5 ms·

Disclaimer: I've met Wim and was one of his guinea pigs in this experiment [2]. The best proof I have for that is that I've claimed this for years on HN ;-) We

Disclaimer: I've met Wim and was one of his guinea pigs in this experiment [2]. The best proof I have for that is that I've claimed this for years on HN ;-) We trained for 4 days in Poland. The hardest challenge I did was climbing up a mountain in my shorts + shoes + socks for 2.5 hours at -7 degrees. I did not have frostbite in the end, none of us did. We did the Harlem Shake (that was a thing back then). I also asked a ton of questions to the researchers back then. From what I've read, g-tummo is very likely not the Wim Hof Method. I've never trained with a monk claiming to know g-tummo. The son of Wim Hof loudly told me "The Wim Hof Method is not Tummo!" (almost a direct quote from memory, probably paraphrased). So I'd argue that back in 2014 or whenever it was, they were of the opinion it was something else. I'd be willing to bet they've never met a g-tummo monk either :) A good medical YT vid on the WHM [1]. From my experiential point of view: the WHM doesn't warm your body, you simply don't get cold, nor do you feel cold (you're too high on adrenaline to have any normal sense of temperature). Sometimes I did feel a warmth boost, but that's not the main "working thing" behind his method. I use it whenever I need an adrenaline boost, or don't want to feel cold. When is it handy or fun to get an adrenaline boost on purpose (my experience)? 1. When you have a headache (free painkiller when nothing is lying around) 2. When you're at a party (no drugs needed, the WHM is a drug in its own right) 3. When you're having sex (a lot of adrenaline kinda changes your personality a bit :) ) 4. When you're cold [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf

