White Fox Talking
Talk About Mental Health & Well-Being… Why Not? Mark ‘Charlie’ Valentine suffered life changing mental illness, before beginning a journey to recovery and wellness; the darkness of PTSD transformed by the light atop mountains and beyond. Mark is now joining forces with Seb Budniak, to make up the ‘White Fox Talking’ team. Through a series of Podcasts and Vlogs, ‘White Fox Talking’ will be bringing you a variety of guests, topics, and inspirational stories relating to improving mental well-being. Find your way back to you! Expect conversation, information, serious discussion and a healthy dose of Yorkshire humour!
White Fox Talking
E68: The Wim Hof Method: Breath Work, Cold Exposure, and Mental Resilience with Jack Walker
Send White Fox Talking a Message
Ever wondered how something as simple as your breath and cold water could completely transform your mental state and physical health? Jack Walker, certified Wim Hof instructor and founder of Wellness Retreat Spain, takes us on a deeply personal journey from struggling with cannabis addiction and unexplained depression to finding extraordinary clarity through breath work and cold exposure.
We are joined in the studio by Bradley Perigo, who practices the Wim Hof method. Also joining the conversation, online, is White Fox Talking resident Psychologist Dave Gallagher, to provide a scientific input.
The science behind the Wim Hof Method proves fascinating – when we deliberately cycle our nervous system between fight-or-flight and rest-digest states through specialized breathing techniques and cold immersion, we're literally rewiring our brain's stress response. This practice builds resilience that transfers to everyday challenges, from road rage to workplace pressure, creating a profound shift in how we handle life's difficulties.
What makes this approach so powerful is its accessibility. Jack explains how just two minutes in cold water (not necessarily ice!) can activate cardiovascular improvements through vasoconstriction and vasodilation, essentially exercising your 100,000 kilometres of blood vessels like you'd train a muscle. The method also stimulates brown fat activation, boosts immune function, and provides remarkable mental clarity – all confirmed by scientific studies showing significant improvements in mood, energy, and sense of control.
Whether you're battling stress, seeking performance enhancement, or simply curious about pushing beyond comfort zones, this episode offers practical insights for incorporating these techniques safely into your routine. Jack's upcoming wellness retreats in Spain provide an immersive opportunity to experience these benefits in a supportive environment, complete with yoga, meditation, and fresh farm-to-table dining.
Ready to discover what your body and mind are truly capable of? This conversation might just be the first step toward finding unexpected peace in discomfort.
Instagram
Website: Wellness Retreats Spain
VLOG
Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking Podcast. I'm Mark Charlie-Varney and Seb is at the controls, and thank you for being at the controls, seb. Anytime, it seems to be a rewire job every time. Well, getting this technology going and working. I know my place, you know your place. No, no, how have you been?
Speaker 2:I've been all right. Thank you, yeah, struggling with my back, it's an ongoing saga.
Speaker 1:Funnily enough, that's who supplies my insurance. Now I'm that old. There's the saga. Yeah, any updates or anything? You break into bits, is it not a self-care thing? Just not self-care, not self-care. Let's leave it at that.
Speaker 1:Okay, a couple of weeks till the marathon, mate. I know this will go out after that, so tell me all about by the time. By the time this goes out, I'll probably be sat with you with a dodgy back. Yeah, been struggling, mate, struggling to do my trainings, but the mindset sort of changed and it's one of them where we're now. Well, where I'm going, where I don't want to go out, I don't want to run after a little bit, hasn't it? Yeah, so it's all cool. Are you ready? Ready for what? For the run? The run, I don't know. I don't think so. Really, I've got to accept that. I'm not a Star Spring chicken anymore. It's a no world record. There'll be definitely no record, maybe the number of toilets used, and yeah, but we'll see how we get on. Go out after that's run. So hopefully the film will be out then as well. So that's all cool.
Speaker 2:We've got quite a big set-up today, don't we?
Speaker 1:We do have quite a big set-up, so shall we go round? So first of all, we're going to say happy birthday to Dave Gallagher. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, thank you. Our resident psychologist Sporting is white folks talking jumper. Yeah, that's cool, looking good, dave. Oh, and t-shirt. Well, I was just saying actually I've hardly got any left because I keep giving them away. So, yeah, people keep asking oh, do you sell them? No, but you can have this one, ones that have been washed so, dave, where are you?
Speaker 4:well, I am in the north of Scotland, on the Isle of Skye, at the Sligican which is an absolutely incredible place. It's mind-blowing and I'm camped in a bog.
Speaker 1:There's a famous whisky collection there.
Speaker 4:Yes, I mean it's a stripped-down bar because it's just at the end of the winter season, but I'm in the posh bit, which is a bit of a change. I don't normally see the likes of me in the posh bit, especially when I'm camped in a bog.
Speaker 1:Well, big up to them for letting you use their dining room, I suppose.
Speaker 4:Exactly. Well, I thought about doing the podcast from the tent, but I wasn't quite sure if my phone signal was right. Yeah, well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:And we can also welcome a good friend of the podcast, former founder member, bradley Perigo. Hello, so welcome, brad. Nice to see you back, and this time as an interviewee Feels a bit weird. Feels good though, yeah, cool, and the reason we're here is because recently the podcast got together with Wellness Retreat, spain and we held a Wim Hof workshop that was hosted and run by our guest tonight, jack Walker. So welcome, Jack. The White Fox Talking podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact, a Wim Hof workshop that was hosted and ran by our guest tonight, jack Walker. So welcome, jack. The White Fox Talking podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact.
Speaker 3:Thank you, good to see you again, lads. So how are you? Yeah, I'm good mate. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, not too bad.
Speaker 1:So, just for the listeners, could you give us a brief introduction about yourself and then we'll get on with what we did down at Testbed and how we got into it, etc.
Speaker 3:Etc yeah, yeah. So, uh, as you know, my name's jack from wellness retreat, spain, and we do spain workshops all over spain retreats and uh wim off workshops in england as well. So I'm a wim off instructor and, yeah, as you know, that's what we do on the workshop the ice, the breath, work, mindset and all-round mental well-being Cool.
Speaker 1:So, if we cast our minds back, jack, myself and Seb came to Emergent Men in Manchester, didn't we? And that's where we met, and it was quite a? Do you remember that circle that we had to get into? It was quite uncomfortable, but it was stepping outside of your comfort zones. That was the uncomfortable, but it was stepping outside of your comfort zone. That was the idea of it, and basically there was an inner circle and outer circle and we had to cross. So the outer circle stepped around, I think, and I stepped around and to look, as guys, we had to look straight into each other's eyes and tell each other a fear and I think do you know what that was? The first thing that popped into my head was and I told you, probably the first time I'd met him myself was that I've got this fear of words and fear of long. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3:And after that I've actually taken action to.
Speaker 1:I'm still scared. I'm still scared. I'll just avoid them more now. But no, that's led on to other stuff with EMDR and stuff like that. But yeah, that was how long ago.
Speaker 3:Was that A couple of years, wasn't it? I think that was in 2023, was it? Yeah, maybe about two years ago. Yeah, so the summer of 23.
Speaker 1:So at that stage, where were you with your, weren't you Wim Hof and Wim? Because there was a reason for every guy that were there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, To be there, wasn't there? Well, honest, that that kind of workshop, that men's work as people know it, as is how I got into all this and how I got led into the whim off method and the ice and the breath work? Really, because I sort of accidentally fell into a workshop myself in london in 2019 and ended up, like yourself, in a circle of men in a environment that I've never been in before and I found myself sharing things and talking about things that I'd never opened up about before, and because I didn't really know what I was letting myself in for when I went along to that workshop. It was a massive eye-opener and, yeah, we did breath work and we did an ice bath, but I think the main takeaway from that first experience was the connection and the vulnerability of all the men there.
