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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
It was an enjoyable book for the first half which I would have rated a 4 star, but the latter half was just repetitive anecdotes of how this method has helped people.
It's interesting to know, however I am still not sold on the method as it could make some illnesses worse, it is basically pushing your body to extreme stress to release adrenaline which doesn't seem good in the long term and should only be attempted under the supervision of professionals in this method as fainting and even drowning have occured.
It's an interesting book but please do read around this method and heed the warnings in the back before attempting.
It's interesting to know, however I am still not sold on the method as it could make some illnesses worse, it is basically pushing your body to extreme stress to release adrenaline which doesn't seem good in the long term and should only be attempted under the supervision of professionals in this method as fainting and even drowning have occured.
It's an interesting book but please do read around this method and heed the warnings in the back before attempting.
Compelling, but even this relatively short book doesn't need to be this long. Deep breathing and cool therapy are great for your health. Here's some suggested routines. The rest gets repetitive, long winded, and quite frankly takes away from the actual evidence and science by making huge, snake oil claims. A lady diagnosed with MS is now running marathons JUST from deep breathing and cold showers?? He promises a lot more than is responsible. Regardless, I'm compelled to start incorporating these habits into my life and anticipate some benefits to my health, just no magic bullets.
Whether you are familiar with Wim Hof or not, this is a great intro to his practice. Although I already practice the Wim Hof breathing technique and cold exposure, I learned even more a few other techniques for controlling my breath for pain regulation and headaches and about Wim Hof's background and life. There are great testimonies throughout from people whose lives have been changed by meeting Wim and following his breathing techniques. Wim is crazy about life and wants to share his enthusiasm for life with the world. He wants everyone to know that they can have happiness, strength and health. He encourages the reader to take a hold of their life through their breath, it's simple and it only takes 20 minutes a day. It was also great to see all of this scientific studies in one place to see exactly how his method works. There was a lot of language in the book, but if you have listened to Wim before, you might have been expecting that.
informative
fast-paced
The Wim Hof Method is a difficult book to review; I feel at cross purposes attempting to separate the method itself and the effectiveness of the practice from its presentation in the written form. Considering the Goodreads audience, I suppose it makes sense to focus on the latter, but for me, the book itself is inseparable from my own limited experience with the method, which I feel might add a little credence to my interpretation of the book, so I'm afraid you'll have to deal with it.
Wim 'The Iceman' Hof is, at his core, a Dutch practitioner of mindfulness, specifically focusing on cold exposure and breathing techniques to help people realise the extremely deep mental and physical potential he believes we all possess within us. He has demonstrated this supposed power by breaking something in the region of twenty-five Guinness World Records (of varying levels of ridiculousness), including barefoot Everest marathons in his pants, underwater endurance tests in lakes of ice, and mile-high single-finger suspensions. Of course, he's eccentric, but there's an ever-increasing pool of scientific proof that his ability to harness his mind is rewriting physiological, neurological and even philosophical books.
Like many in recent years, including two very close friends, I came to Wim during lockdown whilst searching for ways to cope with the mental strain of the pandemic. I tried having a few cold showers, but wasn't quite in the right mindset to appreciate the effects (and also wasn't following the method correctly), so I shelved the idea and focused on daily yoga which got me through my personal hardships. As the months rolled on and the world opened up, I continued my yoga and held only a passive interest in Wim. But then, in April 2022, I finally caught Covid.
Coincidentally, a week or two before this, the BBC began airing a show featuring Wim entitled 'Freeze the Fear'. The program is a bit crap, but Wim's enthusiasm served to rejuvenate my interest in him and his method. Thanks to yoga, I found myself in a better mindset despite my positive test result, so I decided to treat my maiden Covid experience as grounds for experimentation. I read the book cover to cover within 6 days of positive LFTs, and decided to take a cold shower every day for ten days - partly on Wim's recommendation, but also because ten days represents the supposed incubation / contagion period for the virus (at the time of writing). I also conducted an hour long breathing practice on a day in which I wasn't trying to cough my spleen up - but before I discuss my results, back to the book itself.
