Picture the scene: it’s 9am on a damp, distinctly cool Sunday morning in April, and I’m sitting in a bath with a kilo of ice cubes and a stranger I met 24 hours earlier. We’re laughing, breathing deeply and looking intently into each other’s eyes as people clap and cheer around us. A minute later, we get out and start joining other couples in a kind of tai chi breath sequence – ‘ooh! aah!’ – feeling deliriously happy.

Welcome to the world of Wim Hof.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a warm rock for the past couple of years, you’ll be familiar with Wim and his cold-water obsession. I first came across his methods during those early lockdown days when a friend of mine encouraged me to download the Wim Hof Method app and we started doing a weekly challenge. 

Every Tuesday, we fasted and followed Wim’s instructions to breathe 30-40 times, then hold our breath for an increasing length of time. It was a cool challenge; I managed to work up to holding my breath for two minutes… and then lockdown ended.

Fast forward three years and I’ve not really thought about Wim since. My friend, on the other hand, became a full-on believer and regularly has ice baths, cold showers and swims in cold water. And while her journey into the cold has only picked up pace, I’ve become ever more tired of hearing about cold water therapy, from her and its other disciples. I too have had a cold shower when the hot water didn’t work. I’ve spent the past 30 years swimming in ice-cold rivers in the mountains of Portugal and dipped in the sea at Whitby and Aberdeen. It’s just not that deep. 

At least, that’s what I thought before going on a three-day Wim Hof weekend at The Glass House Retreat. I’m fully prepared to admit that I barely knew anything about breathwork (despite doing yoga for over a decade) and hadn’t experienced the power of staying static in cold water. 

Fast forward to the day after the retreat, and without any prompts, I started the morning with a nearly three-minute cold shower before doing a round of breathwork at my desk between morning meetings. The result? Knowing that whatever the day or week threw at me, I could handle it without getting stressed or pissed off.  

The weekend – led by the incredible Ravi Modha and partner (and brilliant pilates instructor) Paris Vekria – was totally transformational. Best of all, the structure and lessons were incredibly simple and easy to apply to everyday life. You don’t need to own an ice bath or have Ravi on hand to put them into practice (although that would be amazing). 

Here are the three game-changing habits I learned that I’ll be sticking with from now on. 

On Friday afternoon, Modha began by getting us all to put one hand on our chests and the other on our bellies. “Which hand moves the most when you breathe out?” he asked the group. The vast majority of us voted for the chest hand – indicating shallow, sympathetic nervous system breathing. That makes sense; I often hold my breath without realising while writing, and sigh a lot to try to ‘catch a breath’, despite being a nose-breathing runner.

By Sunday lunchtime, he asked us again. Nearly the entire group had become belly breathers – me included.

Each morning, we began with an hour’s breathwork session – starting with a simple body scan. Then, we all started breathing in deeply through the nose and out through the mouth for a count of three (becoming more rapid in later rounds). After 30-40 breaths, we exhaled and held that breath with empty lungs. In one session, we held that empty breath for over two minutes and 40 seconds – which is wild, when you think about it. 

And then, we were invited to take one big breath in and hold with full lungs. Each session involved three or four rounds.  

Now, that sounds quite simple, but once I started breathing deeply for 20, 30, 40 breaths, odd things started happening. My fingers went cold, my nostrils cleared (I normally always carry tissues) and my brain felt clear. During the breath holds, my body started vibrating like mad. The last time I felt that sensation was during an ayahuasca ceremony.

After that empty breath hold, you’re invited to take one deep breath and hold it for a much shorter time with full lungs. And it’s then that you might start to feel like you’re tripping (it’s worth saying that you probably shouldn’t try to hold your breath for over two or three minutes on your own – just in case). One time, I was blinded by the colour purple. Another, the breath of the person next to me became the sea. A person in our group told us how, during the last breathwork session, she was struck by a bright white light and an overwhelming sense that her late father was in the room with her and telling her to let go of the grief that had plagued her for years. She had the whole room in tears.

