Full Transcript: Cold Therapy Works Best With Respect

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hello and welcome back to natural sanity mama with myself olga gertz and today we have charlie clemons is that how i pronounce your last name yes that's it awesome and he is an expert in wim hof style cold plunging and i got really excited to meet him because i have been interested in the wim hof method ever since i heard about it like a couple years ago and ever since then i've wanted to know more and i've started implementing a little bit in the winter time doing a little bit of snow rolling and all that and doing some hot cold stuff um in my own life but i just uh really want to talk to somebody who really incorporates this into his life like on a daily basis and can tell us so much more about about it um the ins and outs and how to start and how your life is benefited by doing cold plunges like i'm super super interested in all of these things um and i want to start with you introducing yourself telling us about how you got into this what is your story um tell us how all of this happened for you and how you discovered wim hof how you started doing all this in your own life yeah so uh bullet points on it there um so i i've been picking up the pieces back in my life there 2020 my life had just fallen apart completely and you know young kids in tow and i was getting my life back in check and so one of the things that i did was i joined the gym and uh joined the gym lost 45 pounds there but you know starting to feel better about myself and building self-confidence and whatnot and the first thing i want to say here is i didn't find the method found me my house i i keep it warm i love it warm in my house i have a wood stove keep it 25 degrees love the warm right but this guy at the gym kept going on about the cold uh let's go

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uh let's go we're working out one night and he's like oh let's go jump in the lake mid-november i'm like no i'm not the ice man i don't think yeah i'm good right but he wouldn't stop going on about it so uh after a couple days of him just bugging me and go let's go jump in the lake there's no um i'll download the app because uh there's a free app on in the apple store uh google play store uh wim hof method if you do a search it'll come right up free so anyways so i download this app i go home and i try it and uh it leads you through it like a daily practice right so it starts off with some breathing yeah and i've never really been into meditation or anything so i was like oh geez this is this uh this is neat there's definitely something to it right and uh stretching you know i've always had a hard time even just touching my toes right the stretching was good and and then the last thing that i got into was a 30 second cold shower or at least it was telling me this is what i should do yeah so uh first day i was like no that's good i think i'm okay uh next day because everything you know it's a daily practice so then next day you go through the breathing go through the stretches um i talked myself into doing this 30 second cold shower and then when i say talk myself into it um i mean i have my warm shower um i turned it to cold as it can get like in the winter here our top water is about between two and four degrees celsius right so it's pretty cold um stood to the side for about 10 minutes and do a little two step you know yeah no i love them and anyway so i finally after about 10 minutes got myself into it and um i want to tell you it was not pleasant it was not i didn't really enjoy it 30 seconds felt like about 10 minutes i got out of the

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like about 10 minutes i got out of the shower and i felt fabulous didn't get that cold shutter that you get when the the cold air hits you when you open up the door pull the shower curtain back i just got out and i felt great went to the gym that night had a power workout you know and i was throwing down you know 10 extra reps on any any set that i'd normally do extra weight on every set i think i spent an extra hour there that night i was just completely energized right so next day goes on do the breathing do the stretches and i think maybe there were some push-ups in there too got to the cold shower portion i was like no i did this yesterday i'm good yeah yeah i talked myself out of it and then when i got out of the shower i just like there was a sense of loss like i was missing something i just didn't have that charge right after i didn't get out of the shower and just had that sense of lots next day i got back in started doing them every day uh every day through the month of november december january 1st came up the the polar plunger was cancelled because of coven and uh but i lived right on the lake lake was frozen why not at this point i'd already done the cold showers uh so i went out and i got into the lake for two minutes and 30 seconds at that point i was not sure about the method i i basically wanted to prove or disprove it right and um so i i went and i documented it and then starting in february i think around february 15th started going every day and since that day back in february 2021 i've gone consecutively missing one only one day but consecutively right now my record is 434 days in a row getting in a cold water immersion or ice bath because part of what it does besides giving me energy is it dials you in it gives you great mental focus um and to be honest if i had known any of this stuff going through high school and college what a great tool to get yourself cold right before an exam right then you just go in and you have this heightened focus because of what

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this heightened focus because of what norah adrenaline does to you right it just dials you right in so it's a it's it's a very great thing but that's kind of my path of what's gotten me here if you if you've ever watched wim because there's tons of documentaries out there that he's on there's tons of interviews he is exactly like that in person very charismatic if he says something he does it hmm and he's behind it a thousand percent let's talk about some of the actual like like known scientific benefits of the method yeah there's three pillars to the with a hot method okay we have breathing mindset and cold right and through the three that's how you get the the best benefits right my main focus when i started this was the cold my my true allure to it was the cold and what it did for me the breathing yeah it was all right uh mindset yeah pretty good too but wasn't what the cold was but the breathing is a simple great place to start right just given what it does and how simple it is to get into through that app that i mentioned earlier on the whip off method app um it has guided breathing in there and which is the same guided breathing that i do in my workshops right but only in a group setting and the group said it kind of changes the dynamic it kind of elevates everything right yeah just through that breathing it really can do a lot for anybody out there like i said covering from adhd um to to starting to address diseases and uh most of the stuff here that i'll even anything that i mentioned has been scientifically proven along the way it's not just it's just not just dogma it's not just oh yeah you know hippie hippie voodoo or whatever however you want to categorize right um not to take away from any of that either but there really is something to it and the science is behind it right just because of what it does um i was talking to a customer today because you know like