The first 20% is dedicated to Wim's early life and his formative experiences. Some of these - particularly the story of his first wife - are notably poignant, and whilst his methods certainly and understandably attract sceptics by the metric tonne, I defy anyone to doubt his initial motivation for conquering his mental hardships. His story is believable, and his beliefs are personable. It's an engaging introduction and lays the groundwork for the next 20% - the method itself. Informative, enthusiastic and generally enforced by scientific research, it's the real meat and gravy of the book.
The remaining 60% of the book suffers a little for reading like a motivational speech; it's fairly repetitive (intentionally so, to drive home the ease and the accessibility of the method), and Wim's infectious overenthusiasm can be felt in every word, which will either do it for you or it won't. Additionally, whilst there are several scientific studies referenced throughout, and an importance placed on science over spirituality, there are also some clear research gaps - Wim frequently states that "it's science! we have proved it!" which is certainly sometimes true, but occasionally perhaps a little keen and not *quite* finalised scientifically yet. The sample sizes of some of the studies also remind me of the pertinence of rational thinking but, while the studies are generally in their infancy, their base results are undeniably intriguing: Wim is a normal adult male who has shown that he is capable of supernormal - and ultimately, measurable - physiological and biochemical changes, using the power of his mind.
So what have I learned from diving into the Wim Hof Method, whilst reading the Wim Hof Method, whilst trying to get over Covid? Speaking personally, the daily cold showers have been uniformly rejuvenating and addictive; they've drastically increased my concentration levels throughout the day, and have consistently boosted my energy levels beyond my usual, non-virulent level. I started on fifteen seconds of cold water at the end of a warm shower as instructed, but by day three, using some of the mental preparation steps, I was doing one minute of warm water followed by four minutes of cold - an increase I would have found to be unbelievable beforehand.
As for the breathing - and I semi-apologise once again for using this review as a place to document my own experiment - on a day when my cough had subsided, I laid on the floor with my eyes closed and devoted an entire hour to the breathing cycles (four full rounds with about twenty minutes of meditation at the end). As I'd heard possible due to extremely saturated oxygen levels, I experienced some profound visual hallucinations, a tingling sensation down my arms, legs and even in my teeth (that's a new one to me) and, in the closing moments, a feeling of physical and mental wellness at a level I don't think I've ever experienced before in my life. It was a sense of pure inner peace, of banished anxiety, and about an hour afterwards, I needed to remind myself that I was four days into a viral infection.
In conclusion, the Wim Hof Method is something I'd certainly recommend, and this book is of course the best place to dive in. The book itself isn't quite perfect, hence the rating, but there are certainly greater things to take from it, and without wanting to sound like a fanatic (too little too late), it has brought significant improvements into my life within the span of little over a week. I'd be very happy to recommend or lend the book to anyone interested.
Wim 'The Iceman' Hof is, at his core, a Dutch practitioner of mindfulness, specifically focusing on cold exposure and breathing techniques to help people realise the extremely deep mental and physical potential he believes we all possess within us. He has demonstrated this supposed power by breaking something in the region of twenty-five Guinness World Records (of varying levels of ridiculousness), including barefoot Everest marathons in his pants, underwater endurance tests in lakes of ice, and mile-high single-finger suspensions. Of course, he's eccentric, but there's an ever-increasing pool of scientific proof that his ability to harness his mind is rewriting physiological, neurological and even philosophical books.
Like many in recent years, including two very close friends, I came to Wim during lockdown whilst searching for ways to cope with the mental strain of the pandemic. I tried having a few cold showers, but wasn't quite in the right mindset to appreciate the effects (and also wasn't following the method correctly), so I shelved the idea and focused on daily yoga which got me through my personal hardships. As the months rolled on and the world opened up, I continued my yoga and held only a passive interest in Wim. But then, in April 2022, I finally caught Covid.