mtalantikite 5y ago
I'd also agree that Wim Hof breathing is not Tummo, although who knows if there are some similar biological processes that happen as a result of the two methods. My experience with the Wim Hof breathing is similar to yours though, it's a nice reset button and can make your body feel a lot better when you're in pain or feeling cloudy. It's funny that you mention using it for sex, because Tummo is often a preliminary for Karmamudra practice too. As for Tummo, generally there are a lot of preliminary practices you need to go through before being taught it, which can take the practitioner a lot of time and is probably why you don't see it around in lay communities in the west. For instance, the preliminary practice of ngondro can take people something like 6 months in full retreat to finish, or years if mixed in to daily life. The Yuthok Nyingthig lineage of Tibetan medicine practitioners does things on faster timelines though, in my experience. [1] [2] My acupuncturist is a former monk and teaches Tummo to small groups here in NYC from time to time, although he hasn't done it in a while and I didn't find out about him until after the last group of his had started. You'd still probably want to have had a daily meditation practice and some physical yoga asana practice before beginning I'd imagine -- just sitting in the 7-point posture of Vairochana that you see the monks from the article sitting in requires a pretty open body to get into and maintain. The first time I took a course in Tibetan Nejang I had difficulty with maintaining that arm and shoulder position, even after years of sitting every day in padmasana. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuthok_Nyingthig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuthok_Nyingthig [2] https://purelandfarms.com/ https://purelandfarms.com/
- mettamage 5y ago
  That looks interesting, I sometimes do a small Google search on Tummo. But I can't find much useful/reliable stuff. The knowledge seems to be really arcane.
  - mtalantikite 5y ago
    Same, I searched from time to time as well and never really found much, until one day I was looking for a new acupuncturist and coincidentally this former monk's practice is a few blocks from my house. Wasn't even looking for a tummo teacher during that search! Hopefully some day I'll get to go through the training. Happy to send you his information as well, my email is in my profile.
    - mettamage 5y ago
      I'm not seeing your email, but I'd love to get the info! My email is in my profile ;-)
  - asimovfan 5y ago
    it is an esoteric practice :) you have to learn it from a guru
adamsmith143 5y ago
>The hardest challenge I did was climbing up a mountain in my shorts + shoes + socks for 2.5 hours at -7 degrees. I did not have frostbite in the end, none of us did >From my experiential point of view: the WHM doesn't warm your body, you simply don't get cold Does not compute. Have you violated the Laws of Thermodynamics?
- jhardy54 5y ago
  I think they mean “you simply don’t feel cold”.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Yep, that's what I meant.
    - adamsmith143 5y ago
      So why the point about frostbite? Surely you aren't implying that this technique will protect you from that?
      - stouset 5y ago
        Frostbite at the extremities is significantly a consequence of vascular constriction which prevents warm blood from flowing in and replacing heat lost to the elements. Anything that reduces that vasoconstriction (or actively dilates your blood vessels) will significantly delay the onset of frostbite. On net your body will lose heat faster as a result, but that can be offset by engaging other systems in your body responsible for generating heat.
- dougk16 5y ago
  Your body stores a tremendous amount of energy. For example I've personally fasted for 7 days, no calories in, and know people who have gone a month, no problems. Normal daily routine, exercise, etc. In a way you have even more zip in your step cause you're not processing all that food. So it's not like you're an inert lump out in the elements. You have the caloric equivalent of several gallons worth of gasoline in your body somewhat readily burnable (obviously at the tail end you'd start to look a little worn out). Systems like Wim Hof give you the ability to consciously tap into that energy reserve with enough practice. Also think about tiny animals like squirrels out in the elements all winter. Yes natural insulation plays a small role, but let me give you a fur coat and some nuts and see how long you last. ;) Not to mention surface:volume ratio much worse than humans. They're natural Wim Hof masters.
samstave 5y ago
I grew up in lake tahoe, I am 47 years old. One of the things I learned very early in life in the winters of tahoe was how to consciously raise the temp of my feet/legs in the cold winter nights by just thinking about it. I am far less good at this as I have gotten older, but I am familiar with raising my body temp by thought alone. I've also meditated to instant healing before. I was ~18 at the time and I had done a crap load of sit-ups to the point I damaged my abdonminal muscles, to the point where I couldnt even stand up straight and was just hunched over. I went to meditate and breate, very similar to WHM... After some time meditating my body got the super tingly feeling one gets right before astral projecting, my body took in a swift breath, my back arched and all my abdominal muscles tingled and were instantly healed. I have yet to do this again though, and I have been meditating in earnest recently to attempt to do the same thing again.
- djtango 5y ago
  Don't know why someone downvoted you without taking the time to question you further. What is astral projecting? I have heard anecdotes of self-healing before, it reconciles with my internal model that induced muscular relaxation + increased bloodflow via neuro-stimulation can facilitate healing and also reset any "knots" lingering around. Similar to how massaging, accupuncture and cupping can help recovery. Although many find this unbelievable perhaps because it is hard to measure/study and the knowledge to body control is locked behind unscientific martial arts and requires years of training. Seems like we are starting to tease out reproducible findings via things like Wim Hof and mass interest in yoga. I'm excited to see what we may discover about our own potential - just like how [1] debunked scientists' assumptions about pupil dilation [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28377916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28377916
  - rantanplan 5y ago
    > What is astral projecting? The illusion that your mind escapes your body and/or visits other planes of existence etc. It has been replicated successfully in lab conditions many times over and is proven to be just an illusion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
awb 5y ago
> The hardest challenge I did was climbing up a mountain in my shorts + shoes + socks for 2.5 hours at -7 degrees. I did not have frostbite in the end, none of us did. What’s your best guess as to why no one got frostbite? > Risk increases as air temperature falls below 5 F (minus 15 C), even with low wind speeds. In wind chill of minus 16.6 F (minus 27 C), frostbite can occur on exposed skin in less than 30 minutes. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/frostbite/symptoms-causes/syc-20372656 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/frostbite/sym... It sounds like you were at very high risk of exposure, especially with even a slight wind on exposed skin.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  not OP, but I did WHM too - it heats you up. Not sure about the specifics, whether it's increasing blood flow to limbs or what, but it definitely makes cold exposure more tolerable, and not just in a psychosomatic sense - I didn't shiver at all after hanging around in a bath full of ice for a good minute or so.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Yep, I didn't shiver either. I did hug a couple of skiing people around 90 minutes in though for fun :D The looks on their faces were fun. The effects of WHM and cold exposure have been scientifically documented. I think the YouTube video I linked to also says a thing or two about it. But yea, we were with 12 people that day, none of us got it. The group before us (a month before), also 12 people, none of them got it. All of us were males between 18 and 25, I think... Can't fully recall, the paper I linked to states it more clearly (though it may mention only 18 of us since 6 of us were trained for the case when people would drop out but none of us did).
beaconstudios 5y ago
I went and did the Wim Hof thing at a stadium in London - it's great fun and if you can ignore the somewhat culty environment, you'll enjoy it for sure if you're interested in these kinds of things (meditation, new agey things). Anyway, prelude out of the way - are you sure it's adrenaline that WHM triggers? When we did it, it was essentially CO2-purging breathing and triggered an endorphin high, like a mild MDMDA effect. Either way, it definitely made ice-bath dunking more tolerable (part of the experience is a stadium full of people all going outside in flipflops and sitting in paddling pools full of ice), but I definitely felt the cold.
- mettamage 5y ago
  CTRL+F on "epinephrine" in [1]. There are a couple of charts that show it was much higher than the control. Dopamine, as a hormone not as a neurotransmitter (I think), was also measured and seemed to be lower or equal compared to control. But I can see why you say it's a mild MDMA effect, the WHM does a lot more than just adrenaline, but I simply use it for that. And I definitely notice the adrenaline effects of it as well. But I do agree there's more to it. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf
cf141q5325 5y ago
Do you know if you burned more calories? Also thanks for the report
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Necessarily. Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress. But humans store >2x as many calories as other apes, per unit body weight. And Americans, on average, store way more than normal people, because we are fat.
milesvp 5y ago
My understanding with adrenaline, is that it will open your capillaries to increase blood flow to your extremities. This may be why you didn't get frostbite. The flip side of this, is that it means your body is transferring internal temp to your extremities, which means that you will "die sooner" if you don't have a way to increase body temp at a faster rate. Now it's possible that adrenaline also increases your body's fat burn to allow for this need of higher metabolism. I don't know. My warning, is that this may be a similar problem to consuming alcohol in the cold. You feel warmer, and even have more calories to burn, but according to myth busters, it tends to be a net loss due to radiative effects. And likely is exponentially worse the colder it gets.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Wonder if adrenal fatigue would be a problem. Sort of like spending extended time in flight or fight mode will wreck your body.
- runnerup 5y ago
  I agree that its intuitive that to prevent frostbite, it would be appropriate for the body to increase blood flow through extremities and (assuming core temperature has a narrow functional band) increase heat loss / caloric output in the process. And that this would result in loss of energy stores much faster -- good if you have a large caloric surplus available most days, bad if you are experience extended starvation in the wilderness. Though as with everything relating to health, I'd like to see some data/information to confirm my naive bias/opinion.
- amelius 5y ago
  Isn't this exactly the sort of question addressed by the research?
  - mettamage 5y ago
    From what I recall, part of it is yea. You'd probably know a bit more if you look at all the research. I wonder though if it has been researched fully so that questions like these have a solid answer. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor, all I know is a bit of neuropsychology from my undergrad.

