My Wim Hof notes

I start’d looking into the Wim Hof Method after seeing this video on it by What I Learned. I haven’t publish’d any of my own new work in a while since it’s all projects that take a long time, so I figured I’d publish my notes on it.

If you don’t feel like watching the video, the breathing technique gives you a massive adrenaline shot by simulating a near death experience, but in the process it trains your chemistry to deal with large environmental changes, modifies your immune system, changes how you deal with inflammation, and can give a burst of concentration. Similar benefits to fasting ^{specifically short term or intermittent fasting} or how High Intensity Interval Training conditions your body to better deal with free radicals.

1. breathing for blood doping
   • 100% in then 50-75% out
   • find a rhythm
   • maintain concentration
   • 30-40 cycles to dope the blood
   • last breath 100% in then 100% out
   • Hold on empty for 1m
   • Inhale and hold for 10 sec
   • repeat full cycle twice more, for 3x total
2. focus
   • challenge yourself
   • your boundaries are malleable
   • things are easier further back from the edge, push the edge up
3. cold therapy
   • after working on breathing, focus, meditation
   • trains your circulation to be more effective
   • cold-ish shower after normal
   • accept and pass through, do not resist
   • lower temperature across different sessions
   • after 10 days, skin is train’d
   • recovery from coldshock improves
   • circulation tunes to when to warm you
4. individual limits
   • “the edge” of endurance is meaningless, your edge is what matters
   • start from where you are and work on that

Correcting a gag reflex

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Reddit asks:

I gag when I brush my teeth, how can I fix my oversensitive gag reflex?

Give your friend these directions:

Get something you’re comfortable having in your mouth for a long time. Put it in your mouth near but not at the edge of your gag reflex and leave it there. This is your 1^st position. Breathe at a normal rate for 10sec. Retract a bit and wait for a count of 10, then put it as close to the edge of your gag reflex as you can without a reaction and hold that for 10sec. This is your 2^nd position. Retract to a comfortable place for 10sec, then put it back in the 1^st position. It should easier this time. Hold it there for 30sec, then see if you can swallow without a reaction. Retract and rest. Now go to the very edge again, which may have moved slightly, and hold for 30sec, then retract and rest. Continue this 4 stage cycle of partial, rest, full, rest until you feel you’ve made enough progress for the session as you can.

Doing this regularly will slowly move the upper limit. It won’t fix itself overnight, and it will only move so much in a single session. Once each day is enough, don’t overdo it.

Squeezing your thumb in your fist can suppress your gag reflex while you’re doing it, but it isn’t a longterm solution. Using a numbing spray is a temporary solution at best, creates the need for a consumable resource, and is potentially dangerous. Training the limits of the reflex itself as a skill is mostly permanent and requires only practice.

How To Sleep

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^{Another request, in a roundabout way. Sleep better, Little Bird.}

Changing Step & Stand

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Reddit says: I want to learn how to have better posture.

Early Meditations

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Reddit asks: What kind of meditation do you recommend?

Several. I did very little looking around before diving in. Here’s a few from my experiments:

A little bit of hearing control.

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Reddit asks: Why can I hear better only after I plug my nose and exhale, pushing air pressure inside of my ears?

Get a checkup soon.

This would happen to me periodically before I figured out how to directly control it without plugging my nose. There’s a canal that connects your sinuses to your ear, and when you do that it pushes air past the valve that equalizes the pressure. If the pressure is too different, it’ll hurt as with diving or on airplanes. If it’s full of gunk it will affect your hearing, but even having a weird air balance will do it somewhat.

There’s a muscle that controls the valve at the corners of your jaw. If you find the muscle and learn to hold the valve open, you can expedite drainage, dive deeper, take plane trips with no problem, etc. It also makes you super aware of the sound of your breath and changes how you hear yourself. Humming gets super loud.

I use the enhanced sound of my own breath to tune people out. Whenever someone speaks near me, that speech takes the top slot of my attention immediately and there’s nothing I can do about it. Makes working or reading in public basically impossible, and competitive handheld gaming very difficult. I drop a full tier if there’s a conversation within 10m or so of me. It’s kind of like the cocktail party effect, but for everything anyone is ever saying.

Apparently there’s a subreddit for it call’d Ear Rumblers Assemble

Too useful not to link

Placeholder for the app UltimEyes for iOS & Android.

Compilation of Useful Tips for Mind & Body

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If there’s no edit striking out this line, then this list contains errors.

Reddit asks:

What are some of the best body cheatcodes?

I read somewhere that clenching your fist around your left thumb will stop a gag reflex. And that holding a smile (even a fake one) for more than a few seconds releases endorphins.

Any others?

I respond:

General stuff:

Sitting all the time is as bad for you as smoking. Laying down all the time is as much worse than constant sitting as constant sitting is than standing. Stand up straight, lean forward slightly when sitting to work your lower back for better spinal health. Don’t stand on one leg more than the other, it creates back problems. Many problems like knee clicking or dislocation are caused by muscular imbalance.