Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Most Replayed Moment: Wim Hof's Simple Breathing Technique For Focus, Tranquility and Resilience About this episode In today's Moments episode, Wim Hof reveals the breathwork exercise that helped him reprogram his mind, boost immunity, and help others around the world to do the same. He breaks down the science behind the breath, coaches us through a short practice, and explains how you can access deeper healing - starting today.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Steven Bartlett? What is that first step to, because there's so many people that are going through different forms of grief, or they have that trauma that you've described that goes back a long way. If they're listening to this now and they've stumbled this far into the conversation and they're thinking, I'm so far away from that, Wim. I'm so far away. I've got my shirt and tie on, I'm in the city, I know I'm unhappy, I can feel it in my bones, but I know no other way. What is the first step?
0:25 Speaker 01 Absolutely, the breathing exercises. These breathing exercises in 2014 were capable to show, just like scientifically, hormonally, looking at the nervous system. The depth which we entered with these breathing exercises in this comparative study showed that we were able to tap into the autonomic nervous system and innate immune system, which was considered to be impossible in science. And now it is there. It's not only the autonomic nervous system and the innate immune system, it's also the
1:07 Speaker 01 ability naturally to solve what is deeply stored up in our tissue, which could not be processed in the moment when it happened. Trauma.
1:21 Steven Bartlett? Wim, I've got some of those studies in front of me. I read through all of them ahead of our conversation and they are, quite frankly, remarkable. They're quite frankly remarkable. They are peer-reviewed studies that have been published, went through very sort of scientifically rigorous processes to make sure that they were valid. And in these studies, we see breakthroughs that I think in the past people thought were impossible. But if we just focus in then on that breathing, because you described that as the first step. If I have never breathed in my life, I've never done it, I've never heard about it, I'm skeptical to it, I think breathing is just something we don't think about.
2:04 Steven Bartlett? What do you mean by breathing? And what kind of breathing? And can you explain to me like I'm an idiot? What it's doing?
2:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, what it is doing? For example, I'm now busy with cardiologists. And they saw in heart films that if you stop breathing after exhalation for one and a half minutes, five times more blood flows into the brain and to the heart. This one has never been shown. And now it has been shown through these breathing techniques. I mean, this really goes so deep. We are able to make these, through these breathing techniques, change our blood's chemistry, bring up the pH levels way up, by which the breathing trigger is not happening
2:59 Speaker 01 because it's depending on the CO2 level in our blood. If we breathe
3:13 Speaker 01 like thirty times like this, you become a little bit woozy, a little bit dizzy. Why? Because the CO2 levels go way down. You blow it off, carbon dioxide.
3:25 Steven Bartlett? Have we forgotten how to breathe like that?
3:26 Speaker 01 Oh, yes.
3:27 Steven Bartlett? Is that the natural way of breathing?
3:29 Speaker 01 No, not exactly.
3:31 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
3:31 Speaker 01 What is exactly is that we have forgotten to feel deep emotions, to be in connection with danger. Danger is a deep emotion.
3:49 Speaker 01 Or the cold.
3:52 Speaker 01 It's deep. We avoid these emotions. But we are built to receive it, to express it. And with that comes alive the deeper mechanisms in our body. And if that long term is not exercised, those deeper mechanisms, and among that is not only the emotion, it's also the immune system. It becomes weaker. We become more flaccid. We've become insensitive. Look at the insensitivity in our society. Gaza is happening. Yeah, protest here. We should stop that shit.
4:34 Speaker 01 We should stop those wars because kids, little kids are here jeopardized. And we cannot even feel it anymore. You know, that this insensitivity in us is a plague. It's a plague because we serve a system that runs well on people being obedient and being flaccid, not really sensitive. Because if you are really sensitive, you don't go to a slave job every day and come back stressed. And the other day, you do it again and again and again and again. What we should do within ourselves is learning how to connect into the depth. And this is what I give.
