Book: The Wim Hof Method
At first glance, Wim Hof, if you've ever heard of him, might seem like a quack; a crazy dude with crazy ideas. Funnily enough, he'd probably agree with you. While most of Wim Hof's ideas aren't actually new, they are new to our culture and, since he wasn't trained by anyone, he actually realized all these practices on his own. I'm a big believer that truth, if it is truth, can be approached from many different paths and it will lead to the same conclusion. Most people who talk about what he talks about have been trained by a lineage of monks, but Wim wasn't. In this book, he tells the story of how he discovered this ancient knowledge...by listening to his body and how it can transform you life.
He's has broken 26 Guinness World Records
What makes Wim Hof truly exceptional when compared to anyone else preaching these practices other than the fact that he stumbled across these with his own mind, body, and life is that he's bent on including the scientific community. To that end, he's broken 26 Guinness World Records some of which, unfortunately, have since been reclaimed. Some of his feats include climbing Mt. Everest while only wearing shorts, running a marathon in the Namib desert without drinking, being injected with E. Coli bacteria and not getting sick. He's also sat in a bucket of ice for an hour while maintaining his core body temperature on a stage with thousands of people watching. To keep an eye on his temperature, they used an infrared camera which was streamed to the audience. Once he got out, he host asked him if he could make his right hand heat up on command, to which Wim responded that he'd never tried. A few moments later, with the infrared camera zoomed into his right hand held above his head and the whole audience watching, he was able to make his hand glow in the camera. All of these things he assures us he did with the power of the mind, not his mind, but our minds. We, he maintains, can do it too by breathing, dancing with the cold, and building our neuronal pathways through our ability to withstand hermetic stress.
His method, delineated in this book, is tied to an intimate portrait of a man, propelled by grief, who changed and is changing the world.