendedKilimanjaro in 33 hours and
(45:55):
change right, so adapting fromsea level with no other means
other than a breathing method tosupport me and track the data,
while I did it right For me andsix other guys.
And so I'm a very data drivenperson and I would say in that
sense I'm quite unique in myposition because I don't steer
(46:18):
into some of the discussions orideas that are always purported
from the Wim Hof method.
I would say I steer away fromsome of that because I like to
see data and have it supportedvery clearly and also understand
that like what are the actualmechanisms behind each of these
things and why they may work?
(46:38):
I want to know the reason why,and so that's been my deep dive,
and then I carry thatinformation forward and try to
do my best to train theinstructors to really understand
it.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
From that point of view, I would say that's the
responsibility I carry yeah,yeah, that's great because, yeah
, I'm affiliated with the gbpa Idon't know if you know them,
but they're more well, it's theglobal breathwork practitioners
alliance is more to do withconscious connected breathing
and they're trying to maintainstandards of practitioners and
(47:11):
facilitators.
And, as you said, wild Westthat I think everyone gets
thinks that all breathwork isthe Wild West and it is because
it's so hard to monitorpractitioners and it's so hard
to monitor people who are noteven practitioners.
You know, then they've justdone the wim hof method from the
app and then they go out andteach people.
Same with conscious connectedbreathing.
(47:32):
Yeah, yeah, face palmabsolutely drives me mental.
So the gbpa is obviously doingsomething.
Wim hof is, you know the wholemethod, I guess is the biggest
breath work organization in theworld, certainly bigger than the
gbpa and breath guru, who Iteach for.
So you say you you're trying tomonitor for your week, but is
there scope for the wim hofmethods to really be policing
(47:54):
its own, its own staff, raisingthose standards?
Because you mentioned you wereteaching 73 people at once and
I'm teaching on the breath guruconscious connected thing and
we've decided six is the maximumwe can teach at once.
Conscious connected breathingis more about you know.
It's more like a therapy, soyou do need to go more into to
holding space for people.
But yeah, can you say moreabout what wim hof and the
(48:18):
organization are doing on thestandards?
Speaker 3 (48:21):
yeah, I think what they've done that's a positive
is that they've they continue toadd to their programming and
change their curriculum and makeit more robust.
And if you were to ask me howdo I personally feel have they
met the highest standard thatthey should?
(48:42):
No, that would be the shortanswer, but they're on their,
they're making improvements on aregular basis and so I have to
commend them on that side, right?
I think that when we look at 73practitioners and again that
was just for two weeks I had 40in one week and 36 in the next,
so I think total of 76 actuallythis last couple of weeks.
But those people have beenworking and training for close
(49:06):
to most of them close to ninemonths, right?
So it's not something thathappens just in the last week
and the rest of theresponsibility is through their
other modules that they gothrough to learn some of the
(49:30):
material, to learn about thestudies, to learn how the breath
practice, how it's impactful,what's the actual protocol and
why we do it, and so forth.
And then my week is reallyabout clarifying a lot of that
and pushing them forward, andwhat I see in five days of their
master module is prettyremarkable and I feel like
(49:52):
that's about the best I can dowithin the framework that's
offered there.
Do I wish that I had thosepeople for nine months myself?
A hundred percent, right?
Do I feel like we could do more?
Yes, a hundred percent.
And, as I mentioned, I feellike what I do is I give the
notes back to the organizationabout what I see and how I feel,
(50:15):
and I've seen them make reallypositive changes as they go
forward, so that's a good thing.
Many of the top teachers, thelead teachers, are certified in
more than one type of breathwork.
I think that's helpful becauseit gives them a little bit more
perspective outside of a singlepractice, which is good, and so
(50:36):
I think that's a benefit.
But I think we can only do whatwe can do, and that's what
we're doing right now.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yes, well, I don't want to grill you too hard.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
No, it's good.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I know you have I love it, have good intentions,
but um, what we're doing atbreath guru and my, my wife, is
doing her master's inpsychotherapy and, as you
probably know, psychotherapistshave to have supervision.
You know she's coming towardsthe end of her master's.
She'll be let out into theworld with practitioners and
she'll have to go to regularsupervision whilst until she
gets sort of 3000 hours worth oftraining.
(51:08):
So I think for breathworksupervision from the schools is
something that maybe we shouldlook at.
But is there any anysupervisors out there for Wim
Hof method instructors?
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah, I think there is.
I mean, there's a lot of peoplethat are trying to do their
best in terms of looking atinstructors that are out there
and there's a large communitythat people can ask questions if
something's not going well.
