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to me, god is cold. you could say that i think ofthe cold as a noble force. it's just helping me. it's training me. it's bringing me back to the innernature the way it was meant to be. and there's a way i do not only endure,the cold, i love the cold. >> we live in a world where there'sall kinds of false healers and fake alternative medicineprograms you can sign up for. it's a rare moment in history when someonecomes along who can perform real miracles

with real evidence to back them up. wim hof has defied logic time and time again, andalways under scientific scrutiny. he holds the world record forbeing able to be submerged in ice for almost two hours without hiscore body temperature changing. he's climbed mount everest in nothing buta pair of shorts, and run a marathon in the desertwithout drinking any water. he's even proven in a laboratory setting that he can withstand illnessesusing the power of his mind.

but he's not a freak of nature. according to wim,anyone can do what he can do. they just have to learn his method,the wim hof method. using a combination of cold immersion,breathing techniques and mental focus, anyone can accomplish feats that werepreviously thought to be impossible. >> the question is,is everybody able to do what you do? >> yes, i am able to train peoplein room temperature in just a weeks time with a relativelysimple technique and make people be able toinfluence their immune system.

>> we were skeptical, so wim invited usto take a crash course in his method and see just how easy it isto become superhuman. we first met wim on hishouseboat in holland, where he began to teach our wholecrew the basics of cold immersion. growing up in the 21st century, we're naturally skeptical ofeverything we read on the internet. but to put wim's method to the test,we would have to suspend our disbelief. because no true miracle can beaccomplished without some faith. in this case, the miracle would supposedlyinvolve the crew and i taking off

our clothes and climbing to the top ofthe freezing cold mount sniezka in poland. but before that, our trainingbegan in the canals of amsterdam. so, while i'm climbing the mountain, if they haven't done the training,then they'll be screwed, basically. - yes, and the film too. >> we are going to startwith the breathing. you will see feeling is understanding. and later on we can dig in allkinds of scientific literature and readings and comparisons andstatistics and all that, we don't need.

you are going to feel it, we are pioneers. okay, just go on. no thinking, just feel. your head is becoming light-headed. >> wim was going to teach usto endure the cold like him. but first we had to learn the basics. wim told us to spend one minutebreathing in more air than we let out. then he instructed us to takeone last breath and hold it. by using his technique,we were able to hold our breath for

much longer than usual. i didn't really know what was going on,but my body was doing things it had never donebefore, and i was pretty freaked out. but also very curious as towhere this would take me. it was like i was goingthrough some second puberty, where instead of becoming an adult,i was becoming a superhuman. >> first round, 2:17 for matt. crazy, yeah? - whoa. it's something, yeah?

you still? i just stopped because i wanted to listen. but i was still good. - good. >> my whole body was justkind of like tingling. and then when you said to stop breathing, it just didn't seem like i hadthe need to breathe at all. it was really amazing. who are you?

i mean, i can't argue with the results. you've done things that noone's ever done before. but there have been hundreds ofpeople throughout history in the past 4,000 years who have claimedto be able to do all sorts of miracles by controlling their body, usingthe power of meditation and breathing. what makes you different? is it that you're the firstone who can actually do it? >> absolutely not the firstone who is able to do this. but i am the first one tobring it to science and

to take away the speculation around it. >> what was your life likebefore you became an iceman? >> actually, i was a father of fourkids and bringing them up alone. because my wife accidented in 95. so that kind of adversity and sadness maybe motivated you to... - oh yes. inspire yourself in the same waya lot of people that do... yes, sadness is a deep trigger. where i got peace was inthese breathing exercises.

swimming outside in the cold. the cold is merciless,but righteous as well. >> so, wim's just told me to get intomy shorts, which can't be a good sign, because it means we'regonna get into the water. wim's already shirtless. >> scared shirtless. scared shirtless. just chill out, man. >> all right, yeah!

