05-07-2021, 06:35 PM
Backstory: I read a book called Breath last year. Highly recommend. Amazing the connection between breath and mind, well-being and vitality. Amazing also how poorly we generally breathe. In the book I was turned onto a fellow named Wim Hoff.
He is affectionately called the "Ice Man" for doing extraordinary things like swimming almost two hundred feet (66m) under ice, submersing himself in icy water for extended periods, running 13+ miles in the Artic barefoot and clad only in shorts, etc. On on the flip side, running a full marathon through a desert without drinking water, and other feats of consciously influencing the autonomous nervous system, not unlike what those Tibbetan monks do when they meditate on a snow mountaintop with wet clothes that start to become steamy as they raise their body temperature through Tummo breathing exercises.
He's an eccentric and endearing soul, from what I can gather in his videos, with incredible self-control and determination. I took his online course but got stopped halfway through due to tragedy in my family last November. At the time I was submerging and keeping my hands in ice water (no easy thing let me tell you!) and taking extended lowest setting cold showers (WOW what an energizer!). But while my course work is arrested, I have continued every morning to practice the breathing technique I learned from him, along with occasional cold showers.
Lying on my back, I do 30 or so deep and rapid inhalations and exhalations: in through the belly, chest, head, oouuuttttt. In through the belly, chest, head, outttt. After the exhale on the 30th breath, I hold the breath for about two minutes. My body is highly oxygenated but there is no air (or virtually no air) in the lungs.
If my mind is not a factory of busy bees, during these 2+ min I feel a liquid peace settle over me. There is a sort of physiological stillness and ease.
And when I sense that it is time to inhale, I quickly draw in a deep and full breath and hold it. In tandem I tense and contract my lower and upper torso and my neck, placing my hands into a prayer position while visualizing energy or light moving upward to my crown.
(The hand in prayer is my own addition. Wim Hoff says that in this stage one is sending blood up to the brain. And in his characteristic humor and Dutch accent, refers to this as being "like drugs." I suspect that more than blood is moving upward. I think that prana is as well.)
I hold the breath and the tensed muscles for 30 or so seconds, release, and then repeat the whole process another two or more rounds.
I feel charged and energized, but at rest; vital but still. My head cleared of its cobwebs. It is typically the very first thing I do each morning.
It's incredibly simple. I think you can pick it up online for free. Let me look. ... Here's a version of it, though it doesn't seem to include the tensing and contracting of the muscles I describe above in the retention following inhale. (This video is just his voice. He's great to watch doing it live.)
He is affectionately called the "Ice Man" for doing extraordinary things like swimming almost two hundred feet (66m) under ice, submersing himself in icy water for extended periods, running 13+ miles in the Artic barefoot and clad only in shorts, etc. On on the flip side, running a full marathon through a desert without drinking water, and other feats of consciously influencing the autonomous nervous system, not unlike what those Tibbetan monks do when they meditate on a snow mountaintop with wet clothes that start to become steamy as they raise their body temperature through Tummo breathing exercises.
He's an eccentric and endearing soul, from what I can gather in his videos, with incredible self-control and determination. I took his online course but got stopped halfway through due to tragedy in my family last November. At the time I was submerging and keeping my hands in ice water (no easy thing let me tell you!) and taking extended lowest setting cold showers (WOW what an energizer!). But while my course work is arrested, I have continued every morning to practice the breathing technique I learned from him, along with occasional cold showers.
Lying on my back, I do 30 or so deep and rapid inhalations and exhalations: in through the belly, chest, head, oouuuttttt. In through the belly, chest, head, outttt. After the exhale on the 30th breath, I hold the breath for about two minutes. My body is highly oxygenated but there is no air (or virtually no air) in the lungs.
If my mind is not a factory of busy bees, during these 2+ min I feel a liquid peace settle over me. There is a sort of physiological stillness and ease.
And when I sense that it is time to inhale, I quickly draw in a deep and full breath and hold it. In tandem I tense and contract my lower and upper torso and my neck, placing my hands into a prayer position while visualizing energy or light moving upward to my crown.
(The hand in prayer is my own addition. Wim Hoff says that in this stage one is sending blood up to the brain. And in his characteristic humor and Dutch accent, refers to this as being "like drugs." I suspect that more than blood is moving upward. I think that prana is as well.)
I hold the breath and the tensed muscles for 30 or so seconds, release, and then repeat the whole process another two or more rounds.
I feel charged and energized, but at rest; vital but still. My head cleared of its cobwebs. It is typically the very first thing I do each morning.
It's incredibly simple. I think you can pick it up online for free. Let me look. ... Here's a version of it, though it doesn't seem to include the tensing and contracting of the muscles I describe above in the retention following inhale. (This video is just his voice. He's great to watch doing it live.)
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi
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