Wim Hof Metod Experiment for Post-op Pain
Description
After my shoulder surgery, I experimented with various mental methods to manage my pain. Here is how I used the Wim Hof breathing to great effect.
Update: It is the morning, two days after my operation and I feel pain-free with no drugs of any kind.
You can stand beside me as I make these videos by becoming a patron on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/rewilduniversity
Check out our online video course, "ReWild Your Mind", for many more methods of cultivating a clear, powerful, and positive mind-set. http://rewildu.com/online-courses/rewild-your-mind-online-course/
Visit http://rewildu.com/classes/ for unique educational opportunities in rewilding, wilderness skills, mindfulness, martial arts, primal fitness, and more.
Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods
Video Transcription
greetings my friends I just got back from a shoulder surgery and yesterday I got that and I wanted to talk a little bit about a technique I used based on the wim HOF method last night and the difference that it made in my pain management
so before I start this off most of you if you're a regular watcher of this channel you know that I really make an effort to answer all comments I'm a one-handed typer for a while now so my ability to answer comments is going to go way way down and I will be reading everything I will be back to regular comment replying as soon as I can but for this video and maybe some of the next ones I'm really not going to be answering comments in the same way I do if at all so please forgive me for that and I still really want to hear your thoughts and your ideas so they sent me home with a big bottle of oxycodone cordoned the prescription opiate that people get addicted to and worse if you know me I have not taken any of those and do not desire to take any of those I've been working up and on my other channel I'm probably going to go deeper into this and some upcoming videos I've been working on some meditations some mental ways to shift the mind as far as pain management goes but last night for some reason I felt inspired to use the wim HOF method breathing and so today I'm gonna share what I experienced last night and a twist that I put on to it that really made a difference Eukarya haven't told you about this what I'm not going to go into in this video is how to do that wim HOF breathing there are plenty of videos out there on how to do it so I'll be referencing different the different parts of the wim HOF breathing if you want to know how to do it go and check out some of those videos now those videos are usually going to walk you through the physical part of it so there's the deep inhales and exhales and then there's the exhale and the breath retention where you're holding your breath out for you know until you feel like you need to breathe often it's a surprisingly large amount of time then there's the inhale and you're holding that inhale for 15 seconds so I'm kind of gonna be talking about these three different sections the breathing the exhale retention and then the inhale and the shorter attention now there's other videos as I said they're gonna explain how to do the breathing but often what they're not talking about is the importance of the mental aspect so this breathing is really a meditation and as I'm doing the breathing breathing in and out choosing a focus point and often the suggestion is to focus on your your third eye area kind of up here or you can focus on your bodily sensations and so yeah you've done some of this hop reading before and so I might focus on sometimes people's lips will feel kind of Numb or tingly or you'll feel a sensation through your limbs your extremities
and so really going into those sensations are going into that that point of focus between you're kind of up in your forehead and the reason for this is that it's not just about the breathing this is about a mental training of holding your focus and being able to hold our focus on something mentally is key if we can't hold our focus on something mentally a mind is gonna run around with us all the time and so last night and I have to say that this was less a sobering experience for me because so bring that means that it was well not quite this was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life and by sobering I mean that I realized last night that this amount of pain which seems like a lot to me it's really just a little bit of pain and there you go a little bit of pain in the sense that there's a lot of people that are dealing with chronic pain where they're feeling pain like this way intensified over their whole body every single day I think of burn victims I think of a soldier has been hit by a bomb there are people in so much greater pain than I am that well so it's been a very good experience developing compassion for me as I can think about other people that are suffering much much more pain and so so last night started doing that that breathing meditation remember that's gonna really hat on your back there honey
doing that breathing meditation and I found that the breathing you know in and out deep breaths was pretty painful to do yeah