>> oh, boy. >> let nature go within you. breathe, motherfucker! >> that is some cold amsterdamcanal december water. keep on, silently, witness, witness, witness. you're doing just fine. you're going the way iknow it naturally goes. i don't feel cold at all. i feel like if you keep relaxed and

you stay in there you could do itforever like this guy right here. look at this madman. so now our producer has to go in as well because she's gonna need to be there when we do this. so good luck, casey. >> you can come in too. there you are. hello, take it easy. you know people think i'm crazy.

maybe i am crazy. but not because of mybreathing techniques. not because of my cold water swimming. not because of my beingfearless in extreme challenges. the first time i went under the ice,the water is as sharp as needles. i saw this as a big, huge, sharp diamond. at 35 meters i lost sightbecause the retina, it froze. i couldn't see nothing. i couldn't breathe, of course.

and then my consciousness succumbedto a lower consciousness. this is survival. i do not fear death. i fear not to live fully. if i live fully, i am not into death. i am living. >> it isn't all about breaking records. wim's mission is to usehis body as a laboratory to revolutionize ourunderstanding of physiology.

in 2011,he was injected with a bacterial endotoxin in an experiment that challenged ourunderstanding of the nervous system. in normal humans, the injection shouldcause a strong immune response leading to fever, chills, and headaches. but not in wim. it appeared that he was somehow able tosuppress his immune response by making his body secrete adrenaline, suggesting that his method can allow usto influence our immune system at will. scientists thought he mightjust be a freak of nature.

so to further prove this theory, they performed this same experiment on12 subjects wim had trained in poland. and the same thing happened. >> normally, it's very difficult to increase youradrenaline levels by your own will. adrenaline is released bythe autonomic nervous system. and autonomic means that youcannot voluntarily influence it. so if you walk outside and you are robbedon the street, you will have a heart rate of 160 and your blood pressurewill be sky high within seconds.

but if i ask you now to increaseyour heart rate, you cannot do that. you cannot voluntarily modulate that. and with the techniques of wim hof,we showed that he was able to increase his adrenaline levelsto very high concentrations, even higher than people that gobungee jumping for the first time. that was something that we didn'tthink possible before that. >> if we learn to influenceour immune system at will, we could potentially use that to treatinflammatory disorders where the immune system is overactive, including crohn'sdisease and rheumatoid arthritis.

but wim didn't seem to think that therewere any limits to what his method could accomplish, andthat made me skeptical. he was eager to show that he could helpanyone, including people with cancer. so he invited us to dinnerwith his friend rene gude, a famous philosopher of science, who had taken up the wim hof methodafter being given two months to live. >> i don't think wim is a wonder worker,and i'm not taking him as a wonder worker. - miracle. >> a miracle worker.

i want to forgo that people who havecancer think that they're off their cancer next week. that's not a fact, butthere are very good things happening. >> so this really is kind ofon the frontier of science. it's science that we are testing now. it's science we don't yethave a full explanation for, but we know that it hasresults worth studying. >> yes, andthe real frontier of science is looking if this immune system isan auto-immune system,

or that we can influence ourimmune system in the hope for that the immune deficiencydiseases decrease. and the results are hopeful, buthopeful, i use the word myself. >> everything that wim does is basedin science, but surely faith in wim and nature andourselves is also really crucial to accomplishing the things thatwim teaches people to do. >> as soon as you put the exercise in thecenter, and you see the difference between religion and spirituality and science,there is, in fact, just the explanation. religion, spirituality and

science are circling about somethingthat's definitely good for us. train your body, man. as a human, what has this done for you? >> i'm not easily convinced,but i'm always looking for something that gives me somecontrol in this fucking situation. you have a life expectancy of two months,and then you're out of control. maybe it's the same withthe autonomous immune system. i would like to beautonomous myself a little. and when there is really something thatcan be done and proves it's all right and

makes me feel better, it's... - very satisfying. it was very satisfying. please, let nobody who see's thisprogram think that you're just getting into control and then drive ontosome mountain and conquer cancer. i don't like this speech of conqueringcancer and doing something. but when you get something to do andto practice which you understand and which you can do andwhich satisfies... some feeling of control comes back andi like that very much.

>> hypothetically, if research came backand it turned out that actually your methods weren't working, there wassome kind of trick of adrenalin or some other factor that accounted forall of the feats of endurance. what would that make you feel? >> i'm okay. you know,i want it to be evidence-based in science. and i don't want to give any falsehope to any person in this world. so, i'm into science, buthe is interested in a natural method that needs only the commitment of a person

to make it work within just a day ortwo days. you will be able to godeeper into the system and learn to control the immune system,cardiovascular system, the hormonal system, the muscular system,autonomic nervous system. all that,i mean it's just learning to go back into the inner power which we all have. >> we traveled to poland for the next stepin our training, which would hopefully end with us climbing mount sniezka in ourshorts and not getting hypothermia. in amsterdam, we had our first littletaste of training with the iceman.