mtalantikite 5y ago

I'd also agree that Wim Hof breathing is not Tummo, although who knows if there are some similar biological processes that happen as a result of the two methods. My experience with the Wim Hof breathing is similar to yours though, it's a nice reset button and can make your body feel a lot better when you're in pain or feeling cloudy. It's funny that you mention using it for sex, because Tummo is often a preliminary for Karmamudra practice too. As for Tummo, generally there are a lot of preliminary practices you need to go through before being taught it, which can take the practitioner a lot of time and is probably why you don't see it around in lay communities in the west. For instance, the preliminary practice of ngondro can take people something like 6 months in full retreat to finish, or years if mixed in to daily life. The Yuthok Nyingthig lineage of Tibetan medicine practitioners does things on faster timelines though, in my experience. [1] [2] My acupuncturist is a former monk and teaches Tummo to small groups here in NYC from time to time, although he hasn't done it in a while and I didn't find out about him until after the last group of his had started. You'd still probably want to have had a daily meditation practice and some physical yoga asana practice before beginning I'd imagine -- just sitting in the 7-point posture of Vairochana that you see the monks from the article sitting in requires a pretty open body to get into and maintain. The first time I took a course in Tibetan Nejang I had difficulty with maintaining that arm and shoulder position, even after years of sitting every day in padmasana. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuthok_Nyingthig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuthok_Nyingthig [2] https://purelandfarms.com/ https://purelandfarms.com/