it allowed me to focus and that focus helps to remove my mind from the pain I'm gonna go deeper into what I'm about to explain on my other channel I think in some upcoming videos but basically I began to realize that there are three stages that my mind goes through as it moves towards a temptation if you can imagine pain being a temptation in this instance I think if it makes sense here in a second the first thing that happens is what I call the lure so I'm laying in bed trying to just be there with the pain there's a lure and this is rather a soft sensation it's just a little calling it says look over here look over here here's some pain look over here and this lure is is calling me to look that way direct my attention if I direct my attention towards that pain then there comes a pull it says okay come inside really feel this and it urges my mind to to get deeper into that pain and then there's what I call the mire and the mire English is not your first language you may not have heard of this word mire is a swamp real muddy place where your feet get stuck and you can't move then you get kind of locked down into that you could use the example of a piece of cake
there's the lure oh that looks good there's the Paul you know what I've been eating so healthy I deserve a piece of cake then there's the mire pulling it up towards my mouth notice that the lure is relatively easy to get out of right it's that first initial movement in that direction so it's that pain saying Here I am it's fairly easy with some willpower for me to move my mind away from that and the wim hof breathing was allowing me to do that
so my mind could come back to that sensation here and often you're seeing a little bit of lights kind of or I could come into the sensation of my extremities trying to keep my mind away from this and the tingling and my fingers and my toes and so that's that lower part what happened to me last night is over time my willpower started to break down willpower studies show us that willpower is much like a sprint so when I sprint I I go and I go in my sprint power
doo-doo-doo-doo diminishes diminishes diminishes until I have to stop the next day however I am stronger same with willpower as I use my willpower short-term it shrinks down shrinks down the next day it's growing a little bit bigger and stronger so when I experienced last night is my mind was pulled was lured again and again and again and at first in the beginning of the night it was very very easy for me to put my mind elsewhere put my mind elsewhere there's a little active will every time I do that then I got a little bit weaker my mind just pulled I'm gonna draw more and more into the pain eventually I got mired into the pain and it was quite about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning quite a painful experience so so the so the wim HOF method coming back to that at first breathing in and out breathing in and out gave me a focus and allowed me to move my mind away from it then there's the exhalation and here's where I added a little bit of twist because during the exhalation there is space in which to think and our mind is in a very receptive state at that point and I use that receptive state to do a little placebo action because well the placebo action placebo is when we believe that something will help us if we believe something will help us it tends to help us yeah sometimes remarkably so and this isn't quite placebo because the studies with the wim HOF method show that it for instance is alkalizing my body and it's also reducing inflammation which is really good so I took that time in that space and you know for me there's probably two and a half three minutes after I've exhaled breath retention I'm just sitting in a no breath state and I took the first half of that and I really spent that thinking my body is alkalizing there's any illness disease infection all that is being driven out by the alkaline environment I'm thinking all the inflammation is easing down it's speeding the healing so giving myself those positive placebo effects which again are quite placebo but but adding the placebo mind state to it to really really help us out as much as they could then the second half of the breath retention what I did is I use a little bit of self-hypnosis and this is where I really took it to my own place what's that
so he's like giving himself his own love because love is definitely healing he's believing that love is you yeah you can helping me out a lot so so the help self-hypnosis is again I was taking advantage of the mind being in a very calm relaxed receptive state and remember after this or tension so let's see at the end of the three minutes I feel the urge to breathe breathe n get a I get a strong burst of light and my mind goes into a state of being where there literally was no pain yeah for about 20 seconds each time I did that there was a state where there was absolutely no cognizance of pain and and so what I did is I i'm the second half of the retention part of that three minutes I thought I said to myself Kenton when you inhale you're gonna go into that painless state and that painless state is going to spread out into your shoulder and it's gonna make it so that you have no pain over the next two to three days and you can add placebo to the self hypnosis for instance because sometimes I would say Canton your doctor said that when you go into this when you inhale and you go into this painless state this painless state is gonna act as an analgesic it's gonna move into your shoulder and you will not experience any pain for the next two to three days yeah the studies are showing that if that I can pull my mind away from pain and that's gonna help in the moment but hypnosis or a little bit of self-hypnosis extends things a little bit further and that may be why today has been I won't say it's relatively painless today but it's pretty darn good and so my experience of pain is fairly low and I'll be doing the same thing again tonight