Learning WHM by Teaching — first friends and family workshop.

Last December I attended the Wim Hof Method (WHM) Expedition in Poland. I documented my journey in detail — from first discovering Wim’s book, The Wim Hof Method, to taking the plunge into the expedition itself. It has been nine months since then and I have embarked on another journey — the WHM Academy, where I’m training to become a certified instructor.

❓Why did I sign up for the WHM Academy?

There are two key reasons.

First, the WHM helped me regain my balance when I was beginning to lose it. For nearly a year, I practiced conscious breathing, which became my anchor, the solid foundation that kept me grounded during a difficult mental phase. Over the past year, I’ve also incorporated cold showers, along with the mindset/focus training that comes with it, benefiting both my mental and physical health. I now want to share this simple yet powerful practice with others.

Second, the researcher in me is eager to dive deeper into the core principles of the method. I want to understand the science behind how something as straightforward as conscious breathing and cold exposure (albeit prolonged), can have such profound effects on the body.

💑🧑‍🤝‍🧑 First Friends and Family Workshop

Since the last WHM blog, I have had multiple conversations around conscious breathing and cold exposure. Somehow, “ice-bath” is pretty cool now a days (pun intended). A lot of friends/family were keen to try it out. This presented the perfect opportunity to practice my teaching skills, which is a key requirement for WHM certification. Although I had previously taught the breathing techniques to two friends, conducting a full workshop on the three pillars of the WHM was uncharted territory for me.

Originally, I planned to keep the workshop small with no more than six participants, but it ended up being a group of 12 brave souls! It was an incredibly fun experience, and based on the feedback I received — an average rating of 3.9 out of 4.0 from seven responses — it was a great success. The rest of this blog is a detailed account of the workshop, both for my personal reflection and to inspire others to join in.

If you’re interested in participating in my next workshop (in either London or Bangalore), feel free to send me an email.

Workshop (11 Aug 2024)

The workshop was organized at Embassy Pristine, Bangalore and lasted a total of four hours (10am — 2pm). This was largely without any big breaks.

🐻🐬🦁 Introductions (30–45 mins)

We began with a basic introduction to Wim Hof and the three pillars of the method — Breathing, Cold-Exposure, Mindset/Focus. Afterward, I shared my personal journey with the group. Since the attendees were a mix of family, friends from work, neighbors, and even a few kids, it was important to create a sense of connection among everyone. After all, the fourth unofficial pillar of the WHM is community.

I used two icebreakers I had learned during the WHM Expedition, which turned out to be very effective. The first involved introducing oneself and associating with an animal. We had a full menagerie at the workshop — lions, cows, earthworms, various breeds of dogs, dolphins, cats, a phoenix, horses, monkeys, bears, cheetahs, and more. This was followed by a name repetition exercise, incorporating the animal, to help everyone remember each other. People also took a moment to share what they hoped to gain from the workshop.

The introduction ended with some high-level understanding of the expected benefits (energy, calmness, inflammation reduction, improved immune system, improved cardiovascular system, improved circulation, etc.), and the basic rules for the workshop:
- listen to body, don’t push beyond uncomfortable
- but, try to be comfortable in the uncomfortable
- keep an open mind
- soak in what you need, squeeze out the rest
- make breath your best friend.

✏️📚👓 Theory (30–45 mins) [Rating: 4.1/5.0]

Hormetic Stress
We started with a basic introduction to ‘Hormetic Stress’ — short term conscious stressors in limited quantities which helps train the body, vs. ‘toxic stress’ — prolonged or high intensity stress which weakens the body. Both hyperventilation (part of breathing practice) and cold exposure are Hormetic stressors to the body.

Next we went into basic understanding of different systems of our body.

Nervous System
We covered Somatic nervous system — which regulates voluntary movements via skeletal muscles, vs. Autonomic nervous system — which regulates the internal organs without any conscious control or effort on our part. Autonomic nervous system itself can be of two kinds, Sympathetic nervous system — which deals with the ‘Fight or Flight’ response under stress, and the Parasympathetic nervous system — which deals with the ‘Rest and digest’ systems and is responsible for bringing back to a state of calm. The vagus nerve, a crucial part of the parasympathetic system, can be influenced through breathing.

WHM pushes us between both extremes — the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. In breathing, hyperventilation is the stressful state and breath hold is the calming part. In ice-bath, the cold iself is the stressor and mindset/focus/breathing helps calms us down.

Immune System
We talked about three kinds of defenses: The External Defense (first line of defense) — such as the skin, saliva, cilia (nose hair), etc. The Innate Immune System (second line of defense) — non-specific response which acts on any kind of pathogens; when it gets overactive or dysfunctional it leads to chronic inflammation or auto-immune diseases respectively. The Adaptive Immune System (third line of defense) — which is more complex mechanism to target particular pathogens via specialized cells (T/B cells) which are produced to fight a specific threat.

