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  • To me, God is cold.

  • You could say that I think of the cold as a noble force.

  • It's just helping me.

  • It's training me.

  • It's bringing me back to the inner nature the way it was meant to be.

  • And there's a way I do not only endure, the cold, I love the cold.

  • >> We live in a world where there's all kinds of false healers and

  • fake alternative medicine programs you can sign up for.

  • It's a rare moment in history when someone comes along who can perform real miracles

  • with real evidence to back them up.

  • Wim Hof has defied logic time and

  • time again, and always under scientific scrutiny.

  • He holds the world record for being able to be submerged in ice for

  • almost two hours without his core body temperature changing.

  • He's climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a pair of shorts, and

  • run a marathon in the desert without drinking any water.

  • He's even proven in a laboratory setting

  • that he can withstand illnesses using the power of his mind.

  • But he's not a freak of nature.

  • According to Wim, anyone can do what he can do.

  • They just have to learn his method, the Wim Hof method.

  • Using a combination of cold immersion, breathing techniques and mental focus,

  • anyone can accomplish feats that were previously thought to be impossible.

  • >> The question is, is everybody able to do what you do?

  • >> Yes, I am able to train people in room temperature in just

  • a weeks time with a relatively simple technique and

  • make people be able to influence their immune system.

  • >> We were skeptical, so Wim invited us to take a crash course in his method and

  • see just how easy it is to become superhuman.

  • We first met Wim on his houseboat in Holland,

  • where he began to teach our whole crew the basics of cold immersion.

  • Growing up in the 21st century,

  • we're naturally skeptical of everything we read on the internet.

  • But to put Wim's method to the test, we would have to suspend our disbelief.

  • Because no true miracle can be accomplished without some faith.

  • In this case, the miracle would supposedly involve the crew and I taking off

  • our clothes and climbing to the top of the freezing cold Mount Sniezka in Poland.

  • But before that, our training began in the canals of Amsterdam.

  • So, while I'm climbing the mountain,

  • if they haven't done the training, then they'll be screwed, basically.

  • - Yes, and the film too.

  • >> We are going to start with the breathing.

  • You will see feeling is understanding.

  • And later on we can dig in all kinds of scientific literature and

  • readings and comparisons and statistics and all that, we don't need.

  • You are going to feel it, we are pioneers.

  • Okay, just go on.

  • No thinking, just feel.

  • Your head is becoming light-headed.

  • >> Wim was going to teach us to endure the cold like him.

  • But first we had to learn the basics.

  • Wim told us to spend one minute breathing in more air than we let out.

  • Then he instructed us to take one last breath and hold it.

  • By using his technique, we were able to hold our breath for

  • much longer than usual.

  • I didn't really know what was going on, but

  • my body was doing things it had never done before, and I was pretty freaked out.

  • But also very curious as to where this would take me.

  • It was like I was going through some second puberty,

  • where instead of becoming an adult, I was becoming a superhuman.

  • >> First round, 2:17 for Matt.

  • Crazy, yeah?

  • - Whoa. It's something, yeah?

  • You still?

  • I just stopped because I wanted to listen.

  • But I was still good.

  • - Good.

  • >> My whole body was just kind of like tingling.

  • And then when you said to stop breathing,

  • it just didn't seem like I had the need to breathe at all.

  • It was really amazing.

  • Who are you?

  • Who are you?

  • I mean, I can't argue with the results.

  • You've done things that no one's ever done before.

  • But there have been hundreds of people throughout history in

  • the past 4,000 years who have claimed to be able to do all sorts of miracles

  • by controlling their body, using the power of meditation and breathing.

  • What makes you different?

  • Is it that you're the first one who can actually do it?

  • >> Absolutely not the first one who is able to do this.

  • But I am the first one to bring it to science and

  • to take away the speculation around it.

  • >> What was your life like before you became an iceman?

  • >> Actually, I was a father of four kids and bringing them up alone.

  • Because my wife accidented in 95.

  • So that kind of adversity and sadness maybe motivated you to...

  • - Oh yes.

  • Inspire yourself in the same way a lot of people that do...

  • Yes, sadness is a deep trigger.

  • Where I got peace was in these breathing exercises.

  • Swimming outside in the cold.

  • The cold is merciless, but righteous as well.

  • >> So, Wim's just told me to get into my shorts, which can't be a good sign,

  • because it means we're gonna get into the water.

  • Wim's already shirtless.

  • >> Scared shirtless.

  • Scared shirtless.

  • Just chill out, man.

  • >> All right, yeah!

  • >> Oh, boy.

  • >> Let nature go within you.

  • Breathe, motherfucker!

  • >> That is some cold Amsterdam canal December water.

  • Keep on, silently, witness, witness, witness.

  • You're doing just fine.

  • You're going the way I know it naturally goes.

  • I don't feel cold at all.

  • I feel like if you keep relaxed and

  • you stay in there you could do it forever like this guy right here.

  • Look at this madman.

  • So now our producer has to go in as well

  • because she's gonna need to be there when we do this.

  • So good luck, Casey.

  • >> You can come in too.

  • There you are.

  • Hello, take it easy.

  • You know people think I'm crazy.

  • Maybe I am crazy.

  • But not because of my breathing techniques.

  • Not because of my cold water swimming.

  • Not because of my being fearless in extreme challenges.

  • The first time I went under the ice, the water is as sharp as needles.

  • I saw this as a big, huge, sharp diamond.

  • At 35 meters I lost sight because the retina, it froze.

  • I couldn't see nothing.

  • I couldn't breathe, of course.

  • And then my consciousness succumbed to a lower consciousness.

  • This is survival.

  • I do not fear death.

  • I fear not to live fully.

  • If I live fully, I am not into death.

  • I am living.

  • >> It isn't all about breaking records.

  • Wim's mission is to use his body as a laboratory

  • to revolutionize our understanding of physiology.

  • In 2011, he was injected with a bacterial endotoxin

  • in an experiment that challenged our understanding of the nervous system.

  • In normal humans, the injection should cause a strong immune response leading

  • to fever, chills, and headaches.

  • But not in Wim.

  • It appeared that he was somehow able to suppress his immune response by making

  • his body secrete adrenaline,

  • suggesting that his method can allow us to influence our immune system at will.

  • Scientists thought he might just be a freak of nature.

  • So to further prove this theory,

  • they performed this same experiment on 12 subjects Wim had trained in Poland.

  • And the same thing happened.

  • >> Normally,

  • it's very difficult to increase your adrenaline levels by your own will.

  • Adrenaline is released by the autonomic nervous system.

  • And autonomic means that you cannot voluntarily influence it.

  • So if you walk outside and you are robbed on the street, you will have a heart

  • rate of 160 and your blood pressure will be sky high within seconds.

  • But if I ask you now to increase your heart rate, you cannot do that.

  • You cannot voluntarily modulate that.

  • And with the techniques of Wim Hof, we showed that he was able to

  • increase his adrenaline levels to very high concentrations,

  • even higher than people that go bungee jumping for the first time.

  • That was something that we didn't think possible before that.

  • >> If we learn to influence our immune system at will,

  • we could potentially use that to treat inflammatory disorders where the immune

  • system is overactive, including Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

  • But Wim didn't seem to think that there were any limits to what his method

  • could accomplish, and that made me skeptical.

  • He was eager to show that he could help anyone, including people with cancer.

  • So he invited us to dinner with his friend Rene Gude,

  • a famous philosopher of science,

  • who had taken up the Wim Hof method after being given two months to live.