Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex. Aubrey Marcus

Psychological Association, there was a strong correlation between high levels of stress and poor health scores. Chronic stress, which brings with it chronic inflammation, suppresses the immune system, increases occurrence of pain, and is a major correlative to depression. That’s a lot. It’s no wonder that upward of 75 percent of all doctor visits have a stress-related component. What is a wonder, however, is that less than 3 percent of doctor visits include counseling about stress. Maybe it has something to do with the 76 percent of physicians surveyed who lacked confidence in their ability to counsel patients about stress, or the 57 percent who “rarely” or “never” practice stress reduction techniques themselves. Institutionally, individually, collectively, and sometimes even me personally—we are getting owned by stress.

      To fix the problems, what we need are simple strategies for reducing the bad, chronic stress and diving feetfirst into the good, acute stress. Fortunately, we can find both in a two-part regimen from that crazy Dutchman who went topless to the top of the world. Wim Hof’s conscious breathing techniques and cold exposure practices are going to deliver for us the reduction in bad, chronic stress we need for greater health, and the increase in good, acute stress we need for more consistent growth in both our body and our character. The best part: we can do them at the same time, just like it happens in nature, and develop our willpower in the process.

      Owning It

      Wim Hof’s many physical feats are astonishing even to consider, but what is truly impressive is what he has been able to teach others to do. Wim has trained groups of ordinary men and women as old as sixty-five to climb with him up Kilimanjaro. And yes, some of them went without a shirt on. He has proven in a laboratory-controlled study that he can teach people to alter the immune system’s inflammatory response to pathogens—rewriting both textbooks and expectations in the process. His work on breath and cold has also turned him into a performance coach of sorts for some of the greatest athletes and performers in the world, including the biggest of all coaches (in more ways than one), Tony Robbins.

      Arguably the most successful motivational speaker in history, Tony Robbins is nothing short of a human dynamo. He’s a bundle of indefatigable energy capable of nearly inhuman feats. He’s six feet seven inches tall but spry and nimble. He can walk across hot coals and keep a crowd of thousands captivated during his legendary weeklong motivation marathons. All of this he embodies at virtually the same age as Wim Hof himself (they’re born ten months apart), after decades of emotionally demanding work and a calendar perpetually filled with grueling international travel.

      If you ask Tony, a big part of his capability springs from the fundamentals of the routine I am going to lay out for you in this chapter. As he says, “It’s not exactly a gentle way to wake up, but that’s beside the point.” In fact, it is the point, because this two-part ritual—deliberate, conscious breathing exercises and cold-water exposure—goes a long way toward explaining Tony’s bottomless resolve, vitality, and energy. It also explains why he’s been one of the most successful people in history: he practices overcoming resistance every single day.

      The Breath

      There are hundreds of different breathing traditions from all over the world. Some are shrouded in arcane symbolism. Others come with complicated instructions, like the world’s worst IKEA dresser: ring finger to the left nostril; spiral helix breath in lotus posture; “turn your stomach into the shape of a vase.” Huh? Wim Hof cuts through that bullshit. His instructions are simple. He just wants you to get the breath in. It doesn’t matter which hole it comes through, because it’s what the breath does for you that matters to him. Here is his method in two steps.

      STEP 1: THIRTY TO FIFTY POWER BREATHS

      Inhale through the nose or mouth into the belly with deep, powerful breaths. Exhale without additional effort, just let the chest fall. Keep a steady pace and make sure to focus on drawing the breath deep into your belly. Do this until you feel a slight light-headedness and a tingling sensation in your extremities. That is the sign that a shift is happening and your blood is hyperoxygenated. For most people that effect starts to kick in around thirty breaths, but it can take up to fifty, depending on certain factors.

      Note: It’s important not to overbreathe to the point of serious light-headedness, strong tingles, or involuntary closing of the hands. That will take you beyond the currently desired effect and into the realm of a practice called holotropic or shamanic breathing, which is a topic for a different book.

      STEP 2: THE HOLD (RETENTION AFTER EXHALATION)

      After the thirty to fifty breaths, or once you start to feel the tingling, draw the breath in one more time and fill the lungs to maximum capacity. Then calmly let the air out and hold for as long as you can at the bottom of the breath. You don’t need to set a world record, just hold your breath until you feel that gasp reflex and you really want to breathe again.

      That is one full breath cycle of what has become known as the Wim Hof method. While it is unique to Wim, it has a couple of ancient forebears from the Eastern world: specifically, Tummo breathing (sometimes called Inner Fire meditation) and the yogic tradition of pranayama, which roughly translates to “the deliberate control of breath.” The part that is particularly unique to Wim is the holding of the breath with empty lungs. Temporarily depriving yourself of breath releases some of the same hormones that coffee produces, namely adrenaline and norepinephrine. This is what makes Wim’s method not just relaxing, like much of the focus of conscious breathing, but energizing. It is why it is such a great way to start the day, and why you shouldn’t melt into a puddle of terror when you realize that I’m asking you to hold off on your morning coffee for a few hours. You won’t need it. This regimen is its own kind of cold brew.

      The other reason that the Wim Hof method is energizing is that it reduces the chronic stress that makes you chronically tired. The benefits of pranayama on stress are fairly well documented in the literature. Most relevant for our purposes, a recent study on ninety students, randomized to three different groups—fast pranayama, slow pranayama, and control—showed that specific yogic types of fast and slow conscious breathing reduced perceived stress by an average of close to 25 percent against baseline measurements.

      Think about what that means for a second: one of the major tools for coping with bad, chronic stress has literally been right under our nose this whole time. It’s been a solved problem for thousands of years. And yet we breathe roughly 24,000 times a day, while almost never deliberately taking control of our breath. That sounds like hyperbole, I know, but the way we talk about our breath says otherwise. When we’re angry or panicked, we’re told to “stop and take a breath,” as if it doesn’t belong to us or we’ve just been giving it away. When we’re exhausted or feel rushed, we need to “catch our breath,” as if we don’t have control of it and it has gotten away from us.

       Deep Dive: Wim Hof and … Lamaze?

      Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the power of breath to overcome massive stress load was given to us right before we were born. During delivery, mothers are asked to do two things: breathe and push. Not haphazardly or randomly, but with deliberate and conscious control. Many mothers-to-be take a class prior to delivery that teaches them how to take control of their breath. You’ve probably heard of it: it’s a method called Lamaze breathing. In The Official Lamaze Guide, the tips and guidelines are simple and straightforward: “Breathing is easily subject to conscious control. Therefore, controlled breathing is easy to learn. Slow, deep breathing is particularly effective. The ‘right’ way to breathe is whatever feels right. There are no rules related to how many breaths per minute, whether to breathe through the mouth or nose, or whether to make sounds. The key here is that the breathing is conscious, not automatic.”

      Sound familiar? These are the fundamentals of the Wim Hof method. And they are the core of Lamaze breathing, because conscious breathing doesn’t only reduce stress; according to multiple studies, it enhances relaxation and decreases perception of pain. If you have been through labor, you know why that’s important. If you haven’t, ask your mom what it was like to push a watermelon with shoulders through a hole the size of a coin purse. Then go buy her some flowers.

      Breath is the rudder of our life. We