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Wim Hof first caught the attention of scientists when he proved he was able to use meditation to stay submerged in ice for 1 hour and 53 minutes without his core body temperature changing. Since then, he's climbed Mount Everest in his shorts, resisted altitude sickness, completed a marathon in the Namib Desert with no water and proven under a laboratory setting that he's able to influence his autonomic nervous system and immune system at will.
Almost everything Wim has done was previously thought to be impossible - but he's not a freak of nature.
To demonstrate that any human can learn his methods, Wim offered to teach Matt Shea and Daisy-May Hudson to climb a freezing cold mountain in their shorts without getting cold.
Buddhist breathing techniques repackaged for westerners? There's an app for that.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 15 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)
It is, of course, nothing new... Buddhists have been demonstrating this kind of thing for centuries. Through self-hypnosis and acupuncture, the Chinese have done open heart surgery (successfully) without anesthesia. The twist here is that this guy is teaching westerners to learn and practice some of these things in a very short time, just a few days as opposed to the years to decades long traditions of the east.
In one sense, it's all in their heads - absolutely, call it self-hypnosis or whatever you like. In another, they are doing things with their heads that others cannot, or more to the point: do not. The ice-bath stuff isn't that wild - polar clubbers do that all the time; although, if you get in a bad state with sustained cold exposure you can experience uncontrollable shivering which these people clearly were not. Suppressing auto-immune reaction to injected toxins is pretty far out there, and he taught a group of 12/12 to do that in a few weeks.
The main thing that's interesting (to me) about this is that it's not wrapped up in inexplicable and mystical fog, it's straightforward and open: here's what we're doing, and here's how to replicate it easily.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Monday January 15 2018, @07:54PM
Well said. I'm not clear on what the complaint is. The video is pretty straight forward. Wikipedia has academic citations. Maybe pe1 needs to rtfa, or at least provide a link to a debunking.