they're familiar with the wim HOF method what I did last night is I did more breaths than usual so usually I do twenty to thirty breaths I did forty breaths each time and instead of doing usually I do about three cycles I did five cycles that allowed me to go deeper into it and again I used the first stage the breathing to bring my mind away noticing when there was that lure I'm pulling my mind back to here or back to the sensation in my extremities I used the second part I divided it into two halves the first part I just used as a general place to affirm a placebo effect of inflammation going down any infection being eradicated the second half I used self-hypnosis I really affirmed to myself that when I took that breath the third part and went into that painless state that that painless state would move into my shoulder and would be a lasting effect it would reduce my pain significantly actually said I'd have no pain for the next two to three days I wanted to share this because I'm I think a fair amount of you have heard of the wim HOF method and this is an application of it that just kind of came to me last night so I added some things to it but I I took his breathing method and added that the placebo addition and the self-hypnosis addition and I would say it helped significantly with my experience of pain again there was a period after the wim HOF that I kind of crashed my willpower I was trying other methods my willpower kind of crash and I went into a deep pain State I tried the wim HOF method again when I was in a lot of pain and it helped to bring me out of it so if you if you're someone who is currently experiencing pain or going into pain because you have an upcoming surgery or something I'd urge you to experiment with this check out online how to do that wim HOF breathing and practice it beforehand so you have a feeling for it and then maybe try this method it's it's experimental so you're being a a guinea pig if you do try it I don't know anything about the long-term effects this is you know kind of pioneering something here but I feel really good today and it's made a big difference again on my other channel I'm gonna be going deeper into some other methods that I've been using to manage this pain and and it goes much further than just pain management it goes into being able to take our mind and put it where we want it to go this is this is important stuff I think for all of us even today you know regular lives if we have access to pay medications many of you I'm sure will vouch and say that doesn't matter how many pain pills you're on you're still in a lot of pain and so the more we can learn to harness our mental energy then it can just be in addition to the pain medications that we're on it can be helpful there if you have been dealing with pain or you've dealt with pain in the past and you found some mental methods that really were helpful for you please share in the comments and your insight your wisdom yeah
it's really gonna help other people because there's a lot of people in the world probably a lot of people watching we're dealing with some high levels of pain any help we can give each other is so appreciated and again please remember that I'm not going to be able to answer comments like usually please go ahead yeah friends you just do the best and you're gonna be great you are so encouraging my god that's what everybody needs is just a little encourage or like you thank you my friends thank you for watching and I look forward to seeing what you have to say in the comments all right take it
About the Author
ReWildUniversity
To aid and inspire you on your personal re-wilding journey, ReWild University brings you videos on edible wild plants, tree climbing, natural movement, ancestral skills, and much much more!
More articles from this author
- ReWild University Obstacle Course
- Conditioning to Cold Weather
- Using Food as a Motivation Tool!
- Aging Doesn't Make Us Old
- Bizarre and Beautiful Ice Worms
- Primal Fitness In Your House
- Light My Fire Scout 2.0 Swedish Firesteel Review
- Eric's Survival Scenario Challenge
- Making Pineappleweed Tea
- The Power of Posture
- Starting a Fire with a Mushroom (Polypore Fungus)
- Extreme Winter Survival Overnight
- Matt's 11 Month Forest Monk Training, Episode 8
- Free Gift -- Forest Monk Training Handbook
- Hard Core Survival Gear -- The Pillowcase?
- Matt's Final Video at ReWildU
- Two Women Fall Through Ice and Discuss the Nature of Fear
- The Sugar Challenge
- How Would You Help the Wild?
- How To See More Animals in the Woods
- The Power of Gratitude
- Paleo Fitness Power Stick
- Testing natural tinders (monoculture test)
- Best Barefoot Running Shoes
- Transforming Peer Pressure
- Homemade Survival Matches with Pitch Glue
- The Art of Wild Shapeshifting
- The Power of the Cold Shower
- A Different Perspective on Drug Use
- Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Training, Episode 7
- The Upside Down Fire
- What Is Human ReWilding?
- Creating the "Job" of Your Dreams. You CAN Do It!
- Tracking Challenge Two, Identify This Animal
- The life-changing GLOW meditation
- Quick Deploy Paracord Bracelet, POV
- Matt's 11 Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Five
- Cultivating Curiosity
- Our experience with the Wim Hof Method
- The Benefits of Boredom
- Extreme Almost-Naked Winter Survival Overnight With No Gear
- ReWild Your Mind Online Course
- Transforming Fear Part Two, Vulnerability
- Harvesting Burdock Stems
- The Wisdom of Children, Fear Doors
- The Importance of Awareness
- A Message for Preppers -- The best piece of gear is YOU!