Speaker 3:Like you say, a group of men usually come together in the pub or maybe at the football or, you know, in these masculine environments where it's all banter and everyone's having a drink or everyone's having a laugh, and when you put into a position where there's, say, I don't know 10 men and they're all there, as you say, for a purpose, and they might not even know what that purpose is. But as you start to share and as you start to talk and you do these different exercises, then you do realise that there's a connection there that is beyond the banter and beyond alcohol and drugs and it tears them, layers down and that's when you sort of you get past these traumas or addictions or things that have been holding you back. I know that was my experience with it anyway, and it was the same on that workshop. I'd already done then nearly four years of retreats, workshops, participating, facilitating, and that was sort of just another workshop to experience as I was doing my training for the Wemhoff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it was a really, really good day yeah, can I ask you and you don't have to answer if you don't want is what took you? Was there any particular event, any number of events where in your past or you know a bit about you growing up and you know youth and then realising that there was an issue, or there was an issue and then you went to, because there's a lot going on in the way where we think we're dealing with stuff and then some you know, for any guy that were there or goes to these events or anyone that goes to these events that realisation that actually, yeah, I need to do something. It's a big step, but where have we stepped from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, as I say, I didn't go there with a reason in mind. The first workshop I went on, as I say, was in 2019. But I suppose, if we're going right back, my childhood was pretty good. There was nothing that stands out, there was no big traumatic events or anything like that where you could pinpoint and say, oh, that was the reason for this or that's caused this sort of issue.
Speaker 3:But I think, for me, I've always done things in excess, so I'm all or nothing and I've got a really addictive personality. So if I'm doing something, I've got to be all in, and I've got to, whether it's smoking, drinking, eating Nowadays, obviously, with the wellness or business or whatever it is, I can't just do things by half. So I think what happened with me was when I was about 16, I started smoking weed, going out as you do, drinking and, you know, having a good time and stuff. But then in my 20s, I was smoking weed every day, all day, all night, and obviously that's when you realize it is a problem. And the problem for me was, on paper, I was quite successful, so it was a good excuse to say, well, I'm not fucking up doing this, I'm doing that, you know, I've got a house, I've got a business, I've got my missus. I then had a son, and, on paper, I had everything that I'd always, you know, worked for and what I thought would tick the box to say, oh yeah, that's happiness. But then I found myself going deeper and deeper into a rut of what I now know was depression, and I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be like anxious, tight chest, and that just developed and developed, and then, sort of 2018, 2019, I was running my business I was only about 24, something like that, though.
Speaker 3:So it was a lot of pressure, having a family and all this, you know, responsibility at such a young age. And I was smoking weed all day, smoking obviously at night just to sort of get away and escape, you know, and relax, really, and just switch off. And I'd find myself, you know, just crying for no reason and not really being able to see why I was feeling like this, because, as I said, I had everything that I'd always wanted. So so I thought what's wrong with me? Why am I this way? So I think I knew that something needed to change, but I'd never seen any sort of wellness path of you know self-care. Really, the only self-care I've done is more the self-help books or like the, for example, you know reading like, like the success books, all about money when I was younger. So I was that self-development.
Speaker 3:I was big into, you know, like the law of attraction, the secret think and grow rich these kinds of books, and I studied them massively when I was younger, but I'd never actually looked into the inside or the emotions or that side of it. So when I got invited to a workshop in 2019, I didn't know what I was getting myself in for really and, to be honest, I'm glad, because if I did, I don't think I'd have gone because it was obviously really deep. So, yeah, that's where I was introduced to the breathwork then and the ice baths, cold water therapy and, to be honest, it was the first time I'd actually found any balance when I did the breathwork and when I did the ice, it was like as soon as I got into that ice, all the brain fog went and I finally sort of cleared my mind, even if it was only for two minutes. It was as if all that had just gone and I thought, bloody hell, you know I need to look into this.
Speaker 3:Were you still smoking weed then yeah, well, funnily enough, I'd I've been smoking for about 12 years, like literally daily, and I uh, it was 11 days I'd quit for when I first went on the workshop. But I'm not gonna lie, after that workshop it was like a vicious circle of, you know, stopping for a month or two, then starting, again stopping, starting, and, and now I've done like two years, two months, something like that, nearly three months without any drink, without any drugs or anything, so so I'm just used to crack it yeah, I'm just sort of wondering because you were successful, you know, with your business and you've got your family, but you're in that circle of smoking weed all the time, would you be smoking it?
Speaker 1:And I mean I sort of believe everyone's, you know, individual. It works for some folks. Yeah, yeah, definitely don't work for me. I can't stand next to people that are, otherwise I'll dig thinking was it sort of validating you smoking because you were successful? And you're like, yeah, yeah, I mean because you're thinking, well, I can, I can smoke this and still be successful, exactly well, that's what it was.
Speaker 3:So from a young age I was smoking it so I could function on it, so no one really knew that I was stoned because I was just what I look like all the time. Now you can see a massive difference, obviously, but back then it was just normal. So the problem was, you think of stoners as people who were just like sat at home playing on the xbox, you know, getting stoned, eating food. And that wasn't me. I was out. I was like, say, running a business, taking my son everywhere, you know, going on doing whatever families do, you know, functioning, completely normal.
Speaker 3:But that was a problem, because that was my excuse to say, well, yeah, I might be doing that, but I'm not wasting money on it. You know. Well, that's probably the wrong term, I'm not spending money that I haven't got on it. No one's going without. You know I'm successful. But what I realized was when I started doing these men's workshops and going on retreats and started to facilitate them and stuff, I realised that the problem was at the time I was going after all the wrong things. So, yeah, I thought I was successful. But there's no point being successful if you're waking up in the morning and crying for no reason. So I realised that I was going after all the wrong things the materialism, money, success instead of looking inside it how to actually be happy. And when I started doing the workshops and opening up and talking, that's when I realised that a lot of the stuff I've been chasing was just bullshit really, and there's no point having that if you're not happy in yourself.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to rewind for a second. Okay, when you fall into the depression cycle, if I can call it that what impact did that have on your family? Did they see a change in you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think my son was only about four or something like that. So, as I say, it wasn't like I was. You know, I'd always smoke outside of the house. It wasn't around him or anything of the house, so it wasn't around him or anything. But it obviously does affect the family because you're not showing up as your full self when you feel like that and I think I was getting up in the morning taking him to school, but it's little things like that. I always remember, like road rage is a good example. So I'd everyone does that. When I say about road rage, there's always someone in the room.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the thing with road rage is I'd have it every day, literally. So I'd be doing the school run and I'd end up arguing with someone on the road and I always used to think there's so many knobheads every day when I'm driving. And then what it was, I'm waking up with ganj over, as I like to call it, and don't you, don't function till about. I didn't used to properly wake up till about 11 am, so you're all, you're there, but you're sort of a bit of a zombie and you're like trying to, you know, wake up and when I'm obviously waking up, been up for a couple of hours.
Speaker 3:Then you're doing the school run and it's like you're getting into these arguments with people and you think it's personal. But the way I see it now is it's like you're getting into these arguments with people and you think it's personal. But the way I see it now is it's not personal. So now I don't get road rage because that's just a metal box and you're just a metal box. But when your head's all foggy and you know you, you go noughts of a hundred in no time at all because you can't, you know, process your emotions properly and you can't think straight. So it has that knock-on effect and obviously I didn't want my son being around that sort of thing. So I think it will have affected him in small little ways. You know, like that where the senior maybe be angry and it's not a very good role model.
Speaker 1:So that's the sort of changes that that I've made, you know, over the years I believe when we had james wilson into sleep geek, we were talking about people like, obviously my thing was alcohol and it being a that sedative effect. So you think you've been relaxed, but you're not. You're actually getting less sleep, yeah. And then you wake up and then in the morning you're a bit ratty, aren't you? Yeah, I mean. And then, because you know, and sleep so important for resetting that and said what's your next excuse with rodrigo? No, I've had this before. Do you know what I I may?
Speaker 1:I worked that out myself. I was like, well, you know, if I'm getting angry, sat in my car by myself, ranting, I'm just ranting to me that person might be trying to get somewhere in a hurry and uh, but it's weird, because now I make a conscious effort of letting people out. And then if I've got passengers that care, like, why are you letting them out? It makes me feel all right, you know what I mean. So, seb, how are you getting on with road rage these days?
Speaker 2:I've improved. What still does annoy me, then, is me picking on you about the road rage. No, just people don't stick to the rules. But I can get over that, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's like you say. It's like you're getting yourself wound up in a box, aren't you? You don't know what they're doing in their box.
Speaker 3:I think it goes back to what I've seen from it is. It's all nervous system. So, basically, if you're stressed or anxious, like I was back, then you're living in your fight or flight. So you're always ready to go at any given moment. So you might, you know, get into arguments more easily because you're in that state of fight or flight.
