Wim Hof: The Intersection of Miracle and Science?

Me, this morning

A friend of mine recently purchased an online training course for the Wim Hof method. He mentioned it to me after lunch together on Thursday. I had heard of the Iceman before, but thought of him as an evolutionary freak of nature. What I didn't know is he has trained 12 other people in a very short period of time to be tested and accomplish the same miraculous feats he is able to do (control his immune response, core body temperature, adrenaline levels, etc). He trained a Vice film crew and together they hiked a snow-covered mountain in shorts. If you're not familiar with Wim Hof, prepare to be amazed. He holds 26 world records and has some incredible claims about the human body which have been verified by doctors and scientists.

My friend emailed me some more information, and I listened to this 40 minute documentary by Vice in the background while working yesterday. It's well worth your time.

That got me really interested. I started googling around and learning more. Immediately I thought (as one does), "I should post about this on Steemit!" So I searched steemit for Wim Hof to see if anyone else was talking about him. I found some amazing content! Please check out these fantastic posts from Steemit authors!

Unfortunately most of these posts were not well rewarded. At least one account isn't active any more. Still though, it was a fantastic experience to get really great content about a topic I'm interested in directly from Steemit! The next time you're interested in something, search Steemit first and see what you find. You might be pleasantly surprised! It was through these posts I found Wim Hof's Joe Rogan Experience episode 712. From there I found he was on the show again recently in episode 865.

I watched/listened to them both yesterday (a total of almost 5 hours). This is truly fascinating stuff. Throughout history various religions and mythologies talk of super human abilities and miraculous recoveries and/or feats of strength, endurance, and ability. The skeptical, logical, rational thinkers of the modern era brush these stories aside as primitive thinkers finding meaning where there is none. At the same time, I'm now beginning to realize, "miracles" really are happening and some shamans, healers, and mystics of the world are shaking their heads at the "intellectuals" who can be so ignorant in spite of all their knowledge.

For me, Wim Hof represents the meeting point between science and the unexplained. Out of billions of people, this one individual discovered some realities about the human body previously thought to be impossible. He discredits "woo" pseudoscience just as much as the skeptics, always repeating phrases like "no speculation" and actively engages the scientific community to test and measure his conclusive results. He's helping rewrite biology books!

I love science. I also appreciate his frustration with how slowly it moves. As he points out on the podcast, a cancer patient is worth $200k a year to the medical industry. When asked by Joe Rogan if he thought they were slow to move on his findings because of that, he wisely replied with, "Do you?" It's a dark thought, but if you ask yourself Cui bono? it's a question worth exploring. At the same time, we can't in good conscious tell dying people, "Oh, just breathe this way, and you'll be healed." Thankfully, Wim Hof doesn't appear to be taking such an extreme stance and argues his methods work well with chemotherapy. I lost my mom to cancer, so this is a topic I'm certainly interested in.

I've been a fan of conspiracy theories in the past, but lately I've found it easier to poke holes in them based on reason, logic, evidence, and a solid understanding of logical fallacies. I'm not yet ready to jump into the camp which claims healthy cures are being repressed, but if even part of what Win Hof says about the human body is true (and much if it has already been scientifically verified, from what I've seen so far), then how much could humanity improve if many ailments we face could be cured via something as simple as special breathing and cold exposure? There's so much to Wim Hof's story which seems impossible, but if the evidence is there, what then?

If breathing, meditation, and cold exposure could fundamentally change our lives to be healthier, happier, more productive, and in essence better versions of ourselves, would we do it? Shouldn't we do it?

His claims are so outrageous, we have trouble believing. We should be skeptical, but we should also engage the evidence and consider the possible benefits.

Futurism

I'm going to start diving in a bit more. The basics of the Wim Hof breathing can be found online in various places so I won't reproduce them here. I'm going to try it out and see what happens. Is it possible a new age of self regulation and body control is within our grasp?

To Learn More

Wim Hoff - Wikipedia
http://www.wimhofmethod.com/

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Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, voluntaryist, and blockchain enthusiast. He wants to help create a world we all want to live in.