5:17 Speaker 01 Through the cold, we bring these deeper emotions alive. And then you will not abide to that what makes you weak, to that what kills your purpose. We gotta stand up as humanity and more now than ever. And here we are. And Wim, how do you do that? Very simple. Do this breathing techniques. Do it on your bed, on a sofa or very controlled because you will go past your conditioned mind and body. The shallow breathing we do, we say that is breathing. That's not breathing.
6:00 Speaker 01 That is an automatic reflex of your body doing something. There it is. Now you take over consciously. You start to breathe deeper. You go past these patterns depicted by a conditioned body. And that conditioning is only serving the system, but not necessarily you. I want you to take over the steel wheel. I want you to be conscious and then go with that conscious into deeper breathing, break the patterns of your conditioning and suddenly your deeper traumas, your deeper feelings are able to come to the surface,
6:43 Speaker 01 being stored up, being stashed away forever. And that is what is happening in the first session we do. I can promise any, any person who is doing it will encounter such a tremendous experience of himself from the depth coming to the surface. And that's only the depth coming to the surface, that's all. And it's beautiful.
7:15 Steven Bartlett? There's three elements to this Wim Hof method. There's three pillars to the method. The first is that conscious breathing. So let's just make sure we've covered that off. If I want to be able to just do this at home, if I'm listening now and I'm in my car or I'm walking the dog or whatever, I'm on a plane. What is, what is the sort of key parts of doing the breathing technique correctly?
7:37 Speaker 01 Yes, do it safe.
7:39 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
7:40 Speaker 01 So never outside where you can lose control.
7:43 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
7:44 Speaker 01 You know, when you drive and you lose control, that's no good. When you are in a swimming pool, you lose control, that's no good. When you are at an abbess and you lose control, no good. You know, wherever your motorical power is needed to be in control, don't do it there. Therefore, we say strictly, this is a powerful medicinal therapeutic exercise through breathing, specific breathing patterns we take on. If, for example, we are sitting now.
8:21 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
8:22 Speaker 01 It's safe to do it here.
8:23 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 01 Even if you faint now, then yeah, you would maybe fall here on the ground. There's a soft carpet here, there's no problem.
8:33 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
8:33 Speaker 01 So.
8:37 Speaker 01 Relax. It's a... Yeah, this is also these moments when you're... Okay, relax. I'm now turning myself into myself because I'm gonna breathe deeper. I'm gonna go past my normal uh, control mode, normal conditioning, normal thinking, so... Okay, am I here? Yes, I'm here. Okay, here we go. We have a belly, we have a chest that those muscles are connected to the lungs. So use your belly and use your chest to inhale fully.
9:19 Speaker 01 You can go through your mouth, through your nose, as you feel.
9:22 Steven Bartlett? How do I know if I'm doing it correctly with my belly?
9:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, just...
9:36 Steven Bartlett? So two breaths in.
9:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, and at a certain moment it becomes one.
9:53 Speaker 01 Keep on going. Fully in. As deep as possible and let it go. Just let it go. And then fully in again.
10:04 Speaker 01 As deep as possible and let it go.
10:09 Speaker 01 And all in.
10:13 Speaker 01 And let it go.
10:17 Speaker 01 And all in.
10:21 Speaker 01 Let it go. The mind goes with the breath. Fully in.
10:29 Speaker 01 Let it go.
10:32 Speaker 01 And all in.
10:35 Speaker 01 Let it go. We are blowing, keep on going. Full all in. Blowing off the CO2, carbon dioxide. Can become a little bit dizzy, yes. But that's okay. Your body is charging up. It's changing. Your blood chemistry is changing.
11:00 Speaker 01 Your pH levels go up in your blood. We do ten more. Fully in. Just follow the breath. Whatever feels different, breathe into it. Let it go. And all in.