but for us to really get intowhat wim calls cold hard nature, he's invited us here,to mount sniezka in poland. this is where he trainsall of his big groups, including the 12 scientific test subjectsthat later proved they were able to suppress their immuneresponse in an endotoxin test. >> control. no hocus pocus just the magicof your [inaudible]. make it work guys. control into your brain.

nobody else's, no blah blahs,just make it work. deeply in, let me go. >> faster. okay, count down. ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. good. it's really bizarre to be ina room with a bunch of people who are tripping out from breathing.

you get these tingly sensationsthroughout your hands and your body, so it feels like everything's vibrating. and then you get kind oflike a sense of euphoria. and for me that was it. you cried. >> yeah. mine was so weird. all my hands were like this. they just locked andi could not move them. then i just cried and cried andcried, and i couldn't stop crying.

i wasn't thinking about anything sad,it was just like, it came up. >> it's hard to talk about itwithout sounding really cliche, but when i first did the breathing,in the middle of it, i remember thinking, i'm so happy, i just want to get up andhug all of you people. i love you, i love all of you. and i guess that's how youbecome a hippie, pretty much. >> i was amazed to see some ofthe reactions that people had here. what's happened when people havethis kind of big responses? >> what we do, we are going deeply intothe physiology past, the condition,

and what appears, people begin to cry orthey release anger. whatever is hidden deeperthan the conditioning, these techniques make itquite able to go really deep. >> i guess it's kind of similarwhen a psychologist gets someone to relive past trauma andcome to terms with it. >> we do not need psychotherapy. fuck off! just let it breathe in. just bring back the controlwithin yourself. connect back with the body.

this time we are able to cleanse it all. all of the people say, yeah, you cannotsteer life, and you cannot do this, and yeah, it's part of life, andit's destiny, and it's fate. fuck fate, and fuck destiny and all that. no, this time we learn to controlour happiness, health and strength, and that's not philosophical or sectarian. it's chemistry. >> do you ever get anyreally negative people who never really succumb to the cause?

>> i have a very good example of that. scott carmen isan investigative journalist. he came from america to thisplace to cut through the crap and the charlatan business andall that and that was me, you know? the charlatan and the crap,and it took him two days, and when he converted into hey,but this shit is good. and he was standing with usin shorts after two days. and now he wants to write a book andbring it to america and everything. >> make a big circle, big circle.

it may look like a pentecostal ceremonyat times, but if you hyperventilate for long enough, it's normal to experienceeuphoria and muscle spasms and seizures. it's more difficult to imagine how thatcan make it easier to stand out in the snow for an hour. maybe, like in the immune response test,it had to do with secreting adrenaline. but whether it was some ancient secret ofhuman physiology or simply brute force endurance and mental focus, it seemed thatwim's method was working on the group. my suspicion was that the secret wasthe infectious charisma of wim himself. and just being in his presence wasinspiring us to accomplish things we never

would've normally done. you're getting into some prettydeep places with your mind, and although it sounds kinda out there,when you experience it, i can't even... it's scary slash amazing at the same time. >> i don't know where, buti was gone and i saw things. and i didn't even notice that iwas screaming and making noises. >> it's just somethingwe don't know we can do. in the east part of the world, it's inthe culture to teach people how to do it. in the western part of the world,it's not a culture.

>> enlightenment is a form of happinessand health, and it's not as deep and profound as people imagined it. >> i had a thing called crohn'sdisease about ten years ago. i've been to detox centers andspent thousands and thousands of dollars on lots of differenthealth alternative improvement things. a lot of them are quite new age andjust a load of old bull shit. at least wim hof has been working witha lot of different types of scientists and advanced hospital research,that's the beautiful thing. you've seen him on the guinness bookof records where he is sitting in

an ice cube for two hours. >> so what's going on? >> we are filling the torches with gas, we are going to the waterfall later on,like a fairy tale. >> wim's method would never havespread beyond himself if it wasn't for his business savvy son, enahm whoseturned the iceman into a website, an app and a global brand. i sent him some news when i was in tanzania. enahm, i've been looking around here,but even in these

far places where i'm getting,i don't find an asshole as big as you. >> yeah, as big as me, yeah. >> you are still the greatest. the greatest asshole. >> the wim hof method didnot exist four years ago. it was an iceman doing a trickwhich was only one person. so, iceman is a superhero. nobody can be as the iceman, because itsjust one person, it's a superhero. wim hof is a person like everyone else,and he already gained this fame

to attract the attention to show the wholeworld that everybody is able to do much more than thought of, so i thought that's a beautiful goal. to bring that back to the people. and yeah, i've started doing the platformsand now here you guys are you know. i saw the things already from mychildhood, what he could do with people. so i trusted it. >> how much of this came out ofthe tragedy of your mother's death? >> everything started there. because my mom was psychotic.