Speaker 1:I don't say it because we've got a resident psychologist here, Because I think there's a thing. Is it the HPA network?
Speaker 4:That's right. Yeah, oh, got it right. That's one of the networks, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but wouldn't you so? Is it hypothalamus?
Speaker 4:Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal. That's it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm going to try and get this right, yeah, so once your hypothalamus sends the signal to the pituitary gland, the pituitary gland to the adrenal gland, and once that adrenaline's gone, that's it. It's a physical effect and that's when you is that right, dave Symbol.
Speaker 4:It's actually not so much about adrenaline, it's more cortisol. Cortisol is that stress additivity sort of stress hormone, if you like, which goes and we're probably talking about the immune system in due course. Yeah, it feeds into that immune response as well. But yeah, the hpa tends to be a kind of a long, longer lasting part of the stress response which, with that constant fight, the flight kind of feeling, we're just burning out, burning it out, there's too much cortisol constantly. It's not kind of settling the system down back to baseline, it's constantly kind of on edge. So that's, yeah, that's where the hpa needs to be regulated, not always kind of primed and ready I never.
Speaker 1:I never thought about that when we asked dave to be a resident psychologist. I'm gonna have to get everything right. That's what you're here for, dave, thank you. So let's have a look at the you've. So you've been doing these workshops and finding that they're benefiting you and just opening your own mind and making realizations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, like what dave just said about the stress and the stress resilience. So I think the reason I got on with the breath work and the cold water therapy so well is because you're actually building up a resilience to stress when you're doing both of them things. So then when you're in these everyday situations, you can tolerate it more and instead of blowing up and like, say, getting angry over nothing, and you realize that you can basically calm yourself down. And you don't just you don't have to do that on purpose, it just happens biologically. Because with the Wim Hof method, for example, when we're going into the ice water, you're setting off that sympathetic state.
Speaker 3:So as soon as you step in, you're activating the fight or flight response. So, as we all know because we've all done an ice bath here as soon as you step in you have to catch your breath and it's telling you you're in danger. Oh my God, what's going on? Your brain's going crazy. All the thoughts are telling you you know, get out. And then what we're doing then is we're slowing the breath down and we're activating the parasympathetic. So we're voluntarily activating that relaxation, that calming effect which takes us from the fight or flight, the ready for war, basically into the rest and digest part of the nervous system. And because we're going between the two in the water, we learn on a cellular level how to cope with stress and we build up that, that stress response, basically that stress resilience.
Speaker 2:Do we just quickly want to explain to the listeners what the wim hof method is?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's on my list. It keeps getting in front, sorry, no, no, it's okay, it's all good because it's um, obviously you can see that you're Wim Hof method is yeah, it's on my list. It keeps getting in front. Sorry, no, no, it's all good because it's obviously you can see that you're passionate about it and what you do. So you know, and obviously you sampling it, because I was going to ask at what point did you realise you wanted to be an instructor? But we can't. If we do you want to do that first and then we'll talk about the actual method. Yeah, yeah of course.
Speaker 3:yeah, I think as soon as I did that first workshop, we did a breathing. It was more of like a holotropic breathe, a conscious, connected breath work, where it's about half an hour long, where it's just continuous deep breaths, so you're breathing into your diaphragm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then just letting it go rather than blowing it out, exactly, yeah. So it's like a deep inhale and a passive exhale, no pause, continuous. Some people call it holotropic, conscious connected there's loads of different names for it but it basically takes you into an altered state of consciousness, as I like to call it, and we, we breathe for about half an hour. I'd never done anything like that before and I found myself like pinned to the floor, and it's not. It's probably not a very good advert to people who've never tried it, but this is the truth. I was. I was just pinned to the floor, couldn't move, and there was a couple of guys there and it must have taken them 10-15 minutes no joke to to actually get me back in the room. And but I was later. I wasn't scared or I wasn't thinking oh my god, what's just happened. I felt amazing.
Speaker 1:So, again, all that brain fog that I had had completely gone so were these guys that were there, were their minders, because I know some of these, some of these workshops that you'll have minders looking after you, because of how powerful this breathwork yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were facilitators because obviously, when you're doing these sort of breathes are now, obviously no emotions can come up. You might laugh, you might cry, you might scream, you might just be there in a nice meditative state, but anything can happen. Basically. So you need a couple of people, you know, trained facilitators, just keeping an eye on what, can you know what, what's happening, basically just for safety. And yeah, luckily they were on hand and they sort of coached me back round. But when I came back back round after I thought I've just literally breathed. I've been doing that all my life, so how has this just happened?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'll be honest, you know it's because sometimes with the people that I'm work with outdoors in fact, we just did a wellbeing walk at the weekend for the podcast and there was a rock step and straight away it's like people gripping on and I'm trying to show them or trying to. You know, get into a safe area and just breathe into your diaphragm. People can't do it. You know we can't. There's a lot of people just cannot breathe into your diaphragm. People can't do it. There's a lot of people who just cannot breathe into their diaphragm. I suppose once they're in that heightened state anyway, it's going to be difficult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you say, as soon as you're in any sort of situation where your core is all up or your adrenaline is up, like Dave was saying, the reaction is just to hyperventilate. And if you can slow the breath down, mainly through like nasal breathing, then it really does help. Your breath has a direct effect on your nervous system, your state of mind and your everyday well-being really your blood pressure and everything isn't it.
Speaker 1:Breathing through your nose can drop your blood pressure and therefore your heart rate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, people don't realise because breathing is automatic, automatic. A lot of time it's neglected, whereas it's one of the biggest health aspects. You know that we can, that we can look at people, can eat while you can train in the gym. But if you, if you're sleeping with your mouth wide open and you're over breathing in the gym when you're exercising, then you're probably counteracting a lot of what you're actually doing health-wise. So, yeah, it's really important to breathe slowly, deep breaths into the diaphragm, if we can, through the nose as much as possible. Obviously, when we're doing things like the Wim Hof Method, as we'll talk about later, or different kind of breathing exercises, we're using the breath as a tool. So we can use the mouth or whatever works best in that way, but in everyday situations we want to try and breathe through the nose.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's so much better so I just wanted to interject one little thing saying about all the different things the breathing can affect. It can also, from quite recent research, affect the brain rhythms as well, which starts to explain how it's having an effect on our mindset as well and how it can help us gain more mental control over a lot of these kind of stressors. So, yeah, there is some work now starting to look at literally the brain rhythms, parts of the brain that are affected by, say, parasympathetic symptoms.
Speaker 5:It's giving me a little time to give it these breathing and so on really exciting yeah, I think it is really important with the breathing I I had long covered just a little bit off topic and then one of the things that affected me was my, my breathing. But since having like anxiety and stuff like that, one of the main everybody every time it was, like you know, the breathing's important, you know, like breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, and if I'm ever in a stressful situation now or like that, I'll always do those three breaths and it automatically helps me, brings me down. And I was even reading a book about cycling the other day, about endurance, and it was saying, even if you're cycling up a hill and you're struggling or like that, just taking a massive deep breath for now and just you know, instantly calm you. So it's, it's amazing, like you say, what the, what the breath can do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's as I say. It has a direct impact on the way you feel instantly. If we're breathing shallow, fast breaths, paradoxical breathing it's called from, like the shoulders or the chest, and when the shallow and fast, then we're literally activating the sympathetic, as dave was saying. So if you're constantly breathing like that, that means you're constantly in this heightened state and you're not relaxed ever, even though you might just be sitting on the on the couch or lying in bed. But if you're breathing through your mouth, shallow, then you're going to be activating that fight or flight, whereas when you're breathing slower, deeper, more relaxed, that's when you're going to get rid of anxiety, it can help with depression, you're going to be more relaxed and yeah, not to mention all the like biological benefits for it as well, if we have a look at the method because we, like I said, like we said right at the start, we held a workshop at Jubram and we got some willing participants down to test bed.
Speaker 1:So do you want to just explain to the listeners about the method and, I suppose, the process, and then what it actually does, and then we can bring Dave in for the sciences stuff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think that workshop that we did in Leeds, that's one to remember. First of all, it was cool, wasn't it? Because it was Leeds? Well, that as well. But I think it's the only workshop I've ever been on when people were colder during the workshop than in the icebox.
