W IM H OF

B ecause Wim Hof’s method carries his name, we want to tell you a little about him before you start working with the WHM. It’s important to know how he decided to seek out the cold and why he became increasingly extreme in that quest.

S ITTARD

Wim Hof was born in the southern Dutch town of Sittard in 1959. He had seven brothers and two sisters. He was born in the corridor of the hospital. After his mother had given birth to his twin brother André, no one noticed that a second child was on the way. When the doctors had left, his mother started to feel contractions coming on again.

His mother, a Catholic, prayed that the second child would also be born healthy. She expressed the hope that if it were healthy, the child would grow up to be a missionary. Wim’s mother told this story regularly and Wim believed the circumstances of his birth and his mother’s strength had a great influence on him in his younger years.

Hof was fascinated by the cold from a very early age. One freezing winter’s night when he was seven, a neighbor found him in the snow. Strongly attracted by the white landscape, Hof had climbed out of bed, crept outside, and fallen asleep in the snow. If his neighbor had not discovered him, he probably would have frozen to death.

As a young boy, Hof also loved books. At the age of nine, he was already reading books on exotic religions, yoga and meditation. His interest was sparked by his older brother, who had spent several months hitchhiking around the Middle and Far East and had come back with strange and wonderful tales. Forty years ago, a journey through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India was still shrouded in mystery.

His brother had changed, not only on the inside, but also in his appearance. His hair and his clothes made him very conspicuous on the street. Wim looked up to his brother and felt strongly attracted to faraway lands and strange religions. He also noticed an energy and cheerfulness in his brother that made him curious.

While still very young, Hof learned to meditate from books on Hinduism and Buddhism in the local library. In the Catholic church in Sittard, he would concentrate on his breathing rather than listen to the sermon. When he was only ten years old, Hof taught himself yoga from the book Yoga, Immortality and Freedom , by Mircea Eliade. He went to school with a healthy reluctance and was known as a self-willed, clever and cheerful young boy.

He had a strong desire to learn—not at an intellectual level, but by experiencing things himself.

At the age of 17, Wim decided to leave school and travel to India. He wanted to find a teacher who knew more about what is really important in life. He was looking for a deeper spiritual understanding.

I NDIA—C OLD W ATER IN THE G ANGES

He flew to Karachi and took the train to New Delhi. In search of yogis, he slept in the enormous Birla Mandir temple complex. He met the owner of a teahouse and the rebellious son of a carpet magnate there. These two men persuaded Hof to accompany them to Rishikesh and Badrinath, two places of pilgrimage on the Ganges.

This colorful trio set off together: a strong, bearded Sikh who ran a teahouse, a black sheep from the carpet industry who could get anything he wanted—and who was fed up with the corruption of his world—and Hof. They thought Hof was crazy because he went swimming in the Ganges a couple of times a day. Hof even swam across to the other side, no mean feat given the strong current. He also impressed them with the acrobatic yoga exercises he could do, despite never having had a yoga lesson in his life.

In India, Hof discovered that his autodidactic approach had already brought him a long way. He could already stand on one leg and put the other behind his neck, a position many people have to practice for years to master.

His traveling companions remained behind in an ashram, but Hof didn’t feel at home there. He didn’t like the “clingy-cozy” atmosphere of the foreign participants, and although many of the yogis had learned very special techniques, he didn’t like the way they profited from them. He also discovered that he could not learn much from them, as he had already mastered their tricks. He continued his travels alone on foot.

C OLD W ATER—A D ISCOVERY

In a spot where the Ganges crashes down between sky-high mountains in a cascade of waterfalls, Hof had a wondrous experience. He felt inner peace and enormous strength. He had an irresistible urge to jump into the dangerous waterfall—and did just that. After a difficult swim, Hof stood under the mighty waterfall. His thoughts were immediately cut off by the cold water.

The sensation of a strength and power much greater than himself took hold of him. Since then, he has loved ice-cold water.

So Hof traveled to India—the cradle of spirituality—in search of noumenon (the spirit behind the esoteric books) and discovered the impact cold had on his body and above all, his mind.

After this discovery, Hof did not stay in India much longer. He loved the country, the climate, and the people, but he missed the Netherlands and decided to go back home. He did not know what he was going to do yet, but the lesson of the ice-cold water had made a deep impression on him. He knew he had to do something with it.

