What it’s like to go wild swimming using the Wim Hof Method
“There was nothing unusual about the hot tub. A slick circle of sunken cedar, the water inside shimmering the same shade of rose gold as the setting winter sun. There was one thing missing, however: steam. Sitting on the little bench around the tub’s internal edge, I hugged my arms to my chest as my body jerked with shivers. It wasn’t bubbles that golden light was reflecting off but shards of ice. I was in the final two minutes of a four-hour Wim Hof Method workshop, experiencing the ice bath we’d been building up to during an afternoon of preparatory breathwork.
I was also feeling curiously calm. The force of the ice had hit me as it seeped over my heart and up around my neck but my instructor, Sam Boot, of the Cornish wellness operator Soul Sweats, was reminding me to breathe slowly and calmly, as we’d practised earlier.“