Speaker 1:It was a little bit chilly, it was a bit chilly.
Speaker 3:Well, I was there at first, as you know, shorts and a vest, no shoes on. A couple of hours in, even I was putting my socks and shoes back on, yeah, yeah. But I think during the end of the day sorry during the workshop I was thinking, oh my god, I'm gonna have to look at the health and safety of even getting people in this ice. But I think when we got everyone in and at the end and when it was all finished, looking back and speaking to everyone, it was actually fitted in really well, with it being freezing in there, because it's all about getting out of your comfort zone and obviously the ice bath gets you out of your comfort zone anyway. But I think the whole day people were battling, you know, with, obviously, the workshop itself, but also the conditions that we were doing it in. So I think it was an eye-opener for a lot of people and a massive challenge during the day, because the Wim Hof Method is all about taking yourself out of your comfort zone, trying something that you've maybe never tried before and finding that peace in discomfort pretty much. And that's what we're doing with the breath work. That's what we're doing with the breath work, that's what we're doing with the ice baths. There's three pillars of the wim hof method. You've got the breath work, the cold water therapy and the mindset like focus, determination, you know, commitment and they all come together to make the method. So with the breath work, we're looking at going into deep breaths with a passive exhalation and when we continuously do this it'll take us into a sympathetic your fight or flight, as we keep talking about. So you're putting yourself into a stressful situation voluntarily, but then you're holding the breath. Anyone that's done the method knows that when you hold your breath it then relaxes you. So you're taking yourself voluntarily then into your parasympathetic nervous system. Your rest and digest.
Speaker 3:So when we're going between the two, going from fight or flight to rest and digest, we're training ourselves to be able to do that, to cope with that stress, the acute stresses, whereas in everyday life nowadays we are in our comfort zones a lot, so we don't get taken out and we don't see discomfort. We don't have to cope, we don't have to adapt. Traditionally we had to hunt for our food, we had to light a fire if we were cold, we'd have to run from wild animals and all these things, the life and death. If we didn't do them, then we would have literally died. So we had to adapt, we had to evolve. Nowadays we don't. We put the heating on, we go in the kitchen, get some food, we put a coat on, we're living in. Most people anyway are living in comfort. But the problem is, instead of evolving, we're sort of devolving because we're not having to cope with these everyday acute stresses.
Speaker 3:So what we're doing with the Wim Hof Method is we're simulating traditional hormesis or hormetic stresses, which basically means we're putting ourselves into that stressful situation but we're using the breath to take us back out of it and to calm us down. And then, when we find ourselves in road rage or a stressful situation at work or an argument with the kids or whatever it might be, we can cope better with that stress because we've trained ourselves to go in but to take ourselves out of it. And that's what the method's all about. The ice is the same. You get into that ice, you're stressed, you calm yourself down with the breath and then you find peace a lot of people talk about. When they're in the ice, the all the thoughts go away, all your problems go, and you do find that peace when you're in there yeah, I suppose I did notice I did my own the workshop that people were really, you saw, the ice is the.
Speaker 1:The ice is what sort of win-offs known for, it's the ice man and the records that he's done, et cetera, et cetera. But there's so much more to it. Like you say, it's not just getting into the cold and bearing it, no, it's that focus. And some people, even on that workshop, you got in and just focused on just being in there for that two minutes, but without avoiding that sort of panicking or just jumping back out.
Speaker 3:Really, yeah, exactly that two minutes, but without you know, and avoiding that sort of panicking or just jumping back out. Really, yeah, exactly, it's not about fighting it, it's about letting go. So, yeah, that's what happens in the ice. You, you can't just get in there and try, and, you know, tense up and fight it. You've got to relax and you've got to connect with the breath and through connecting with the breath, you're then calming your nervous system down, which calms the mind down, and you're not thinking about your problems that you got in there with For the first minute. You're thinking, fucking hell, this is freezing. And then after that, you do find that calm and then you're thinking, well, you know, I'm in here, I'm doing it, I'm relaxed and yeah, that's why you have to, you know, sort of give in to the cold, not fight it. If you try and fight it and use your ego, then you'll get nowhere. You'll be jumping out of it in 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:So Brad, can I just bring you in and just ask you know, because you've been, you've started doing, or you had started doing, the Wim Hof. In fact, when we first started the podcast, we were talking about the Wim Hof method. All that that time ago what, three years ago? So what's, what did you find getting? Did you do it? Did you do it under any instruction at all, or did you just take it from books and and guidance and then just do it yourself? And what benefits did you get out?
Speaker 5:so I well, first of all, when we first started the podcast, I started off with the cold showers when we started doing that, so we obviously we knew about the, the ice baths, but it was because we just had the showers and we used to, I remember, because we used to time ourselves, didn't we? And we'd say, oh, I've done this amount of time this time and all like that. And then then we I started stopped doing it, but then when I started getting my anxiety like really raised and stuff like that, I went back to doing the, the cold showers, but doing it in a more controlled way and you know, like, say, well, learning from wim hof and the app and stuff like that of how to do it. And then that sort of evolved into when we went to like a spa, there was a plunge pool there, like you know, ice plunge pool and get it was really good because I got in there and just relaxed, like you say, did the breathing, and we were in there for like about two, two minutes, like going up to three. Obviously I know that's not the the way, but it was. We were so relaxed in there. It wasn't a panic, like you say, and then I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna get my own, and I found it really did help.
Speaker 5:Like you say, I think, putting your body under that sort of stress and all like that in that fight or flight, it then means, when you do come to those stressful situations, you're ready. I mean, if athletes train to put their bodies under stress, for that, what they're trying to do, you know, we should really take a leaf out of their book in real life because I think, like you say, we're really comfortable now we don't. There's no stresses and the stresses are there but they're not. I think they're not perceived as stresses, do you know what I mean? Until you're at boiling point and you know you're boiling over and you and you blow up. So, yeah, that's, that's what I found with it. I think it really helped. You know, getting in there and it's weird, like you see, you get in and you panic a bit and then you just relax and I mean I used to put a bit of like relaxation music on and just sit there because it's it's quite serene dev.
Speaker 1:What's going on psychologically?
Speaker 4:what's going, yeah, what's going on dev yeah, I mean it's a combination of the physiological response to it and the psychology and, to be honest, the two are very much interlinked. And that's kind of where I look from a neuroscience type of view. So I mean, what tends to happen when we are stressed is that fight or flight, or partly. It's the HPA system we've talked about, but it's also the sympathetic nervous system. There's flight differentiation there, but we needn't go into detail on that. But basically that stress response puts down Someone put a dog in cold water. Sorry, there's a dog in the room next door and it's gone mental just one second.
Speaker 1:It's all good, the dog's gone into the HPA network.
Speaker 4:Right, exactly. So where are we staying? So, basically, that stress response, it's what's called a peripheral nervous system response, it's that body response which in turn affects the higher kind of mental functions. So it's a biological survival response which prioritises acting, in a way, rather than thinking through a problem, strategizing, which is all a bit more energy intensive and a bit more kind of luberant, you could argue, but that's not always the case, because sometimes we really need to think our way out of dangerous situations. So what's happening is that those higher parts of the brain are kind of shutting down in a, in a fight or flight. But that kind of calming breath work, that is sort of getting that physiological system under control, is helping those higher parts of the brain kind of come online and become like a feedback loop, become in control of that.
Speaker 4:Stress response Basically means you can think more clearly, you're more focused, more alert, and it's a kind of a mix. So there's different states going on, because like a totally calm state, meditative, you might not be thinking about much at all. So there's nuances to it. But effectively, yes, physiology and the psychology are very linked in the brain in that respect. But I mean talking about to pull up your point about adrenaline and the HPA and I sort of corrected you briefly. The HPA is about the cortisol, it's about the adaptation to stress over time. But the other part of the stress system is the phytophthalein sympathetic, which actually is where the adrenaline is kind of involved in that. It's actually norepinephrine is one of the neuro transmitters involved and, again without going into so many brain parts, there's a key area called the locus coeruleus, which is one of the key parts of the brain which produces that norepinephrine which makes us more alert, makes us more focused, ready to act. So there's a number of things going on in there, but the key thing is with, as jack says, the kind of breath work brings that calm system down, but it gives you clarity of thought because that norepinephrine or epinephrine, as well as two related neurotransmitters, is providing that brain's impetus to focus, to be alert and to be in more control. Because at the end of the day, it's about the resource available to the brain to to get in control, whatever that means. It means controlling that reactive state into a more proactive.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so that's kind of what's in a nutshell, that there's elements of that going on, and the more you can get in control of that autonomic nervous system, the more you can use it to your advantage and not be sort of driven by whatever state it happens to be in relative to the stress or whatever the stimuli that are coming in. So that's kind of aspects of it. It's a big subject. I mean, jack, already you know we talked about this in the workshop A lot of science the team is coming out with and it's not a lot I could add at the time. You know there's more to it, but yeah, yeah, we kind of covered it already.
