| Can We All Heal Disease And Come Alive With Ice Water, Mind And Breathing? (Ignore The Title Of This Video: Wim Hof Has No Interest In Being “Superhuman.”)
Yes, I Am Obsessed With Wim Hof’s Teachings (Again)
Celia Farber
Aug 29
I can only tell you, urge you, to listen to him, and not have pre-conceived notions. He’s not a show-off, dare-devil, money-grabber—none of that. But if you only see the name ‘Ice Man’ you would never know. You’d never know how warm and human this man’s heart is, or that his story began when it shattered, and he had to find a way to survive.
I find myself in an airport hotel in central CT, and have emerged from months of very transformative crashes of both health and circumstance. More than ever, I loathe Craigslist. My angels are exhausted, and some have even thrown in the towel.
Jack and Lewis are with me, traumatized but ok, and this hotel, despite being a chain, has a human presence. They insisted I open the cats’ boxes when I checked them in because they wanted to say hello to them. Cat lovers—very sacred people.
Our world is not over, or dead, or surrendered to AI, Trans-humanism, technocracy. The warm, ancient, classical world is right here with us. But we have to stop worry-beading, a bit. We have to consider the toll of narrating catastrophe all the time but never power, joy, beauty, transcendence or hope.
Last night, I changed course.
I needed God’s help, and I needed his forgiveness, once again, for having stopped listening.
Instead of asking him to heal me, I was asking persons. No person was able to deliver me from the illness.
So: I needed to stop asking any other human being to examine, prescribe, intuit, or in any way “make me better.”
All of a sudden, I was done. Done being sick, confused, weak, emaciated, undiagnosed, or whatever else—(even if I actually was all those things.)
I have work to do was the thought that got me genuinely fed up.
Among the things I’d forgotten: To thank God continually, for everything, including the “bad.” The way my mother Ulla said it: If your life is in imminent danger, start thanking God. You may not have much time.
Last night my friend Carol, one of my great Christian friends and teachers, spoke with me at length about illness and prayer. When she got, essentially, “Covid” (no oxygen, fever, exhaustion) she prayed against it as a demon. She pled the blood, over and over, until “poof” it left her. She could breathe again. It was over.
(Talk about anything you like, but never speak of sickness in a non-material way—not in the USA. Please!)
You “have” a disease. You “take” pills. You have no role in it, at all, no power, only an inert body. This is the premise of both allopathic and alternative medicine. Have you noticed this? You have no power, and you are not connected to any divinity.
The MD has the power, the pills have the power, the herbs, or the healer-it’s never you. You can’t ever learn how (fearfully and wonderfully) you were made.
This morning, up on my screen, this particular Wim Hof interview appeared. I listened attentively, in a warm salt bath, (I’m always cold) and then I made the decision:
OK. I’m doing it.
God had placed an ice machine right outside my hotel room so no more “how-will-I-ever get-that-much-ice?” excuses.
I filled the tub with cold water and dumped a total of 4 wastebaskets of ice into the water. I set my phone timer at 2 mins 10 seconds, then I got in.
Was it cold?
Yeah.
I breathed deeply and felt things that are hard to describe, like my body was zooming new information around, very fast.
All I was thinking was that it did not interest me or matter to me whether it was cold. So what, I thought?
I was so mad, at losing my life every day.
It only mattered to me that I could take control over my life, my health, and my sense of disempowerment. I breathed deeply and it seemed like the 2 mins 10 seconds passed very quickly. I even stayed in a little longer.
Afterwards, I felt happy, energized, and like I trusted myself more. I was less timorous.
I experienced, (hallelujah,) vascular circulation. This meant my blood was able to transport energy and nutrients. I could feel it right away.
I plan to do this again tomorrow.
I’ll stay near this hotel ice machine as long as I have to to cure myself of the multi-factorial energy/brain/nerve illness that has taken me away from work, life, and joy, for so many years.
I believe Wim Hof has the simple answer, so simple, it’s very hard to get anybody to hear it.
We love complexity, STUFF, heroes, gurus, geniuses, medical intuitives, protocols, bottles, pills, detoxifiers, homeopaths, energy healers, devices, eureka moments, specialness (..oh I have this precise thing wrong with me…)
Well, the Swedish side of me hates all that.
As an American, a worshipper of complexity, and one divorced from nature,I went up and down hundreds of healing rabbit holes over the last 13 years. I never found health.
Maybe it’s simple: You were conned out of listening to your body, conned out of pushing yourself into discomfort, conned out of ever feeling alive, ever being cold, ever not being “safe,” because that’s the American Dream. To be swaddled from cradle to grave like an infant.
No thank you.
I’m with Wim.
Just dive into the nearest cold lake, every day, stay in for at least two minutes, get your circulation back, and you will probably resolve your chronic illness. But it starts with the mind, the idea. For me it was: “Enough already.”
I began with a thought-setting:
“I can’t wait to get into the ice and possibly feel alive again. I am not dreading it.”
And I wasn’t.
I was dreading the way I always felt—not alive.
(Now I am actually kind of wondering if I can take two ice baths in one day. Or if that’s me over-doing it, or maybe even using ice baths as the latest way to procrastinate?)
By the way, about 29 minutes in, Wim, who co-slept with his identical twin brother throughout childhood and youth, describes a study in which mice who are separated from each other get soaring cancer rates. From 20 % to 80%
So why is Eric Clapton being canceled for saying essentially the same thing—that we need human touch and togetherness?
I think they (“the money power,” to quote a friend) have not yet realized the immensity of Wim Hof’s life works and discoveries, which puts every last one of them out of business, and out of importance. All their spells break, with Wim’s documented mind-over-body experiments.
I think they’re hoping everybody just sees him as VICE level dude-fascination, a dare-devil. An “Ice Man.”
I believed that for years, and therefore never listened to him, because I can’t stand dare-devilry. But imagine unlocking not only sickness, but also “depression,” “anxiety” and “mental illness.”
Walk to your bathroom and just try it. Start with 15 second cold showers. That’s 15 seconds of choosing to be uncomfortable.
Americans were once like this—strong and disinterested in comfort—and we can be again. What Trump used to call “Great.”
But he should have mentioned that we can’t be “great” if we can’t take cold showers.
We have become a comfort-ruined people.
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