A MSTERDAM

Hof went to live in a squat in Amsterdam in 1979 at the age of 20. Through one of his brother’s friends, he got a place in De Wielingen, an old orphanage, where he lived with ninety other squatters. He led an ascetic life, eating little and doing a lot of yoga. His lifestyle was very different from that of the hippy-like students in the squat. They used LSD, smoked joints, and ate space-cake to achieve altered states of consciousness.

In the Vondelpark, Hof shared the yoga positions he had mastered with anyone who was interested. He also liked to explain their physiological basis. One sunny autumn day, Hof was swimming in the pond in the park. Soaking wet, he sat down in the sun to dry. Then he felt two hands on his back, which began to massage him. Hof remained sitting in his yoga position. He did not look up or around, but there, in the open-air theatre in the Vondelpark, he felt love. After the massage, he turned around, and looked straight into the eyes of the woman who massaged him. She made him beam with joy.

The woman’s name was Olaya. She was Spanish—or, more precisely, Basque. From that moment in the park, they were inseparable for a year. Deeply in love, Olaya moved in with Hof at the squat. For that first year, they did not have sex, even though they slept together on a single sleeping mat. Their platonic relationship was warm and physical. Hof’s life was devoted to yoga, and his Spanish girlfriend respected that.

After a year, Olaya got homesick and returned to her family home in Northern Spain. Hof wanted to see more of the world, so he and his twin brother cycled to Senegal.

A C ITY B IKE TO S ENEGAL

The two brothers set out for Senegal from Sittard on two regular city bikes. During this journey, Hof discovered how the sun affected his mood. Although the two brothers left in the autumn, the sun shone incessantly. Bad memories and depressive thoughts disappeared during their daily rides in the sun. Hof regularly thought of how Vincent van Gogh suffered less from depression in the South of France. Once again, Hof experienced the great impact of a “normal” natural phenomenon.

During the bike journey, Hof also had a deep spiritual experience, in which his body and mind became one. The sense of duality seemed to have disappeared—a new breakthrough for Hof. His body was now a vehicle, not just a tool. He had this feeling one morning, after an intense period of yoga training. Around that same time, the brothers met Wolfgang, a friendly German they caught up with in the Pyrenees. Wolfgang wanted to learn yoga from Wim. Because Wolfgang was on his way to Algiers, and not Senegal, the lessons were very fast and intensive. Wim explained the physiological effects of yoga, and taught Wolfgang many of his skills. The profundity they achieved in their practice proved to be another important step forward for Wim.

After this illuminating cycling trip, Hof went back to India. This time, he searched for the power of nature, not for yogis. He trained his body and mind under extreme circumstances. Sometimes he spent several days at great heights while enduring temperatures of -2°C (28.4°F), without food. He discovered a new way to survive the extreme cold: controlling his breathing. With breathing exercises, he could transform his fear and the negative experience of the cold into a powerful form of energy. He saw his body in a new way, and learned that breathing is an important instrument. This was also where he learned his breathing exercises.

A M ESSAGE TO THE R EADER

We want to put your mind at ease. You’re probably asking yourself, “I wanted to read a book about the cold and hard science. So what’s all this about spirituality, yoga, duality, and ashrams?” Don’t worry, all that will be explained in great detail in the coming chapters. But, now that science has embraced Hof’s method, it is important to know where his knowledge originated. You won’t need to go to India and sit on a cold mountain in some impossible yoga position.

Before we continue with the cold, we first must share the sad story of Wim’s wife, Olaya.

O LAYA

Before Hof went to India for the second time, he returned to Amsterdam. He missed Olaya and they met each other again in the city. After two years apart, the love between them was as strong as ever. They got married. In 1983, they had a son, Enahm. The proud parents rented a house and two daughters followed, Isabelle (1985) and Laura (1986).

But, Olaya found the cold climate of the Netherlands difficult. Eventually, the family of five emigrated to the warm side of the Pyrenees. Wim found work teaching English, and they rented a farmhouse just outside Estella. They dreamed of setting up a center where creative individuals could come together and learn yoga, philosophy, or painting—and where you could walk for hours.

Hof was happy, but still restless and searching for new challenges. This led him to do a lot of mountain-climbing. One day, he climbed a steep rock face with only a hemp rope, a small hammer and a few pitons. Olaya was furious that he was willing to risk his life climbing in that way, since they had three children. Hof had an uncontrollable urge to climb, but also felt responsible for his wife and children.