Coincidentally, a week or two before this, the BBC began airing a show featuring Wim entitled 'Freeze the Fear'. The program is a bit crap, but Wim's enthusiasm served to rejuvenate my interest in him and his method. Thanks to yoga, I found myself in a better mindset despite my positive test result, so I decided to treat my maiden Covid experience as grounds for experimentation. I read the book cover to cover within 6 days of positive LFTs, and decided to take a cold shower every day for ten days - partly on Wim's recommendation, but also because ten days represents the supposed incubation / contagion period for the virus (at the time of writing). I also conducted an hour long breathing practice on a day in which I wasn't trying to cough my spleen up - but before I discuss my results, back to the book itself.
The first 20% is dedicated to Wim's early life and his formative experiences. Some of these - particularly the story of his first wife - are notably poignant, and whilst his methods certainly and understandably attract sceptics by the metric tonne, I defy anyone to doubt his initial motivation for conquering his mental hardships. His story is believable, and his beliefs are personable. It's an engaging introduction and lays the groundwork for the next 20% - the method itself. Informative, enthusiastic and generally enforced by scientific research, it's the real meat and gravy of the book.
The remaining 60% of the book suffers a little for reading like a motivational speech; it's fairly repetitive (intentionally so, to drive home the ease and the accessibility of the method), and Wim's infectious overenthusiasm can be felt in every word, which will either do it for you or it won't. Additionally, whilst there are several scientific studies referenced throughout, and an importance placed on science over spirituality, there are also some clear research gaps - Wim frequently states that "it's science! we have proved it!" which is certainly sometimes true, but occasionally perhaps a little keen and not *quite* finalised scientifically yet. The sample sizes of some of the studies also remind me of the pertinence of rational thinking but, while the studies are generally in their infancy, their base results are undeniably intriguing: Wim is a normal adult male who has shown that he is capable of supernormal - and ultimately, measurable - physiological and biochemical changes, using the power of his mind.
So what have I learned from diving into the Wim Hof Method, whilst reading the Wim Hof Method, whilst trying to get over Covid? Speaking personally, the daily cold showers have been uniformly rejuvenating and addictive; they've drastically increased my concentration levels throughout the day, and have consistently boosted my energy levels beyond my usual, non-virulent level. I started on fifteen seconds of cold water at the end of a warm shower as instructed, but by day three, using some of the mental preparation steps, I was doing one minute of warm water followed by four minutes of cold - an increase I would have found to be unbelievable beforehand.
As for the breathing - and I semi-apologise once again for using this review as a place to document my own experiment - on a day when my cough had subsided, I laid on the floor with my eyes closed and devoted an entire hour to the breathing cycles (four full rounds with about twenty minutes of meditation at the end). As I'd heard possible due to extremely saturated oxygen levels, I experienced some profound visual hallucinations, a tingling sensation down my arms, legs and even in my teeth (that's a new one to me) and, in the closing moments, a feeling of physical and mental wellness at a level I don't think I've ever experienced before in my life. It was a sense of pure inner peace, of banished anxiety, and about an hour afterwards, I needed to remind myself that I was four days into a viral infection.
In conclusion, the Wim Hof Method is something I'd certainly recommend, and this book is of course the best place to dive in. The book itself isn't quite perfect, hence the rating, but there are certainly greater things to take from it, and without wanting to sound like a fanatic (too little too late), it has brought significant improvements into my life within the span of little over a week. I'd be very happy to recommend or lend the book to anyone interested.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
The techniques are great but this book was a challenge to finish.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
It’s important to understand that your heart rate increases whenever your body experiences stress. That sends a primordial signal to the body to activate adrenaline and cortisol, which sets off a series of biochemical processes that exhaust your adrenal axis, your energy, because you’re in poor vascular condition.
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The Wim Hof Method first attracted me through James Nestor's book Breath: A New Science of a Lost Art. Nestor highlights Wim Hof in his book and the profound and positive effects this method has on the body. What I love about this book and method is how scientifically backed up it is. Hof never hides behind a guru status or tries to create an exclusive community. This method is for everyone and can benefit everyone.