11:22 Speaker 01 Let it go. This morning at five o'clock, I was doing this. Because I was preparing to be freed in my biochemistry of any shit. And this is cleansing the biochemistry. Trauma, anything, anything that is deeply in is being cleansed. Yeah, five more.
11:43 Speaker 01 Let it go.
11:46 Speaker 01 Fully in. Let it go. All in.
11:53 Speaker 01 Let it go. All in. Let it go.
12:00 Speaker 01 Last one. All in. Let it go. And stop after the exhalation.
12:08 Speaker 01 Close your mouth. No breathing. No need. Your pH levels are way up. There's no need for breathing. What is going to happen is what I was saying, mentioning before.
12:23 Speaker 01 After one minute, and there is no need for breathing because the breathing trigger depends on CO2. CO2 is blown off. You are biohacking your body.
12:37 Speaker 01 You're going deep. You're going past the conditioned mind and body. You're going deeper in the tissue.
12:47 Speaker 01 Now you're entering into the deepest part of your brain. It's going to shoot out adrenaline, epinephrine. The adrenal axis is now in activation.
13:02 Speaker 01 Now slowly but surely, five times more blood will flow into your brain and your heart. You feel peaceful.
13:12 Speaker 01 You have it fully in control, yet the deepest of your mechanisms and the deepest of your brain are at work right now. And because you are doing it, you are connecting with those mechanisms. That's the way we learn to gain control over these mechanisms. And you're still without breathing, even normally you would die like, "Breathe, breathe." You're peaceful. You're completely in control over your parasympathetic nervous system, which is deep, autonomic nervous system level. And you are in control right now. This is where trauma is starting to release.
13:56 Speaker 01 Five, four, three, two, one. Now you take a full breath in.
14:04 Speaker 01 Hold it and press it to your head. Press it to your head. Press it to your head. This is subliminal cerebral spinal fluid to your head. It's flushing in and all brain, hundred percent neural activity. Three, two, one, let it go.
14:28 Speaker 01 Good. If we go into a next round, you will be able to go, say, for two minutes without breathing, then two and a half minutes, then three minutes. After exhalation, it cannot be something else than regaining a control deeper than ever before thought possible. And this is what we have shown. This is where the bacteria subtly had no chance. The virus has no chance. Why is it that the world doesn't know about this? Why is it that the scientific world is not examining this as a beneficial therapeutic power to battle all the diseases we got?
15:14 Speaker 01 Because aren't we built with an immune system that shoot? Hold virus, bacteria, inflammation, it is. But it is never at work because this is deeper than our conditioned body and mind. And this is the way to get a hold of that.
15:33 Steven Bartlett? It feels so, I feel very different in every, in every sense of the word. I feel, when I came back into the room, it all felt very, it almost felt a little bit like I'd just woken up. But it also, I was a little, you know, it was a little bit of, it was very peaceful. And I was very, um, when I came back into the room, I felt very focused.
15:51 Speaker 01 Nice. And I felt like I. This is the last study I did with five hundred forty people in Australia. It shows that this, uh, this, uh, method is compared to meditation and mindfulness works a whole lot better.
16:10 Steven Bartlett? How did you learn this? Where did you learn this?
16:13 Speaker 01 By intuition. You, you remember the mother who made me, uh, uh, uh, uh, become a missionary, become a seeker? And then I found the cold water. What does the cold water do? First time you go into cold water. You learn to breathe deep and that makes all the change. At a certain moment, I became aware that if I was breathing deeper, slowly and deep, slowly and deep. I was able to endure the cold much longer. That means that if we go into deeper breathing, we are able to activate deeper mechanisms that are able to make us a lot stronger.
16:57 Steven Bartlett? And that translates to life?
16:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, translates to everyday life.
17:02 Steven Bartlett? I want to get on to the cold water, which is the sort of second pillar of the Wim Hof method. But the third pillar I find really interesting as well, which is the power of the mind.
17:12 Speaker 01 Exactly.