Speaker 2:In that sense, I mean, I can fit in a few more bits of science as we go on, but that's kind of you know. Can I just ask a question? So we were talking mostly about the psychological effects. Are there any physical benefits no physiological physical. Is that one of your special long words? Yes, physiological, no physical benefits. Are there any physical benefits to all of that as well, because surely it's not just a psychological?
Speaker 3:aspect? No, there's loads. Yeah, so I'm sure, dave, obviously. Well, we've spoke about this. I think the biggest thing that I try to teach people on the workshops and that I will have spoke about to all you guys in Leeds is the cardiovascular system. So the cardiovascular system is 100,000 kilometres-ish of blood vessels, basically, which is obviously a ridiculous amount.
Speaker 2:I think I remember you mentioning it, it wraps around the world four times Two and a half.
Speaker 3:I times two, two and a half, I think yeah, something like that, which is obviously crazy, that it's insiders. And if you think of it like an infrastructure of like a city or the motorways and the roads, if you've got traffic lights on red or roadworks or accidents and little blocks everywhere, the infrastructure isn't going to work optimally. It's the same as your cardiovascular system. If the blood isn't flowing as it should or at optimal performance, then you're going to have issues all over your body. And what we're doing with the breath and the cold water is we're actually exercising the cardiovascular system through vasoconstriction and vasodilation. So, to put it simply, when we get into cold water, all the blood well, the warm blood will basically go to your core, so it'll protect all your organs and come out of your fingers, your arms, your toes, your legs, your extremities, because we can lose a toe or a finger, but obviously we can't lose an organ. So the warm blood will protect your core and what happens is the blood vessels close up, so vasoconstriction, and then, as we start to warm up, as we get out of the ice or if you train regularly in ice, you can even, you know start to dilate while you're in there. As you warm up, the blood vessel starts to open vasodilation.
Speaker 3:So what we're actually doing is we're training the cardiovascular system. Like you train a muscle in the gym. Where it's going, you know you're doing a bicep curl and your muscles are growing, contracting, expanding. The same things happen to the blood vessels. So it's closing up, opening up, and that means that the blood flow is going to be a lot more efficient. You know the heartbeat is going to slow down. The the blood flow is going to be a lot more efficient. You know the heartbeat is going to slow down. The blood pressure is going to come down. So your cardiovascular system affects loads, obviously bringing in oxygen, taking away waste gases.
Speaker 3:So all this is being improved just by doing cold water. And it's the same with the breath work as well. As we do the deep breaths and as we do the breath holds. Again, the blood vessels are opening and closing. We're exercising them and it only takes 10 days as well. If you do like you were saying brad about your cold showers, perfect way to slip it into your everyday routine is just turn the shower on cold after you've had your hot shower and after 10 days your cardiovascular system will already start remembering and be trained, basically to open and close a lot easier. So you won't get that pain that you get. You know instantly when you go into the cold. It still might affect you, but nowhere near as bad, because your body starts to learn that it can constrict and dilate.
Speaker 1:You know, in these situations that sort of brings us back to where you were saying earlier about living in this, living in this, where we get out of bed in the morning, come under your duvet, central heating's on, you, put your big coat on, you go outside, you get in your car, turn the heating on on the car, drive to work, get into work, and so there's none of this yo-yoing effects of being cold and feeling warm you know, like there would have been. At one stage I did watch a fascinating clip about the lymphatic system and how that works, all wrapped around your blood vessels. So if your fat system's not pumping, then I believe I believe them. Toxins are sort of just sat there, aren't they?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure Dave can go into more detail than me, but if again the breath work and the ice does flush out your lymphatic system, so again you're getting rid of all the toxins and you know, the waste gases tend to pee a lot after a coach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've thrown ice bath, not in the ice bath? Well, hopefully. Well, you can't, can you after you mean, yeah, you can't pee, can't pee. All you've got to get out for that. And if were you sorry, sorry, dave.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, I'm coming to you then I was going to say a joke. Were you going to talk a bit about the brown fat?
Speaker 3:Oh right, With brown fat. We're all born with it. So when you're a baby, everyone has brown fat. And what brown fat is? It keeps you warm, naturally. So, in simple terms, basically babies are born with it so that they can regulate their own body heat and they won't get too cold. But, as we're talking about, we live comfortably now. So you put the heating on, you put clothes on and then your body's like, oh well, I don't need this brown fat now.
Speaker 3:So you start losing it as you become an adult and through the Wim Hof method, through the breath work and the cold water therapy, we actually activate the brown fat again. So what we're doing is we're building the brown fat up, which then helps keep us warm in these situations as well, and also it can help us lose weight by boosting our metabolism. So, yeah, and obviously you've got to eat healthy and exercise. Well, you can't just get in an ice bath, you know, and create brown fat and lose loads of weight, but it's all sort of helps towards the goal of being as healthy as you can be really. And yeah, you can actually. They did a test on Wim and he had loads of brown fat. Basically he'd recreated it through his adult life way more than any you know normal adult has through getting in the cold water. Obviously he's done it to the extreme levels but we can all do it by just having a cold shower every day or every other day to.
Speaker 5:To bring it to a non-scientific way, I used to be really cold before when it was cold, and now I'm warmer. There you go. No, but in all seriousness, like I, really I've noticed a difference that before I really I really bad in the cold, really couldn't tolerate it, and I used to work outside as well. But since doing the cold water, like treatment, and the ice and stuff, I found that I'm a lot more tolerant to it and I've also found, like last year as well I don't know if this is anything to sort of do with it, but I didn't get as ill as much either. I won't didn't get as many colds, didn't as get as many things and I could really like, say, stand the cold a lot a lot more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think with the immune system it's massive and, as dave was saying, he's going to obviously talk a little bit about that, but wemhoff himself he'll say never, ever gets ill because we're well. The good example, to be fair, is the study that they did on when. So some of you might know about the endotoxin study. So basically what they did was they injected him with a dead bacteria and endotoxin, and previously they'd injected about 100 people or something and they'd all got ill Because it was a dead bacteria. It only lasted like three hours or something. But what happened is they got the flu-like symptoms, a bit of nausea, sweats, just felt bad when an illness is coming on. And they said to him let's see what happens when we inject you with it. So basically they've injected him with the endotoxin, the dead bacteria. He's then done the breathing, so he's done the Wim Hof method of the deep breaths, and he did it for a couple of hours nonstop and what happened was he got no symptoms, didn't get ill at all. So obviously the doctors are saying, oh, it must be some kind of you know, genetic miracle. There's no way that this can be right. Obviously a hundred people have got ill and how has this happened? So they got, I think, something like 18 people or something.
Speaker 3:Half of them did nothing, half of them, wim took off to train and I remember when I was doing my Wim off training him, one of the instructors who who's met Wim quite a lot and obviously heard him tell this story she said when they asked Wim, how long do you need to train these people to be able to do what you've done? And Wim being Wim, he's just gone. I don't know 10 days, because he's got 10 fingers. And um, he took them off to poland and trained them in the ice water lake, swimming, ice bath, breath, work, meditation, and after four days he was like right, you're all ready, let's go. And he took them up a mount snezka, I think it's called in poland just with shorts on and shoes, nothing else. These, these were just regular people. They weren't like athletes, they weren't like pros in the cold. It was the first time doing it. So we took them up the mountain and they got to the top. And when they got to the top, they saw some Polish soldiers there, the Polish army. They're obviously all fully dressed and all the snoods and everything wrapped up because it's freezing up there and you can Google it. They actually had selfies with them because obviously they're like what are you nutters doing? Why have you got no clothes on? Up a snowy mountain? So, yeah, he took them back then and injected.