mettamage 5y ago
That looks interesting, I sometimes do a small Google search on Tummo. But I can't find much useful/reliable stuff. The knowledge seems to be really arcane.
- mtalantikite 5y ago
  Same, I searched from time to time as well and never really found much, until one day I was looking for a new acupuncturist and coincidentally this former monk's practice is a few blocks from my house. Wasn't even looking for a tummo teacher during that search! Hopefully some day I'll get to go through the training. Happy to send you his information as well, my email is in my profile.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    I'm not seeing your email, but I'd love to get the info! My email is in my profile ;-)
- asimovfan 5y ago
  it is an esoteric practice :) you have to learn it from a guru

adamsmith143 5y ago

>The hardest challenge I did was climbing up a mountain in my shorts + shoes + socks for 2.5 hours at -7 degrees. I did not have frostbite in the end, none of us did >From my experiential point of view: the WHM doesn't warm your body, you simply don't get cold Does not compute. Have you violated the Laws of Thermodynamics?

jhardy54 5y ago
I think they mean “you simply don’t feel cold”.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Yep, that's what I meant.
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    So why the point about frostbite? Surely you aren't implying that this technique will protect you from that?
    - stouset 5y ago
      Frostbite at the extremities is significantly a consequence of vascular constriction which prevents warm blood from flowing in and replacing heat lost to the elements. Anything that reduces that vasoconstriction (or actively dilates your blood vessels) will significantly delay the onset of frostbite. On net your body will lose heat faster as a result, but that can be offset by engaging other systems in your body responsible for generating heat.
dougk16 5y ago
Your body stores a tremendous amount of energy. For example I've personally fasted for 7 days, no calories in, and know people who have gone a month, no problems. Normal daily routine, exercise, etc. In a way you have even more zip in your step cause you're not processing all that food. So it's not like you're an inert lump out in the elements. You have the caloric equivalent of several gallons worth of gasoline in your body somewhat readily burnable (obviously at the tail end you'd start to look a little worn out). Systems like Wim Hof give you the ability to consciously tap into that energy reserve with enough practice. Also think about tiny animals like squirrels out in the elements all winter. Yes natural insulation plays a small role, but let me give you a fur coat and some nuts and see how long you last. ;) Not to mention surface:volume ratio much worse than humans. They're natural Wim Hof masters.

samstave 5y ago

I grew up in lake tahoe, I am 47 years old. One of the things I learned very early in life in the winters of tahoe was how to consciously raise the temp of my feet/legs in the cold winter nights by just thinking about it. I am far less good at this as I have gotten older, but I am familiar with raising my body temp by thought alone. I've also meditated to instant healing before. I was ~18 at the time and I had done a crap load of sit-ups to the point I damaged my abdonminal muscles, to the point where I couldnt even stand up straight and was just hunched over. I went to meditate and breate, very similar to WHM... After some time meditating my body got the super tingly feeling one gets right before astral projecting, my body took in a swift breath, my back arched and all my abdominal muscles tingled and were instantly healed. I have yet to do this again though, and I have been meditating in earnest recently to attempt to do the same thing again.

djtango 5y ago
Don't know why someone downvoted you without taking the time to question you further. What is astral projecting? I have heard anecdotes of self-healing before, it reconciles with my internal model that induced muscular relaxation + increased bloodflow via neuro-stimulation can facilitate healing and also reset any "knots" lingering around. Similar to how massaging, accupuncture and cupping can help recovery. Although many find this unbelievable perhaps because it is hard to measure/study and the knowledge to body control is locked behind unscientific martial arts and requires years of training. Seems like we are starting to tease out reproducible findings via things like Wim Hof and mass interest in yoga. I'm excited to see what we may discover about our own potential - just like how [1] debunked scientists' assumptions about pupil dilation [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28377916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28377916
- rantanplan 5y ago
  > What is astral projecting? The illusion that your mind escapes your body and/or visits other planes of existence etc. It has been replicated successfully in lab conditions many times over and is proven to be just an illusion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

awb 5y ago

> The hardest challenge I did was climbing up a mountain in my shorts + shoes + socks for 2.5 hours at -7 degrees. I did not have frostbite in the end, none of us did. What’s your best guess as to why no one got frostbite? > Risk increases as air temperature falls below 5 F (minus 15 C), even with low wind speeds. In wind chill of minus 16.6 F (minus 27 C), frostbite can occur on exposed skin in less than 30 minutes. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/frostbite/symptoms-causes/syc-20372656 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/frostbite/sym... It sounds like you were at very high risk of exposure, especially with even a slight wind on exposed skin.