they consented her with 11 personalities,and she was never there for us. it was always my dad being there for us. they stuffed her up with pillsto get her outside of society. and she committed suicide. so that was the beginning of my dadexploring for, okay, what's the answer? where lies all these problems? so he went challenging himself. you know if you don't have an answer,if they don't have an answer, you're going to find yourself an answer.

i know where i came from, from a valley. it's like a trauma. she jumped from eight floor. that's my grief, i loved her to death. but the world is huge,it's not interested in natural effects so much, it's the money. it's very difficult to bring this totheir standards, but we are on it. so science in time now will take it on andwe do our studies. >> everyone's about to participate inthis kind of non-religious ritual.

they hold the torch to representthe fire within, then get in the water. yeah, it might look a little bitsectarian and i've said it before, i don't think this is a cult, butthe thing is wim is so charismatic, if he gave me any poison to drinki'd be the first person to drink it. >> five. four. three. two. there you go, one.

there we go all in and let them go. i am going to tuck you in. >> i love being tucked in. we're so cute. the group had gone and daisy and i werenleft with our own personal iceman trainer. in the lead up to climbing mt.snezka, we were gonna need all the extra help we could get. >> that was so weird. that was at the trippiest it's been.

>> yeah, you get eventually,these white hallucinations, but it might just be deprivingyour brain of oxygen. i don't know if that's good. maybe. >> here is the summit,which we are going to get to tomorrow, in snow and ice, and just in shorts. this is what i did before, on mt.everest. i was up till here, in shorts. coming from 5,200 to 5,800,

6,400, 6,700, 7,500, 700. over here i was. >> he walked up mt.everest in his shorts. what have you done with your life? we've just done the fun part of the wimhof method which is when we get to do the breathing exercises andmake ourselves feel really giddy and now it's time forthe part that everyone hates. which is stripping down to our shorts andjumping in a freezing cold waterfall. the waters running sothe water doesnt actually freeze but

the temperature is below freezing. that means this is pretty muchthe coldest water i'll ever experience. so we've just come out ofthe freezing cold water and i cannot tell you how cold it was. it was the coldest wateri've ever experienced. i can't feel my toes at all. to each one of my toes, the toe next to itfeels like a foreign object in my shoe. cuz i just can't feel them. you just start to think fight orflight mode.

i need to get out of this water. this is not where humans are meant to be. >> [foreign]- yeah, of course. you know nothing about poland! >> obviously, you have your mission,which is a noble one. but i have to ask, is it not alsoa bit about the bragging rights of being able to say i climbedmount everest in my shorts? >> if i can use it, i use it all the time. too many are records.

too many of them have givenno real peace within myself. my unrestfunless deeply within,created by not me, but by destiny itself. so, i gotta solve this, until itsat peace and, okay i will keep on. i think the king and the queens,all these funny hats. the thing about that,if you're healthy electromagnetically, you are able to distinguishan energy field around your head. - see you're doing that thing you always do, when i'm really intowhat you're saying. it's filled with beautiful metaphors.

i'm ready to accept you as my leader. and then you say something ican't quite get my head around. what is an electromagnetic halo? oh, that's just your nervoussystem actually as electric signals. yeah, okay. i’m following you now…- and if your brain bit not fucked up then you got a nice electricalfield around your head. >> do i have any kind of aura? >> yes, you got.