He decided to stop climbing, and to control his urge to climb, he developed a breathing technique that allowed him to stay underwater for more than six minutes. Every morning, he went to a nearby lake to meditate and practice staying underwater.

But the tension between Hof and his wife remained. One day, she disappeared and did not return for several months. Olaya suffered from attacks of rage and depression, and expressed her unhappiness by regularly threatening to take her own life. But she refused to seek treatment. The family returned to Amsterdam because the remote farmhouse no longer felt safe.

Back in Amsterdam, their youngest son Michael was born in 1998. Shortly after the birth, Olaya left again, without saying anything. Her depression was very difficult for her and it was a tough time for Hof, too.

When he contacted Olaya, he never knew what her mood would be in advance. Sometimes, she spent three or four months with Hof and their children, but then she would spend three or four months at her parents’ house. In the summer, Wim worked as a climbing trip group leader, and the family of six all stayed with Olaya’s parents in Pamplona.

Hof had a good relationship with Olaya’s Spanish family and friends. He learned about the culture and how to speak Basque. He did his best to be a good father and son-in-law, but he still needed moments to challenge himself in silence, away from the daily routine. He saw that Olaya would sometimes sit and stare straight forward strangely, but he did not really respond to it. And she continued to refuse treatment for her increasingly severe depression. Sometimes, she would slap someone hard in the face for no reason. She loved her children, but announced that she wanted to divorce Wim. He did not know if she had said this “only” for attention. He felt powerless and started climbing again to keep from losing himself.

One day, when Hof was alone in the mountains, Olaya jumped from the eighth floor of her parents’ house in Pamplona.

Olaya was dead. Enahm, Isabelle, Laura, and Michael lost their mother, and Wim lost his wife. He felt guilty and the children were devastated.

Hof devoted himself to caring for his children, occasionally retreating to be alone with nature to re-charge his batteries. In those years, he was a well-known figure in the Vondelpark. With ropes and belay equipment, he showed young children how to climb the highest trees. The children learned that they could do more than they thought was possible. Hof enjoyed the natural surroundings, even in the heart of Amsterdam.

Later, Wim remarried and had another son.

I NNERFIRE

The children grew up and Hof looked for new challenges. His breathing techniques, yoga and cold training gave him enormous strength—and he liked to share it with others. The media got him in their sights. Encouraged by the attention and the effect it had on other people, Wim broke record after record. He took the longest bath in ice. He climbed snow-covered mountain peaks, wearing shorts. He ran a marathon in Lapland at -30°C (-22°F). He swam hundreds of meters under the ice.

These records earned him the nickname “The Iceman”.

His records were reported on television in Japan, Germany, Poland, Spain and many other countries. The BBC made a documentary about him, and millions of people watched his feats on the internet.

Hof enjoyed the attention and the expanding potentialities of his body. But, something started to gnaw at him. Perhaps because he was getting older—or because of his five children. Or, maybe he was still coming to terms with Olaya’s suicide.

He felt the need to share his knowledge and the possibilities of his body with more people. Could other people do what he can do? In 2007, the renowned Feinstein Institute in New York studied Hof. The results showed that he was able to control his autonomic nervous system. For Wim, the results were logical—after all, he had trained to do it for many years. But, the researchers thought he was a medical wonder.

From then on, Hof put himself at the disposal of science. His main aim was to show others that they could also train to do what he does. It was the start of a very special time in Wim’s life. He attracted more and more attention and those who started using his method were wildly enthusiastic.

In 2010, Hof’s eldest son Enahm set up a company called Innerfire. The combination of breathing exercises and cold training had far-reaching effects on people over and over again. They started organizing workshops and trips, and the method was increasingly validated by science. In the Netherlands, more and more people learned to train others in the Wim Hof Method (WHM). In the near future, people will be able to learn the method, under supervision, in many places around the country.

Hof’s daughter, Isabelle and his son Michael now both work at Innerfire.

More and more people are using Wim’s techniques, including leading Dutch entertainer Theo Maassen, former Minister of Finance Gerrit Zalm, athletes, people with rheumatism and Crohn’s disease, psychiatrists, cardiologists and internists. Companies ask Hof to sit in ice baths with hundreds of managers at a time.

At the same time, more researchers are now studying the WHM at the Radboud University Medical Centre, the Amsterdam Medical Centre, and at universities in Boston and New York.

Why is that?

What is the secret of Wim Hof’s method?

That is what we are going to tell you, starting with cold training.