Wim Hof on Controlling the Vagus Nerve

Like right now, and right now, the last conversation I had with, uh, Dr. Kevin Tracy, he was in the board for the jury, uh, for Nobel Prize winners or medical in the medical, uh, area. He tested me in 2007, and he saw me influencing deeply into the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is considered to be autonomic, outside of our will. If you are able to control or influence deeply into the vagus nerve, you are able to bring down inflammation, which is a cause and effect of disease. We found the answers in nature.

Can you describe in any way that would be comprehensible to someone who didn't know how to do it, how you manage such things as control over the vagus nerve? Yes, the vagus nerve and the autonomic nervous system, the immune system, and the endocrine system, all those were thought to be out of our willful control. In 2014, I showed, for as the first one in medical science, to be able to be injected and then have no symptoms with the E. coli bacteria, which can be lethal. It's a strong bacteria, and it causes the cytokine storm.

Cytokine storm is, uh, inflammatory markers going berserk within our body because it does not know what's happening, and everything is in our alarm, and it can damage our system. That's a cytokine storm, and we could not do anything against that. Then they tested me, and I showed as the first one to be injected and have no effects. So, what did you do after you were injected to, to, to stop?

Two things, okay? I did two things. First of all, I used my mind. I just explained what the mind is capable of. If it is connected to the stress mechanisms, our willful control, then you can give a neural signal to the, uh, neurology of the rest of the body to do whatever is necessary to neutralize the physical impact of any kind. That is the real connection we possibly all have. But I did that, then I used my will, and I used breathing.

This breathing technique, apparently, it's an amazing technique which is not known anywhere because I found it out by going into cold water. In cold water, you are directly in, uh, exposed to deep stress—freezing water causes deep stress on your body. What do you do? You don't think; you learn to regulate biochemistry by deep breathing. You jump into cold water, yeah, and then you breathe automatically, like you demonstrated.

Then you've played with that breathing and learned what I learned, that through deep breathing, I was able to prolong my stay in cold water like tenfold. How long did it take you? How many months or years did it take you to develop? Only a couple of months, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and I could stay. I also did my breathing exercises, and I could stay for five to seven minutes.

Brett Halt, that's another thing. It's not sports; it's just our capacity is much more than we normally use. Right, right, and you're making the—you're making the case that if we expose ourselves to relatively extreme stressors, that we become more integrated psychophysiologically. Yes.