Speaker 3:They then injected the people that had been training with the endotoxin and they injected the people that hadn't trained with WIM. So, as you can imagine, the people that hadn't trained, they all got ill. Same symptoms. The people that had trained did the breathing as it was injected focused? Did the breath work? And again, none of them. I think there was like 10 of them. None of them got ill, no symptoms, nothing at all.
Speaker 3:So then they were like right, we need to obviously look into this and see what's going on. So they looked at the bloods to see what was actually happening and they found that, in a simple way of putting it, they were flooding the body full of adrenaline and this adrenaline was creating anti-inflammatory proteins called interleukin-10. And what that was doing is it was dampening the immune response. So when we feel these symptoms, it's obviously the immune system kicking in, trying to fight off the illness. And what they were doing with the breath workers, they were dampening the effects of the virus before it could take hold. So they were basically creating anti-inflammatory proteins, but the immune system was still working in the background. So the biggest breakthrough here was that Wim proved that you could voluntarily influence your autonomic nervous system. And they actually have had to change, as Dave will tell you. They've had to look at science books and say well, we thought that this wasn't possible and obviously they've proved that just through the breath and through the Wim Hof method you can actually tap into the autonomic nervous system.
Speaker 1:Thoughts on that Dave, before dog birth slips in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you've summarised more than what I was going to say anyway, that anti-inflammatory response.
Speaker 4:My general point I was thinking from earlier on is again around the HPA and the accumulative effects of stress which start to impact on the immune system. But by that voluntary engagement in stressors and learning to regulate, control and be proactive rather than reactive, it does give us that longer term ability to to our immune system. That's really all I was kind of going to go into on, but it just it highlights that embracing stress as a challenge, as something I can adopt and, and you know, learn to control and use techniques and mindset is vital to to that daily ability to be not reactive to stress but proactive. That's basic verbs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of talk about this, like setting yourself a challenge each day and overcoming that. You know you've set that challenge. You get in your ice bath, or you get your ice shower every morning, or ice shower, you get a cold shower every morning. And that increasing resilience Is that actually strengthening part of the? Is it? Is it just resiliency? How do we summarize that into into science? Is it? You know? Because it does. It does get easier, doesn't it? It's like when you tell someone that you're getting a cold cold, you know I get in a ice bath in the morning like you must be nuts, but it does get easier it's a regulation, you're taking control, you're regulating your response.
Speaker 4:It's kind of like you, you're giving the higher parts of your brain permission to have a dampening or a mitigating or a modulating effect on those systems. Because, like I said before, the psychology and the physiology are very much interlinked. It's not like they're separate systems. I mean, the brain is an organ of the body and it happens to have these incredible feedback loops and this capacity to send signals down, to communicate and interact with that so-called autonomic system. But yeah, it's the regulation as much as anything. But yeah, things like mindset, things like managing expectations, the anticipation. So the anticipation of stress or whatever it is you might be afraid of, is setting this precedent to be on edge. But we're kind of managing that anticipation by understanding what it is we're trying to achieve, by understanding how we reframe the process and understanding a bit about the mechanism of how it's going to be beneficial, will all help to dampen that reactivity, if you like.
Speaker 1:I think there's the vlog that we've sort of seen, the first sort of edit, your friend Tony. He mentions, doesn't he, that he came into that workshop because he'd been asked along and he didn't want to do it. Did he really Really apprehensive, but at the end of the workshop, absolutely buzzing, wasn't he? Yeah?
Speaker 3:I think that's the main takeaway from a lot of the workshops, because we get a lot of people coming on them and half the people will say I'll come but I don't think I'll do the ice bath and everybody does it because the workshop is all about prepping and priming the body and the mind to be able to get in that ice at the end. That's what we're working towards. You know, with the breath work, with all the theory that we do about the science and about what is happening, about showing people diaphragmatic breathing, functional breathing. You know, as we talked about the slow, deep breaths rather than the shallow breaths. So once you've done three hours of talking about the benefits and what it's doing for you physically, psychologically and obviously priming the body with the breath work as well that then makes you think, well, yeah, I can do this. And obviously when you're in a group as well, that really does help.
Speaker 3:And once you've done it, you get the happy hormones, release your serotonin, your dopamine, all the adrenaline, the norepinephrine that dave was talking about, and when they're released, you feel amazing afterwards and you want to do it again and it becomes addictive, like anything, because you've released those endorphins naturally as well, and a lot of people have never released them naturally. So when they experience it they're like wow, I thought that was going to be horrible and I've got out and now I'm buzzing, I'm wide awake, can't believe I've done it, and a lot of the time. That's why it's good in the morning, because if you have a cold shower in the morning or an ice bath or maybe just getting your cold plunge, then you've achieved something already for the day. So when you get out of there you can't not feel good because you won't have wanted to get in. No one ever wants to get in unless it's like 30 degrees and we're in Spain doing a retreat.
Speaker 3:Then sometimes people might want to get in because they're red hot. But if you're in England and it's freezing cold, nobody wants to go outside in the dark and get in their ice bath. But once they've done it, no one's ever regretted it because you feel amazing. So then when you go into your day or your week or whatever it is that you're doing, you know that you can overcome other challenges as well. So I think that's the main reason people do it. You know in the daily routines because it helps you be more motivated. You know to do other things in life as well, so I remember after I jumped in the ice bath.
Speaker 2:First of all, I had quite a weird sensation while I was in the ice bath that the ice felt really cold, but after about halfway through it actually started feeling warm when I came out of the ice bath. When I went back home, my mind was clear, felt like I had loads of energy, I was awake. Plus, I played football the day before with Tony and both of our aches and pains were gone, which was completely beneficial to me. So it was just an amazing feeling. I had the physical benefits and the mental benefits.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and it's brilliant for that, for recovery from football or any sports really. We were talking about this on the workshop. If you've exercised and it's for endurance, like it's a football match or you're running or something like that, then it's perfect to get in an ice bath straight after or the day after. Or you know, people will get the DOMS, like the delayed onset muscle stress, where a couple of days later you're aching worse than you were the day after or the day of the actual exercise and what it'll do is it'll slow that down. So it's like getting in the ice bath. It'll help with inflammation, muscle soreness, muscle tightness and I'll release it pretty much and instead of, you know, just trying to stretch and get rid of it that way.
Speaker 3:But if you're bodybuilding and you're looking to grow, then you don't want to be getting in an ice bath straight after. You want to do it either maybe five hours before you train or maybe the next day, because if you think of it like when you bang your head and you get a big lump and you put ice on it, it goes down quite a bit. So if you're trying to rip your muscle so that it then grows and repairs and grows when you're training and you're trying to get bigger, then what you're actually doing is you're getting straight in the ice and you're not giving it time to repair and grow. So you might grow a little bit, but you're damping the growth basically. So if you're looking to bodybuild, it's not a good idea to do an ice bath straight after or straight before. You want to do it with a gap. But if you're looking to run a marathon, jump straight in the ice bath after you've trained and the recovery time will be way quicker.
Speaker 1:That's more of us these days, isn't it Absolutely More into endurance than the bulking? I should just ask, I suppose, if anyone's listening to this, are there any dangers to look out for? Because I wouldn't want anyone thinking we've come on this podcast and it's going to cure all ills For myself, spot on with the mental well-being and getting in in the morning. I've completed that task. And also if I've been training and I can go in and do that. But when I first started the cold showers I'd be getting in and I'd be bloody screaming. I wasn't enjoying them. But I mean, there's a difference between enjoying and any Enduring Enduring but then obviously can it be harmful to anybody?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. I think with the main thing like what wim always says is feeling is understanding, so you know your own body. So if you feel like you're overdoing it or with the breath work or the ice, then just slow it down. But I think the main thing to do is, before you actually start practicing ice baths at home or breath work at home, come on a workshop, because on a way more fundamentals workshop, there's instructors all over the world, so there'll be one near you, if obviously I'm not local. But if you go on the workshop, you'll be taught how to safely incorporate the method into your daily routine. And that might just be a 30 second shower or it might. You might end up doing cold plunges every day, but the workshop will show you how to safely do that, how to connect with the breath, and obviously there are dangers involved as well.