We try to have a number ofresources to continue to educate
people within that frameworkand so I think within that side
(51:42):
of things there is a help and ifpeople are doing something
reckless or sort of off thebounds, as soon as we hear about
it or the organization, Ishould say because that's really
their responsibility does tryto intervene and help people to
pull back.
What does happen, I will say,is that not everybody continues
to renew their certification andcarry on.
Not everybody continues theireducation.
(52:04):
Some people are looking for acertification to really do their
own thing, but they want tohave a piece of paper that
allows them to get business, andso maybe the intent is a little
bit different in some cases andthose people are really looking
to do and explore their ownpractices and their own styles.
That really has nothing to dowith the Wim Hof method.
So I think that happens as welland that's pretty hard to police
(52:25):
, if you will, but I think forthe vast majority of people that
are part of it.
Nobody's really looking to doharm.
Everybody's looking to do theirbest and to hold space for
people and guide them in apositive experience.
I would say that's theoverarching goal.
In most cases, the vastmajority right the people are
(52:46):
well-intentioned.
It's like with anything, thoughif you don't remain curious, if
you don't have a broaderperspective, if you don't
continue to build and reinforcea strong foundation within your
own practices, you don't knowwhat you don't know right, and
you'll never know what you don'tknow, but you're going to be
limited in your ability toassess potential issues or to
(53:08):
really understand and how tocare for people throughout an
arc of a breathing practice, andbreathing is extremely profound
, right.
It can be life-altering,life-changing both in the moment
and going forward, and so theresponsibility that we have as
breath workers, as people thatare helping people in this way,
is tremendous, and to look at itotherwise, I think, is a grave
(53:30):
mistake, and so one of thethings that I try to do is just
communicate that for the peoplethat I am specifically in
contact with and to say keepcurious about your practice,
keep curious about it in general.
Let's not try to just glub ontosomething to assume it's the
end all be all truth.
(53:50):
And how can we actually knowthat we're caring for people in
a proper way to make surethey're not getting damaged from
the work that we're doing, thatwe're actually facilitating a
positive, life-changingexperience, that it can be?
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Wow.
So what's next for you then,Matt?
That it can be.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Wow.
So what's next for you then,matt?
So what's next?
Oh well, I've got.
I've got some things that areon the horizon that I've been
working on.
So typically I would be holdingany number of events.
I do a number of different typesof events as a as my personal
brand.
I guide people in the cold.
Of course.
I run a martial arts school tohelp people in that sort of area
, and then I do a variety ofbreathing events, and one of
(54:32):
which is the vibrationalbreathing experience.
So that's always been a lot offun and that steers people to
the psychedelic using theirbreath, and so that's really
powerful and positive that I'vebeen playing with the last
couple of years.
But I've actually been workingon a new project that I hope to
be international with startingin the new year.
(54:53):
So if you look on my websiteright now, you'll only see
Alaska posted, and that's onpurpose.
So if you want to joinsomething, come to Alaska.
I'll guide you through there.
It's a wonderful deal.
We get four days of reallybeautiful, intense breath work.
We'll eat some of the finestfood made by private chefs,
we'll get into the Alaskanwaters both the frozen
(55:15):
waterfalls and we'll cut holesin the ice and be in the sauna.
I backpack saunas on site, wesleep in a great Airbnb group
home and we just community andit's fantastic right, four days
of just wonder.
But that's all that's up thereright now, instead of the
typical month to month events.
But I hope to launch my newproject in the first of the year
(55:37):
and I look forward to that.
Okay, when is the Alaska trip?
Alaska is February 5th throughthe 9th this year, february 5th
through the 9th.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Exciting yeah, so this is a secret.
The next thing yeah, I got tohold it back for now.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
It'll be a big project, but it has to do with a
lot of the things that I'vebeen working on within the
stress tools that I share withpeople to manage their stress
and to leverage it to live theirbest lives.
But I got to hold that back fornow because I've got one or two
things that are still on thehorizon that I have to button up
before I can announce that.
Fair enough, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
But stay in contact.
You can go on and get a freemembership on my website and you
can be privy to theannouncement as soon as it's
made.
And the website name is Mattsoulcom, so my last name is
s-o-u-l-e, so matt soulcom, andyou can find all the information
there awesome, all right well.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Thank you very much, matt.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
Thank you, andy yeah, thanks, matt, and
congratulations by being mykilimanjaro time by seven days.
It's pretty impressive, ifnothing else wait.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
How long did you do it?
I think it's like eight days.
Eight days, okay I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
That was great scenery.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
I did it in five days , three like three and a half up
, one and a half down.