- Share Your Adventures
- Matt's 11 Month Forest Monk Program, Episode One
- Winter Wild Edibles, Ground Cherry and Watercress
- A Forest Monk Shares Amazing Wisdom
- Brett's Fire and Ice Challenge
- Primal Fitness Basics, Winter Woods Running
- 20,000 Subscriber Channel Update
- How to Turn Off a Song In Your Head
- Lousy Nostradamus
- Identifying Turkey Tail Mushroom
- Increasing Your Awareness and Enhancing Your Senses in the Woods
- Tree Tracks -- A secret clue in the forest that reveals many things
- ReWildU Tour and Woodslore
- Beginner's Guide to Making Fire with Firesteels
- This Wonder-Full World
- Kill Your Television
- A Quick Trick for Better Patience =)
- How to Rappel With Rope Only (South African Method)
- The Forest Monk Online Training Community
- Harvesting Spring Beauty Roots for Food
- What's Wrong With Modern Agriculture?
- How to Climb Trees Without Branches
- Two ID mysteries -- a mushroom and tracks
- ReWildU Issue Survival Pack Contents
- Help ReWildU Create the Wilderness School of Your Dreams
- An Operating Manual for Your Mind
- Woods Parkour Tutorial, Precision Jump
- How to Hack Time
- How to Transform Anger
- Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Training, Episode 9
- On the love of nature, and a question
- How to Survive a Fall Through Ice
- A Different Perspective on Loss
- Some Fun Tracking Illusions
- Survival Chocolate With White Avens
- How to Recognize Seven Wild Edibles in Their Earliest Springtime Forms
- Culture Hack -- Who Knows What is Good or Bad?
- The 5-to-1 Fire Challenge
- Calling Upon Flint Knappers and Rockhounds -- Asking for Help Identifying Mystery Stone Flakes
- Hand and Foot Conditioning For Shoe-and-Glove Weakened Hands
- How Flint and Steel Really Works
- Hand Drill Firemaking Beginner's Step by Step Guide
- Using Patreon to Break Free of 9-5
- Harvesting Wild Springtime Ground Beans
- How to Transform Negative Memories
- How to make firebundles -- storable, ready-to-light campfires
- Dealing With Changes in Our Bodies
- Wild Spring Rolls
- How to Make Pine Pitch Glue
- Transforming Dead-End Thinking
- Overcoming Apathy With Eyes of Adventure
- How to Make Sumac Lemonade
- Richard's 4-Month Adventure, Video Two
- Want to try cold showers but you're afraid? Here's some inspiration. From a six-year-old.
- Guided Sensory Meditation
- Bushcraft Plastic
- Network Invitation and 1000 Subscribers Thank-You =)
- Paracord Bracelet Survival Challenge
- Why I Turned Down a TV Survival Show
- Condition Your Mind to Avoid Junk Food
- When The Going Gets Tough
- Matt's 11 Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Three
- Spartan ColdFire Challenge
- A Bow-Making Adventure
- Tracking Mystery #1
- Transforming Fear Part One, Curiosity
- Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Two
- The Cons of Convenience
- Reach: A Movement Paradigm
- Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Six
- You Have Choices
- Building a Debris Hut Shelter for Long-Term Living
- Problems vs Challenges
- Rewild University Classes Trailer, 2015
- Wood Nettle Cordage Using the Reverse Wrap Method
- UCO Survival Matches Review
- Can We Transform Money?