Speaker 3:I think the main thing is, if you're doing the breath work, lie down, maybe in the bed, on a sofa, have a cushion behind your head, because we're hyperventilating. So with these deep breaths, we are releasing carbon dioxide. So when we release carbon dioxide, we can hold a breath for a lot longer. As you all saw, when we're doing the breath holds, because carbon dioxide is what triggers the brain for us to breathe, and when we're expelling a lot of carbon dioxide with each breath, then we don't get that trigger. So sometimes, very, very rarely, you might pass out. So, to be on the safe side and just lie down or sit on the sofa, make sure you're safe, maybe have someone else in the house when you're doing it. So just take you know precautions that way. And the same reason goes for the breath work before you get in in the ice. Always leave about half an hour before you go in the ice and always have someone with you as well. So don't ever go in an ice bath when you're on your own or there's no one at home or wherever you are.
Speaker 3:Because, again, if your carbon dioxide is really low, then you're going to think you can hold your breath forever, and there's been cases of people you know trying to hold the breath underwater and it's obviously not ended well and they haven't followed the protocol of the Wim Hof method. So it's called shallow water blackout, where you think you can hold your breath for longer than you actually can because the carbon dioxide is low and it doesn't trigger you to breathe. So the main thing is never do it around water, never do it in water, never do it while driving. You know, just simple common sense, really. But come on a workshop and you can learn how to do it safely, do's and don'ts. Or go on the Wim Hof website and there's all the protocols on there can I just ask one question?
Speaker 4:something I'm curious about is that you don't advocate getting the head in the water at all. I mean obviously not, not with your nose under because you wouldn't be able to breathe, but you don't.
Speaker 3:The Wim Hof method doesn't advocate having you set up to the up to the shoulders, yeah, so, yeah, there's no real benefit of putting your head under the water. I mean, again, you'll see people on instagram and they're in there for 10 minutes and they're dunking their head under and it's all just ego, really. There's no, there's no reason to to do all that stuff. I mean, we always say submerge just below you know. So the water's just above the shoulders.
Speaker 3:The reason for that is when we go into the water, our body's obviously reacting and trying to adapt. And what happens is when I always tell people go in, go water just over the shoulders, put your hands on your thighs, and then what happens is after about 30 seconds to a minute, you'll form like a thermal layer around your skin and that'll help warm you up and help you adapt. But if you've got like, if you're in up to like here, then your brain and your body doesn't really know what's going on. You're sort of half in, half out. So it's actually a lot harder to adapt and to find that comfort in the discomfort when you're sort of half in, half out. So I always tell people go into just above the shoulder, obviously, keep your head out so you can breathe and yeah, you'll adapt a lot quicker and you'll find that calm in the storm a lot easier.
Speaker 1:Just a question to you, dave. Actually I cut whether it's relevant to this. I thought there's something about if you get your head in, then it triggers the mammalian response which is a different sort of stress. That's where.
Speaker 4:I was going with that. Again, I don't know to what degree there's a slight difference in philosophy there with Wim Hof. Versus that, that is a naturally triggered reduction in heart rate, it goes down by about five beats a minute. I've done a lot of work with seals, but with people as well, so yeah, I was kind of curious as to why that may not be the case employed in Wim Hof's method.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that is something that obviously it's the mammalian dive reflex, I think they call it, and it does wake you up.
Speaker 3:You'll see, on a lot of films, you know, people are like splash water on the face and be like, oh you know, as they wake up in the morning and it does sort of alert you and wakes you up. But I think it might be from a health and safety point of view with the Wim Hof method or it might be that there's that many benefits you know to the ice bath anyway. Might be that there's that many benefits you know to the ice bath anyway. There's no real need to to put your head in after, as you all saw, some people do, some people enjoy doing it. I mean, I don't tell them to do it and if they want to, on my workshop I do sort of advise against it. But if you've been practicing for a long time and you enjoy it and that's and you know, as I say, feelings understanding, if you know your own body and you get a lot out of it, then completely up to yourself.
Speaker 4:But it's just not something that it may be down to the coldness of the water. I'm not entirely sure I'd have to check this off. I don't know if there's an optimal temperature at which that mammalian diet reflects in a human works positively, but with a cold shock it might be like you say, it might be sympathetically counteracting the parasympathetic response.
Speaker 3:Yeah, true, I mean, if you've gone into the ice bath and you've gone into that sympathetic and you're sort of trying to catch your breath, if you say it's your first one, and you catch your breath and after a minute you're chilled, the last thing you want to do at the end is then spark that sympathetic again, like Dave says. So you're all nice and relaxed and you've done a minute and then you put your head back in and you're straight oh God, that was cold again and you're sort of getting out then stressed rather than relaxed.
Speaker 1:There's nothing relaxing about having ice cream brain in it. You know the cold yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:I hate it. I've been in waterfalls before and I see some people and they're sat under them. You know where. The water's literally blasting and literally gives me brain freeze instantly. So I will swim underwater in lakes and stuff like that. But I don't really even myself. I don't really put my head under in an ice bath. But each to their own, I quite like putting my head under. There you go king cullen okay it sounds really creepy.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest each to their own. Yeah, I I I.
Speaker 5:But the thing is his mind's a plunge, but I don't really have ice in, so it's never. Yeah. So I think it might be with the temperature, but I know when I get a cold shower, so normally I'll go to the. When I go to the gym I'll go in the steam room, I'll come out and I'll put my head under and I find for me it's more mentally it blocks everything out, like it really I could be thinking about something and then it totally just takes my head away. But I don't know any science about that, so that's focusing it though.
Speaker 3:In a cold shower I do that 100%. Head under feels great, but in an ice bath, like you say, it's a lot colder. But while we're on the temperature subject as well, just so everyone knows, cold water therapy doesn't need to be ice. Anything below about 15 degrees is technically cold water therapy or cold water exposure. So you don't need to fill your tub full of ice every day. You know, in the summer you can literally 15 degrees and you'll get all the benefits in two minutes. So that's another safety aspect of it. Two minutes is enough. You don't need to be sitting in there for 10 minutes, five minutes or whatever. Yeah, I did one the other week.
Speaker 1:It was three minutes. Three minutes, three degrees, and I couldn't really think. You know what I mean. I was trying to focus but it was being filmed as well, and then but I was obviously, yeah, yeah, they're all high, all the shit, just that three minutes is nothing Originally, when I first started doing it. So I started doing the breath work and then the ice and getting in the bath with loads of ice, and just got into a wrong mindset, I think, where it were like a challenge, yeah. So I'm still I've been gone past getting the benefits I mean a personal opinion gone past getting any benefits because it turned into a challenge, yeah, and then making myself hypothermic and tripping off in the in when I was doing the breathing, you know yeah, I went through a stage of doing that every day where I was like I've got to get in the store every single day.
Speaker 3:And I've stopped that now because it becomes sort of counterproductive, because I'm like stressing myself out, kicking myself if I don't get in because I'm too busy one day. And then it's like, well, I'm doing this to stop being stressed and it's making me stressed because I haven't got in or I've missed a day. So I think again, don't think you've got to do this every day. Just listen to your body and just do it when you need to like cold shower here and there, ice bath here and there, and just mix it up a bit. You don't need to. You know, like you said, it becomes like ego challenge.
Speaker 2:Then Well, you did say you had an addictive personality, exactly, yeah, and that's the problem.
Speaker 3:You have to keep that in check. At first I was like, right, every day I'll wake up, get in that ice. And then I actually last year yeah, last just well, a year and a half ago, 2023 in the winter I was doing a dip a day in November and I was doing it in like waterfalls, lakes and you're literally breaking through the ice. So it was when I first started properly doing the whim off workshops as well and I was doing, I was recording myself and I'd never really done like the videos before and I'm trying to promote the workshops and I ended up in the waterfalls for maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes. But I'm like, oh, I've done a million ice baths, I'm doing the horse stance to warm up and I'll be fine.
Speaker 3:And about two weeks into doing it, my feet started like burning when I was in there. So I thought I'll be fine, I've done this a million times warming up. And then one day I was doing a video for instagram to promote the workshop and I didn't realize what time it was and basically I was late for the school run. So I was like, oh shit, got out of the waterfall, dried off quick, got dressed and then I had to go across a little stream to get out, which I'd forgot about, and I got my feet wet again, so thought nothing of it really, and my feet were numb for about three hours literally, and I was like God, this isn't the best. Like well, it'll be all right.