It has been observed that WHM can help suppress the innate immune response (think reduction in inflammation) while strengthening the adaptive immune system.

Hormonal System
We touched a little bit on the stress and happy hormones. Stress hormones — Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine and cortisol, and Happy hormones (DOSE) — Dopamine for motivation, Oxytocin for love, Serotonin for overall mood, Endorphins for pain-relieving.

There have been studies on the positive effects of WHM on different hormones (I must confess, my understanding is also a little weak at this time so this was a high-level discussion).

We did not go over the respiratory and the cardiovascular system for lack of time (and to be honest people were getting a bit impatient to see more action, which I am sure you are too reading about it.)

👃🌬️🕊️ Breathing + Stretching (30 mins theory + 30 mins practice) [Rating: 4.9/5.0]

We started with some basics of breathing and an intro into how to do WHM breathing practice. Please refer to the awesome Official WHM intro video in-case you want to try it out.

How does the body know it needs to breathe? through Co2 concentration. High Co2 concentration triggers the breathing response. In WHM breathing, we expel out more Co2 and hence lower the concentration and reduce the need to breathe in the breath-hold phase.

What else happens during WHM breathing? Lower Co2 concentration increases the pH levels; the blood becomes more alkaline (and less acidic). This can lead to — Vasoconstriction leading to light-headedness; tingling sensation due to the lowering of calcium ions; and adrenaline levels increase. During breath-hold the O2 gets absorbed by the body and the O2 concentration drops in the blood (can go down to 40 and below). This is a short term stressor at the cellular level.

Overall it brings the ‘monkey mind’ to rest, thus creating space in the head, suppresses the innate immune response (lower inflammatory markers) and strengthen the immune system (higher natural killer cells). The practice acts as a “hormetic” stressor. The body adapts to lower oxygen, increasing lung capacity, circulation, and long-term metabolic efficiency.

What is the method? Note: This is for my own reference, please refer to official WHM instruction for guided practice.

The basic practice is to alternate between hyperventilation and breath-holds for 3–4 rounds. During hyperventilation we breath actively through the diaphragm creating a wave of belly-chest-head motion and letting it go passively, repeating this for for 30–40 rounds; and during breath-hold we hold the breath outside for 1–2 minutes with a 30 second inhale hold.

As an important safety instruction — the participants were told never to practice where loss of consciousness can create danger, such as in water or while driving.

Before the breathing practice, we did a 5-minute stretching exercise led by one of the participants, followed by a short break. Then, everyone settled into a lying position for the breathing practice.

Afterward, we conducted a sharing round, though the process became a bit chaotic with everyone eager to speak. Note to self: organize the sharing session better next time.

🧊❄️☃️ Ice Bath + Mindset (30 mins theory + 1 hour group practice) [Rating: 4.9/5.0]

The cold is a strong activator of the sympathetic nervous system. Among others it causes vasoconstriction, increases metabolism, releases norepinephrine, activates brown fat and influences the immune system. Overall benefits of cold exposure/ice-bath are as follows:

1. Cardio vascular workout — the cold causes the vascular muscles in the blood vessels to rapidly contract and relax, helping train them.
2. Thermoregulation — it has been shown that cold exposure stimulates the brown fat tissue, responsible for heat generation, which increases our body’s ability to handle cold.
3. Mental Wellbeing — cold causes release of noradrenaline (or norephinepherine) which regulates wakefulness, mood, attention and focus.
4. Immune System — Similar to breathing cold exposure regulates the innate immune system (decreasing the inflammatory markers) and improves the adaptive immune system.

For me, the biggest challenge is the 30 seconds before entering the ice bath and the first 30 seconds in the bath itself. That’s when the mind is under extreme stress, and calming it through mindset and slow exhales is crucial. This practice builds long-term resilience to future stressors. Despite a year of cold showers, I still feel some stress entering the cold, but it’s gradually lessening. We discussed intention-setting and mental centering before cold immersion.

After reviewing safety tips (listening to the body, watching for afterdrop), techniques (slow exhales, connect hands to the body), and useful info (don’t worry about shivering, focus on heating from the inside), we practiced the ‘horse stance’ (to generate internal heat and focus). After some visualization exercises, we proceeded to the ice immersion.

Overall, I am very satisfied having shared my knowledge of the methods to a few nearest and dearest ones. Looking forward to the next workshop.

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studiochhavibangalore — Nikhil was a brilliant teacher who patiently took us all through this experience and being his first teacher training session did a fantastic job indeed.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Wim Hof and the entire team for building such an incredible course. I learnt a lot going over the course material, and I could see that even in a small workshop, the knoweldge received was well appreciated.

I would also like to thank the participants of the workshop for believing in me and being game for my first Intro to Wim Hof Method workshop.