The idea behind all this is changing the levels of oxygen and CO2 in your system, and while there’s some scientific evidence (although scarce) to suggest that being able to hold your breath may increase longevity, help brain tissue regeneration and lower stress levels, the thing I took most from these sessions was just how much control I have over my body and that the body is equipped to deal with stress if you just trust it to do its thing. It’s not about the length of the breath hold. 

You can calm yourself down quickly if you know how to control your own breath. You can get ready to tackle something scary or challenging by firing up the breath. We have all the tools for activating or downregulating.  

Try this breathwork routine:

1. Lie down in bed or on a yoga mat with a blanket or duvet to keep yourself warm
2. Breathe in deeply through the nose for a count of three
3. Breathe out fully through the mouth for a count of three
4. Repeat 30 times
5. Now, breathe out fully and hold your breath. Use a stopwatch or set a timer for one or two minutes
6. Now, take a deep breath in and hold for 30 seconds.
7. Breathe out and resume normal belly breathing. 

It can feel impossible to turn off your brain. Meditation is so hard because the moment you stop, thoughts start flooding. But being exposed to cold water feels like someone’s taking a hose to your mind – flushing out the clutter.

The first ice bath of the weekend took place in the sunshine on Saturday afternoon, when Modha had us each get in for two minutes as he guided us through the breathing process. It was tough, but by the end I’d almost warmed up. I felt amazing afterwards.

The next morning, however, was much colder, and we weren’t allowed to bring our bathrobes outside. “You have all you need to stay warm already,” he explained, pointing to the horse stance tai chi breathing exercise. To warm up, you simply have to get into a squat position and start moving your arms across your body as you breathe (right hand pushing towards the left, then left hand pushing towards the right).  

So, bikini-clad in temperatures around 12°C, I stood awaiting my fate – this time with the lovely woman I’d been next to in that morning’s breathwork session. And the bath was even better the second time. Afterwards, we horse-stanced our way back to warmth and spent about 30 minutes in wet swimsuits in the cool air feeling totally fine. Even the sodden earth felt warm.

Since getting back home, I’ve been having a cold shower every morning – putting an upbeat track on Spotify instead of the news and breathing deeply as the water gushes over me for two minutes. It’s nowhere near as cold as the ice bath but it is invigorating. After the two minutes is up, I switch to hot in a bid to get that sauna-plunge pool effect.

Benefits of cold water exposure

We know there are big health benefits of putting the body through cold-to-hot exposure. One Dutch study found that people who switched to cold showers for as little as 30 seconds a day called in sick to work 29% less than those who took warm showers.  

Cold water also helps to stimulate blood flow circulation by redistributing blood from the extremities to the core – delivering freshly oxygenated blood to areas that need it. We also know that it can improve insulin sensitivity, which means better metabolic health. 

When you combine cold and heat as they do in Scandinavian countries, you tap into even more benefits. The cold activates the immune system while heat causes a spike in proteins that can reduce inflammation in the brain and also triggers the release of white blood cells.  Cold constricts your blood vessels while heat dilates them, which together means you’re giving your circulatory system a good workout.

Wim’s method encourages newbies to start with a hot shower and end on cold but the opposite makes more sense to me: start with a long period of cold then give yourself a hot shock at the end to bring the blood back into the hands and feet.   

Perhaps the most important thing the weekend taught me was just how critical it is to connect with people around you. I went on this retreat with my fiancé, and it was great to try new things together but also go outside our comfort zone and meet new people. 

We’re so used to living, moving and working in our little boxes that we don’t willingly leave the silos we’ve put ourselves in. I’ve been saying for ages that I want to connect with like-minded people and doing so for three days confirmed my suspicion that there’s a whole community all around me who want more from life than the stress cycle that is work-gym-eat-sleep. Even if you can’t meet up with people, they exist online. 

I’m already looking up Ravi’s next Wim-inspired workshop. Oh, and the Glass House Retreat with its naturally heated (read: cold) pond, incredible vegan food and luxurious rooms? I’m counting down to the days until my return.

You can find out about Ravi’s next Wim Hof workshop here. For info on spa breaks and other retreats at The Glass House, click here.

Images: The Glass House Retreat