Speaker 3:Anyway, long story short, I ended up with what's called frostnip. So it's like I had all little black spots over the bottoms of my feet and it was the first stages of frostbite, basically, and it just showed me that, no matter how many ice baths you've done, no matter how many cold dips you've done, you've got to warm up naturally and gradually, because all that blood, as I said, has left your hands, left your feet. If it mixes too quick, then you end up with what's called after drop, which basically makes you ill and obviously your cardiovascular system is closed off. Mine was closed off for that long. Obviously it's had these effects on my feet and it took a couple of months for me to get over that.
Speaker 3:So it really did show me to respect, you know, mother nature, respect the cold. No matter how long you've been doing it. You've got to stick to that protocol and that's what we do on the workshops as well. That's what I drill into people. You know those safety protocols of warming up. The warming up is probably the most important thing about the whole ice bath yeah, is this why you're heading out to Spain?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you've got to go up to cold streams in Britain. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, so I can do the ice baths and jump back straight into the 30 degrees on a snowbed.
Speaker 1:So do you want to tell us about Spain, what's happening over there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm moving out to Spain permanently in July because, obviously, with the retreats really taking off, it just seems like the best thing to do. And what we do out there is wellness retreats. So we've got an amazing venue called Moonspiration in Alicante and it's purpose-built for retreats. So we've got teepees, we've got the house you can stay in as well, we've got the chalet outdoor, so everything is done on a big wooden platform looking over onto the mountains. We'll be doing breath work, yoga, meditation, sound baths, all that sort of thing. Mindset. It's all around wellness. We grow all the food. So Matty and Moon, who actually own the venue, they grow all fresh veg. Everything we eat is on site, freshly made. So, yeah, it's all just about the mind, body, soul connection, just taking a couple of days out of your everyday life and just connecting back with yourself really and having a bit of self-care.
Speaker 2:Is that what they are? A?
Speaker 3:couple of days to retreat, or are they a bit longer? So four days usually, yeah. So we do the one-day workshops, but the retreats we've got one in june that's fully booked, and then we've got two four day retreats. So you come, say, on the monday and you'll leave on the thursday evening. So it's like three nights, four days, everything all included, all the activities. We'll have a beach day as well. Um, some little surprises along the way.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I suppose a question that's got to be asked is why did we do a workshop in Leeds when we could have done it in Alicante in July?
Speaker 5:We could have gone to Benidorm before and straight on to Alicante.
Speaker 3:That's another retreat that's called the recovery retreat, the rest and recuperate.
Speaker 1:Dave, have you anything to add?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I wanted to add the result of the little study we ran on the, the result of the little study we ran.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, on the actual day of the workshop in Leeds I distributed some little survey forms to people. This is a self-report of, you could say, stress and emotional state. It's on three dimensions. So how positive or negative are you feeling? And this was done before the start of the day and right at the end. So everyone first of all looked at how kind of positive or negative they were feeling, how much energy they had in them. Were they kind of prepped to go or were they feeling quite chilled? And control. So how much control?
Speaker 4:So it goes back to what I said before about the reactivity to stress or the proactivity, and I can grand reveal the scores on a scale of one to nine. The scores beforehand for each of those dimensions were five, 4.4 and 5.4. So five is about neutral, neutral kind of pleasure or pleasantness, so not quite sure how you feel or you're not quite negative or positive. Energy was slightly below that, so roundabout, sort of in the middle, not hugely energised, and control was again fairly neutral. I'm not quite sure what's happening. And I can grand reveal by the end of the day the scores had gone up to 7.87 and 7.6. Now I've done a little bit of statistics on that and it appears to be. Even though it's a small sample, it appears to be significant. So on each of those three dimensions, pleasure, people felt more pleasant and pleasurably kind of positive emotions. 7.8, better than 9, that's pretty good. 7 on the energy scale. So energy was up and you could argue well, if it were kind of chilled by the end of it, then it might be down.
Speaker 4:But energy, you're feeling the buzz of that and it correlates with the. The kind of higher scores on the pleasure and control was 7.6. So again, a sense of taking back a bit of control over that stress response and just feeling in a good place. And I've done these type of surveys in other situations, whether it's on high ropes courses or whatever. And you do find fluctuation in people. Sometimes people are chilled or they feel like they're not quite where they want to be at the end, but that's that's very positive. So yeah, so very, very useful to see a bit of data and show that people as a rule came out much better.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thanks for well. First of all, I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, if it had gone the other way. But thanks for doing that, dave. Yeah, so it's, it's good to get that. Yeah, Rather than us. I mean, I went away thinking, yeah, that was Everyone did, didn't they? The feedback? You know everyone doing the horse dance and then having a laugh afterwards you know what I mean Whereas something you do again, it's that thing, it's something you've achieved, so that's good to hear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. I think this is why I love the Wim Hof Method so much and I've got so into it and obviously trained as an instructor because it's science-backed. So everything that we do in the method has been backed by studies, like we spoke about earlier, the endotoxin study, where he's proved that he can dampen an illness. There's hundreds of studies now out there. They're constantly doing more and more and that's just a little bit of proof that you can come feeling a certain way and even in the conditions that we endured that day in the minus five of the uh, even after all that they felt amazing at the end of it. So proof's in the pudding really how can people find you?
Speaker 2:where can people find you? How do they book onto your wellness?
Speaker 3:yeah, so the website, wwwwellnessretreatspaincom, or the Instagram, just at wellnessretreatspain. And yeah, just give us a shout on there, drop us a follow, wellnessretreatspain. Or yeah, check us out on the website and drop me a WhatsApp. Brad, are you up to add before?
Speaker 1:we leave.
Speaker 5:No, I don't think so, apart from maybe that there it'd be nice that's been here since the start well, our listeners can't see it, but we can. It's for our listeners who are listening to the podcast. It is a picture of Wim Hof with heart on With heart.
Speaker 1:So let the body do what the body is capable of doing. That's it. Yeah, a good answer there. I think that's from the, that's from the Breathwork app, isn't?
Speaker 1:it yeah, that's what it does as I've been twitching around the bed. Well, first of all, thank you to everyone for getting this together. Thanks, seb, for rewiring the studio. Also, big thanks to Laura and James down at Testbed. Laura came along to the workshop and I think she's featured in the vlog, and James for letting us use the space and all the participants that came along and were quite happy to be filmed frozen cold. Yeah, dave, is that our first study? I suppose that's the first study you've conducted in the White Fox Talking Colours. We'll put it that way, because it's not our study, is it? I had about a decimal point in the wrong place.
Speaker 2:What's a decimal point? Yeah, first and minute.
Speaker 1:So yes, thank you, dave, for joining us. Enjoy the rest of. So what's the decimal point? Yeah, first of many. So yes, thank you, dave, for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your stay on Skype. Let's hopefully see you back soon. Don't be going too far up that cooling ridge in the pissing rain and heavy winds.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I did think of actually having a plunge in a waterfall pool. I thought should really put my money where my mouth is. But by the time I got back down I was so drenched and pulled and wet I thought that would be pushing my luck.
Speaker 1:Well, it's probably a good time of year to do the ferry pulls on Skye, because you can't get there after like April, can you?
Speaker 3:If you do before the hike, you can warm up. Then on the whale.
Speaker 4:We did bump into a couple of scousers coming as we were coming down. I'd met a random guy in the pub last night and we decided to do the ridge together. So, yeah, we bumped into these two scousers and they went just away to the ferry pool and, like we're both, I think it's a very long way if you carry on now, and this was about three o'clock this afternoon when you know the lights going to stop, so God knows where they are now. If they're going for a plunge, they didn't have any gear with them or anything, and it was a local duo.
Speaker 1:Good luck to them. Good luck to them, but you can't on that well, you can't beat the sense of adventure, can you? That's it Right. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thank you, jack, thanks for travelling up and making it an in-person podcast rather than online not that I'm knocking you, dave, because you're on your holidays, okay. So thank you very much, folks. Bye, and if you'd like to support us and help us keep the podcast going, then you can go to Buy Us A Coffee, or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalkingcom, and look for the little cup. Thank you.