17:13 Steven Bartlett? What do you mean by this, the power of the mind? You're telling me that I can do things to my mind to make my mind stronger and more resilient?
17:23 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
17:24 Steven Bartlett? What do you mean by the power of the mind?
17:25 Speaker 01 First of all, we just recently did this new study. It's coming out now. Um, it's into submitting and they did it with five hundred forty people. So.
17:37 Speaker 01 Meditation and mindfulness is about the mind, isn't it? To bring anxiety down, to bring stress down. This method works better than mindfulness and meditation, which is in the corporate world, but also in the wellness industry, overall, and also therapeutically in the health, mental health care, yeah, systems,
18:05 Speaker 01 being accepted and implemented and used as a therapeutic means. So this works better. The stress resilience goes way up. Stress experience goes way down. And cognitive awareness goes also way up, is what you just said. And this was only one round. Imagine if you do four rounds, you will go so deep, that's, yeah, unprecedented deep where you will go. And things can come to the surface, never been stashed away,
18:47 Speaker 01 you never knew of, or were not aware of and all. This is all blocking our awareness. And now, when it's getting out of the way, then suddenly our awareness becomes bigger, brighter, nicer, more flow, more receptive, more sharper, clearer, and all. And that is part of a system that suddenly is able to override our conditioning. So our conditioning is a conditioning wherein deeper mechanisms are not really at work, but we are able to function in this society system, etc.
19:32 Speaker 01 But not necessarily we are connected with the depth of ourselves. And when trauma happens or emotions start to be not nice, we don't know what to do with that. Now, the power of the mind is very simple. Through doing this, you learn to override, to create a different conditioned mind and body relationship.
19:58 Speaker 01 And suddenly opens up a new terrain, a new capacity in the brain to connect with. And that is interoception.
20:06 Steven Bartlett? Interoception.
20:07 Speaker 01 Interoception.
20:09 Steven Bartlett? Interoception.
20:10 Speaker 01 And with that, we suddenly learn to control and to command our bodies, a vessel of our emotions, of our sensations, of whatever we experience, that's our body. But when it feels bad, we don't know what to do. And now we found a way to go past that conditioned state. And we found a new way in the brain and get a hold of that, which is there naturally to control whatever is going wrong, to re-regulate it, to rebalance it, to reset it, to make
20:48 Speaker 01 our bad feelings, emotions, disease, et cetera, make it go away in our command. That is the power of the mind, which is a natural capacity of ours, which should be revealed past the system way of thinking and be brought into secondary school or even when kids are very young, that they are able to depict their own happiness, strength and health.
21:20 Steven Bartlett? Is part of the building up the power of the mind becoming, stepping into personal responsibility and stepping away from victimhood?
21:29 Speaker 01 Yes, because victimhood is no longer needed. Responsibility is there where we have the ability to respond. And this is, these are the tools. Then suddenly we feel we got the steering wheel in our hand.
21:45 Steven Bartlett? How do you train someone, though, to stop being a victim in their own life?
21:48 Speaker 01 In one, in one session.
21:50 Steven Bartlett? How?
21:51 Speaker 01 Just do this breathing.
21:52 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
21:53 Speaker 01 And then we go into the ice bath.
21:56 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
21:56 Speaker 01 They suddenly feel power. Sorry that I'm yelling.
22:01 Steven Bartlett? You can yell.
22:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's power. People feel being silent in that ice bath, overcoming all that stress, and suddenly feel that they are on top of it. And they are suddenly able to go past this concept of this dangerous cold, power, energy coming, no control, this anxiety. Suddenly, they got a halt, complete halt over that. And with that comes that paradigm that always thought of that to be impossible to control. Suddenly, it's a piece of cake. That is then turning into a domino effect,
22:45 Speaker 01 a cascade of feelings of, hey, if I can't do that, I can do that, I can do that.
22:52 Steven Bartlett? So you can build personal responsibility by taking control of the cold and not...
22:56 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely. And just one day.
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