>> really?>> yeah, yeah. what's it doing? >> what does it look like? >> wait a minute. its coming, its coming! >> no, no, fuck you! its already there man. you're the king,she's the queen, and that's it! >> well done, today.

and tomorrow even better. nature calls us. and mother nature says igotta tuck you in man. because of a powerless situation of grief and emotion and now i've got the power. and now, i want to take away andshow scientifically that depression and all the diseases, almost all the diseases, we are able to learn to prevent themfrom developing inside the body. because we are able to havea connection direct inside,

which goes far deeper than ever thought. boom, i'm gonna show the worldthat everybody is able instead of being powerless to havepower over his own system. >> we just stayed in that freezingcold water for one minute. and the craziest part is ifeel warm on the inside. it must be the adrenaline orsomething, but i finally get it. by standing in there andletting the adrenaline rush over you, you don't feel the cold. i could stand out here for a while.

but i'm not going to because i might die. >> right now,we are right over here, 750 meters. we go up to 1400 meters, that's the kopa. from the kopa we'll go to the snä›å¾ka,and it's cold. and so all you have studied,matt, you are going to need it. and now just, don't think, but focus. trust your body to be able to go with theelements up there, and you will be able. and with that you are going to show foryourself, hey man i can do this. >> if you ever wanted a real testof the wim hof method, this is it.

if you concentrate hard enough,this snow looks like sand and you just feel like you're at the beach. >> exactly. that's the mind. if your mind is on it, then you're quitecapable of dealing with the elements. yeah, cause it is a bit nippy really.- yeah. hey. [foreign] there's a method to this. what i'm doing is breathing in more oxygen than i need

and then i'm breathing out without fully letting go. doing that five times and on the final breath squeezingthe oxygen into your chest, neck and head, and that creates either real orillusionary heat. and then you let go. and that's how we get tothe top of the mountain. oh shit! my crampons! minor crampon emergency, it's fine.

there a few theories as to whywim hof can do what he can do. one is that he has a higher levelof brown adipose tissue, or brown fat, in his body, which isa heat generating tissue in the body. studies have shown that peoplewho work outside in the cold have higher levels of brown fat. so it's possible that he's ableto manipulate the level of brown fat in his body by exposure tothe cold, like we're doing right now. another theory is that he's able tosecrete the hormone noradrenaline at will, through breathing andby jumping into cold water.

then that adrenaline allows him toovercome coldness and illnesses. another theory is that he usesa form of meditation similar to the tibetan tummo meditation, which byshutting off the activity of the mind, your metabolism gets redirectedinto generating heat. it's probably a combinationof all those three and some as of yet unexplainedphysiological phenomena as well. but wim takes it a step further. he says that using his method,you can go deep into the body and actually control your own autonomicnervous system and immune system.

i went through the scientificscrutiny of research and put me to the test andthey saw amazing things. but then they said you are the ice man,you are just one test subject, and i said, no, what i can do, anybody can do. >> you can just startdoing these techniques and you can modulate youradrenaline levels by will. stress are able to modulateyour immune response. there are many diseases thatare influenced by your immune system. and you can imagine that it wouldbe of interest if you could

modulate that immune response andsuppress it, that it might be of benefit forpatients with diseases like that. >> how did it feel when you finally gotrecognition from the science world that your methods work? >> i cried. >> really? >> you know what happens when your wifewhom you love so dearly, she suicides? you don't understand,you just don't understand. you have no power anymore.

and finally, because you havebeen everywhere looking for how to silence the grief,you finally get scientific recognition, that's the time when you break. that's the time when you can relieve. that's the time you can let go. it's when you cry. >> look at the clouds. >> wow, mother holy mama. it's nice, huh?

>> it's amazing what the body can do whenyou actually force it to go to its limits. >> yes, to its natural ability. >> we 'vecrossed the border from polandinto the czech republic, and now we're just about to summit the tallest mountainin the czech republic in our shorts. hello there. all the way. >> how are you feeling? >> i'm feeling good. once again, back home.

>> one of the reasons it's been sodifficult for wim to get his method acceptedby a scientific establishment, is that it's inimical to our society'sview of the body and medicine. wim's figured out a way toinfluence the immune system without the use of pharmaceuticals. and that could have big ramifications forpeople with inflammatory disorders. whether it can be used to cure actualdiseases remains to be proven. this is the frontier of science, so it might be many years before wefully understand the implications.

we came into this with a heavy dose ofskepticism, but within a few days we were able to comfortably climb a freezingcold mountain in nothing bur our shorts. wim gives people a chance to take backsome control over their minds and bodies. and forpeople who suffer from depression or illnesses, that kind ofhelp can be priceless. what's the final stage in your mission? >> final stage is go back to the grief. go back to the love, the lost love. i want to bring back love to the world.

love is compiled by happiness,strength, and health. if you radiate good energybecause you are healthy, happy, and strong, that's love. breathe! it's for free! it's life! it's good! take em in! if you need to breathe you take em in and blow your mind.

come on. it's natural drugs.