beaconstudios 5y ago
not OP, but I did WHM too - it heats you up. Not sure about the specifics, whether it's increasing blood flow to limbs or what, but it definitely makes cold exposure more tolerable, and not just in a psychosomatic sense - I didn't shiver at all after hanging around in a bath full of ice for a good minute or so.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Yep, I didn't shiver either. I did hug a couple of skiing people around 90 minutes in though for fun :D The looks on their faces were fun. The effects of WHM and cold exposure have been scientifically documented. I think the YouTube video I linked to also says a thing or two about it. But yea, we were with 12 people that day, none of us got it. The group before us (a month before), also 12 people, none of them got it. All of us were males between 18 and 25, I think... Can't fully recall, the paper I linked to states it more clearly (though it may mention only 18 of us since 6 of us were trained for the case when people would drop out but none of us did).

beaconstudios 5y ago

I went and did the Wim Hof thing at a stadium in London - it's great fun and if you can ignore the somewhat culty environment, you'll enjoy it for sure if you're interested in these kinds of things (meditation, new agey things). Anyway, prelude out of the way - are you sure it's adrenaline that WHM triggers? When we did it, it was essentially CO2-purging breathing and triggered an endorphin high, like a mild MDMDA effect. Either way, it definitely made ice-bath dunking more tolerable (part of the experience is a stadium full of people all going outside in flipflops and sitting in paddling pools full of ice), but I definitely felt the cold.

mettamage 5y ago
CTRL+F on "epinephrine" in [1]. There are a couple of charts that show it was much higher than the control. Dopamine, as a hormone not as a neurotransmitter (I think), was also measured and seemed to be lower or equal compared to control. But I can see why you say it's a mild MDMA effect, the WHM does a lot more than just adrenaline, but I simply use it for that. And I definitely notice the adrenaline effects of it as well. But I do agree there's more to it. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf

cf141q5325 5y ago

Do you know if you burned more calories? Also thanks for the report

ncmncm 5y ago
Necessarily. Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress. But humans store >2x as many calories as other apes, per unit body weight. And Americans, on average, store way more than normal people, because we are fat.

milesvp 5y ago

My understanding with adrenaline, is that it will open your capillaries to increase blood flow to your extremities. This may be why you didn't get frostbite. The flip side of this, is that it means your body is transferring internal temp to your extremities, which means that you will "die sooner" if you don't have a way to increase body temp at a faster rate. Now it's possible that adrenaline also increases your body's fat burn to allow for this need of higher metabolism. I don't know. My warning, is that this may be a similar problem to consuming alcohol in the cold. You feel warmer, and even have more calories to burn, but according to myth busters, it tends to be a net loss due to radiative effects. And likely is exponentially worse the colder it gets.

treeman79 5y ago
Wonder if adrenal fatigue would be a problem. Sort of like spending extended time in flight or fight mode will wreck your body.
runnerup 5y ago
I agree that its intuitive that to prevent frostbite, it would be appropriate for the body to increase blood flow through extremities and (assuming core temperature has a narrow functional band) increase heat loss / caloric output in the process. And that this would result in loss of energy stores much faster -- good if you have a large caloric surplus available most days, bad if you are experience extended starvation in the wilderness. Though as with everything relating to health, I'd like to see some data/information to confirm my naive bias/opinion.
amelius 5y ago
Isn't this exactly the sort of question addressed by the research?
- mettamage 5y ago
  From what I recall, part of it is yea. You'd probably know a bit more if you look at all the research. I wonder though if it has been researched fully so that questions like these have a solid answer. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor, all I know is a bit of neuropsychology from my undergrad.