- ReWildU Patrons' Q&A Video One
- Incredible Handmade Leather Quiver
- Notchless Hand Drill Fire with Chaga Fungus
- How to Become an Adventurer
- The Gift of Horta
- ReWildU Teacher Tracking Challenge
- Breaking Free of 9 to 5
- A firemaking trick for low-quality punkwood and wet tinder
- Overcoming Irrational Fears
- Patron Q&A Video Two
- Meditation -- Pushups For Your Mind
- The Bowl of Challenges
- Richard's First Week Living in the Woods at ReWildU
- Finding Wild Leeks Out of Season
- The REAL Primal Diet
- Never Rush That Which Must Be Done Quickly
- 12 Wood and Stone Forest Exercises for Strength
- Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Four
- Coming Together
- The Most Important Moment of Your Life
- How to tie the Moana Knot
- How to Overcome Laziness
- You Matter
- Interview with "The Wheel" star and Marine Shon Joyner
- Asking You for Help
- Richard's 4-Month Forest Monk Training, Video Three
- Natural Navigation -- Shadow Guides
- Forest Monk Pre-Training Guide (for all of us! =)
- Richard's Spartan Coldfire Challenge
- The Ultimate Guide to Splatter Vision/Wide Angle Vision
- Richard's Final Video at ReWildU
- The Kjortel -- an ancient but super-functional garment
- A tracking challenge, plus how to tell deer tracks from coyote tracks via the straddle
- Unfetter Our Minds
- Forest monk shares about relaxing into cold
- The Beauty of Winter (for those who miss wintertime)
- How Has Nature Changed You?
- The Power of Giving
- You Are Plastic
- This channel will stay, but I'm also announcing a new channel!
- Hunter's 4-minute Ice Bath
- Sensing and Thinking
- Overcoming Porn Addiction
- Reducing "Fluff" in Your Life
- A Quinzee-Inspired Winter Concept Shelter
- A Strange Exercise With Multiple Benefits
- Some Tracking Mystery Fun For You!!
- A Survival Game -- the One-Item Group Challenge
- Deer Walking -- an easy method to develop more "woods stealth"
- You Can Do Tough!
- Using driving as physical and mental training
- Kenton's "Backstory"
- What Would You Miss If You Lived in the Woods?
- What We Can Do (About The State of the World)
- Conscious Perspectives
- A Question for Veterans with PTSD
- Chickadees, Winter's Hard-Core Survivalists
- Fixing Ourselves Vs. Exploring Our Potential
- Lostproofing 101 -- Understanding Your "Map Sense"
- How to Breathe (Critical Thinking)
- Dealing With Social Exclusion
- Simon, a Forest Monk, shares some wisdom from the woods
- Dakota Fire Pit Variation
- Survival Skills: Staying Warm Without a Fire
- The Generalization Game
- A Family Canoeing Adventure
- Touchstones, A Tool For Taming "Monkey Mind"
- Earthing as a study in conflict
- An Adventure, Sharing Woodslore
- A Forest Monk Speaks of the Benefits of Discomfort
- Three Forest Monks Share Some Experiences
- Why Practice Primitive Skills?
- Giving Up vs. Letting Go
- Stepping Off the Path
- Be Famous to One Person
- Less YT views = a hidden gift
- Underwater Knot Tying Challenge
- A Forest Monk Goes to McDonalds
- How To Deal With Mosquitoes (Without Repellent)
- Taking Things Less Seriously
- Three Forest Monks on an Overland Navigation Trek
- A Challenge -- The Day of Nothing
- Using your pants to start a fire =) (charcloth trick)
- Inhabiting Your Life
- The Delicious Zombie Mushroom! (Lobster Mushroom)
- Testing "Ashcloth" As a Firestarter
- Cultivating Determination
- Take the 2-Week No-Sweet Challenge!
- Transforming Performance Pressure
- Relationships: Keeping Love Fresh
- Accepting Things in Life
- 7 Mystery Knives
- Starting a Podcast! Help us with topic ideas!! =)
- Diet For Our Minds
- Revisions vs. Re-Visions
- What is your perfect knife?
- Transforming Bigotry, Hate, and Judgement (In ourselves and others)
- Kenton and Mirabelle on Expectations
- Meet Djembe!
- Eating Wild Rice Caterpillars
- Helen's Spartan Coldfire Challenge
- Interview with Dustin, Head Instructor at ReWildU
- Tiny Steps (and a tracking challenge!!)
- A Forest Monk's Town Adventure
- Understanding Why Desire Doesn't Get Us What We Want
- Into the Icewater
- 50k Channel Update, Thanks, and Giveaway! =)
- 8-Year-Old Mirabelle's First Almost-Solo Fire
- How to Develop Response over Reaction
- Time to Shine!! =)
- Shedding Our Armor
- MUST KNOW Survival Skill -- Hot Rock Primitive Technology
- Staying Warm in Winter Without Fire