You were six up two down.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah, yeah, okay, wow , 33 hours is serious it was
pretty fast.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
It was pretty fast were you running the way up?
No, on the way down I ran, Iran pretty fast, but on the way
up, no, we just hiked and wespent one overnight as part of
that.
So you go up midway and thenone overnight and then we push
to the top to get our time there.
It's pretty fast.
(57:24):
A wonderful experiment to getour time there.
It's pretty, pretty fast.
A wonderful experiment, really.
I was motivated by breathingand how it was impacting.
You know different breathingprotocols, different breathing
styles whether we were using thenose or the mouth, how we use
that, to what extent is eachrelevant and really tried to
inform my understanding ofbreathing physiology in real
(57:45):
time.
Especially as we steered intoextreme altitude, it becomes
pretty important.
I document all of this andstronger through stress.
There's a great story that goesalong with it.
That's my book that's out onamazon, so if you're interested
in learning more, you coulddefinitely read there.
Awesome it's been a greatpleasure having you on.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, you're obviously so knowledgeable and
clear on your, on your mission.
It's that's great to talk toyou yeah, all right um, I don't
know about you, but I wastotally blown away by the
introduction there um such amoving story and um so
(58:24):
eloquently spoke.
But what a what a example ofturning some serious um
adversity and traumatic eventsinto something so positive yeah,
I think that's such animportant reframe.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
I think there's a lot of the idea that if something
bad happens to you in a child,childhood you know childhood
trauma then you're just yourlife's over, you know you're,
you're a dud, you've, you've gotno chance.
But actually there are so manypeople who recover from trauma
and actually it fuels them, itpropels them to things that
perhaps they wouldn't have doneif they did have just, a very,
(58:59):
um, safe, normal, uneventfullife.
And uh, I think it was maybe itwas Bessel van de Kolk one of
the trauma people says you, Iworry less about the people who
have had childhood trauma thanthe people who have never
experienced any adversity.
And there's some amazingstatistics like in Encyclopedia
Britannica 90, I think it's like97% of the Encyclopedia
(59:23):
Britannica's most notable peopleof all time lost one or both
parents before the age of 14.
So certainly there are positiveconsequences to having
tragedies such as losing aparent or other terrible things.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I really enjoyed his story through, you know, martial
arts and really kind of goinginto the dissonance of it and
finding that peace withinmartial arts and then within
breathwork.
And it's very clear that hemaintains such high standards,
which is encouraging for anyonewho wants to get involved in Wim
Hof.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Yes, the standards in the breathwork industry are a
recurring theme on this podcast,but, yeah, it's first time
we've had someone from wim hof adifferent methodology to the
one that I teach, but a greatone nonetheless.
By the way, listen, I love wimhof.
I've done a lot of it.
I've met wim and uh, I reallylike their technique and what
they're doing for the world.
Just one disclaimer that weshould throw in here you never
(01:00:27):
want to do breath work, uh,breath holds, hyperventilation
in water because you can passout and people have died from
doing wim hof, breath in ice andin swimming pools and things
like that.
So, yeah, it's really importantthat if you're doing breath
work, it's it's not theconscious connected, it's not
SOMA, it's not voluntaryhyperventilation or Wim Hof.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
And to end on a slightly lighter note, were you
surprised by how much he'dbeaten my Kilimanjaro time?
What does that feel about,right it?
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
seemed probably right Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
No, that is amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Because when I did Kilimanjaroaro, willimanjaro, uh
, they were really like tryingto slow us down.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
We the same.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
I think that was partly like you paid for six
days and maybe we could get youto seven and then we get by the
day.
So can you just slow down?
Um, whereas we were, we weretrying to walk quite quickly.
I was.
I was like 19.
I was doing it with my frienduh moley shout out to him, he's
a listener and yeah, we were.
We were walking fast and theywere trying to walk quite
quickly.
I was like 19.
I was doing it with my friendMoley Shout out to him, he's a
listener.
And yeah, we were walking fastand they were trying to go slow.
So I think we probably couldhave done it quicker if we
(01:01:35):
wanted to, but yeah, 33 hours isoutrageous though.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah, it is, that's silly money.
So where do they find us Rich?
Yeah, it is that's silly money.
Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
So where do they find us Rich?
They find us at AndyEsam onInstagram, at TheBreathGeek on
(01:02:10):
Instagram and on my website,richardlblakecom and
TheBreathGeekcom, where you canfind out more about me, the
podcast, my breathwork practice,which you can now sign up for
sessions with me one-to-oneonline or, if you're in walnut
creek area you can come forin-person sessions as well
awesome, thank you rich thankyou addy, thank you listener,
bye.
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