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customer today because you know like this is a hat i wear right i have my other business that i i deal with during the day and i was telling him you know i've been running that business for 15 years right it's been profitable and and that's great i've been running this officially since i got back from poland and and so catching on here has been kind of slow but i've only helped a handful of people here so far and what i've done in 15 years is great but the handful of people i've helped in the last couple of months is a reward that it's not the same right and i'll do it a thousand times over it's all been on my time here so far right uh but just helping everybody to learn these tools in this method um has been amazing and i look forward on on continuing to grow it right and hopefully in our country and in the maritimes here becomes bigger and more well than known uh to the point where you know it's a household name and it's a household thing you do for sure and i like uh i like what you said about kids and i love seeing um because you can kind of follow your journey on your facebook page right i i like seeing your little son there trying to test the waters of the ice tub so i'm curious has he gotten full has he fully immersed himself yet how old is he uh he's eight and yes he has um about the week afterwards he did uh however you know i had a couple people that kind of reached out and they're like hey you realize this isn't europe and you might want to watch what you're doing you know yeah yeah so i was like uh well maybe we won't post that video but at the same time my boys and i we go in the ocean um i think we were swimming in december in the ocean when it was like six degrees right um we were out in the ocean again last week it was like 8. 5 degrees the ocean temperature right uh you know so it's if with this and what i tell people about it look a lot of people don't like the cold right i'm not a huge fan of it right i like

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i'm not a huge fan of it right i like said i like my warm um however this method has taught me a way that i can deal with it better right so so now you know if i go out and it's cold my body knows how to deal with it and what to do with it we become so comfortable in our nice warm houses that i talked about like mine 25 degrees you know um one of the things you used to tell my kids here years ago i was like yeah when you get old you get cold i don't know what it is but it just happened but it's so true when we get old we get cold and if you ever notice like kids run around at a younger age they're furnaces yeah yeah they run around in the middle of the winter with no jackets on so true teenagers you can't keep them closed put a hat on exactly right and um so what ends up happening is as we grow and as we progress right we become comfortable in our warmth right and staying warm so our body stops creating brown fat right and the brown fat is basically it's a it's stored energy it's different from white fat it's actually a converted white fat um that helps us thermoregulate ourselves in the cold right so so now when i go in the cold uh because i go also go for cold runs here in the winter or when it's cold enough or i run almost every day but um when it's cold it's fantastic um and i go out in the cold and i do my three and a half kilometer run and yeah the first 30 seconds or so is kind of like but after that brown fat kicks in and you stay warm one of the biggest challenges i've had with this is trying to keep up with the calories that i burn every day from going into the actually in the i got to a point here where i had to reduce how many um how long i was staying in my coal baths every day because i was just i couldn't keep weight on so if you want to lose weight start with a cold shower 30 second cold shower every day right for a month i can

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shower every day right for a month i can guarantee you you will drop 5 to 10 pounds just like that right so you burn more calories when you're cold yes absolutely burning calories is how the body warms itself up now typically that's that's from shipping right one of the things that happens from doing the cold immersions is you start producing this brown fat again right and the brown fats all through your spine or up through your upper spine and up through your shoulders there's is mostly where it's all stored right so instead of the body shivering it can use a brown fat store to keep you warm wow right so i shiver a heck of a lot less right which is great so but but even when i do shiver now um i it takes me a while to get to this point but i i actually embrace it i i don't enjoy it right kind of hard in my mind to actually enjoy shivering um but i i try as much as i can to embrace it and realize it's just my body's way of warming itself right so so a little bit back to the science of that when we're babies for about the first year that were born babies can't shiver right so they use brown fat to keep themselves warm they burn brown fat right and that's what thermal regulates themselves right they keep themselves warm so but then again like i said as we age those brown fats stores because we keep ourselves warm we have no use for it so then the brown fat just starts dissipating right and that's why you know we got to have the warmth to keep us warm there's a lot of science behind it that's that's so interesting yeah i wasn't familiar with the brown fat thing that's really interesting okay awesome so next i was wondering if you could tell take us through a little bit of maybe like two minutes of the breath work that you teach is that possible sure uh actually probably one of the best things i can i i teach a variety of breath work um when somebody comes to my works off the majority of its wim hof method some of it is not right some of

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method some of it is not right some of it is just great breathwork methods that i've kind of picked up along the way sympathetic sign right this is a great tool that anybody watching here can do and pick up right and i'll teach you this quickly and then we'll we can move on to uh another quick method here so so what it is is um basically we saw whether we're aware of it or not every five minutes we saw at least once right and that's to pop open the avioli's in our lungs that have collapsed 5 600 million of them right so every now and then one of them just collapses because there's so many right so the body's created this way that they keep those popped open right and whether you realize it or not every five minutes you're signed right so something you can do quickly here it's just and i do this depends on the day sometimes i do this a lot but it really helps it's just two big breaths in the nose [Music] [Music] and one more so i find this isn't wim hof method but i find this is one of the best quickest tools that you know anybody could use out there on a day-to - day basis doesn't matter where you are you could be driving you could be chasing your kids you could be walking your dog if you just want to dial it down a notch right so induce relaxation is that what we're going to two quick breaths in the nose and release out of the mouth nice long exhalation or nice long exhale

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nice long exhalation or nice long exhale right i like that and i find that it really helps and one of the things that that does for the long exhalation is it'll lower your heart rate right so anytime that i'm fine i'm really stressed through the day and i'm just like stop breathe yes so i love it i think that is a tool yep yeah you jammed up in traffic yeah or like your kids crying in the back and you're just like oh my brain and you're like it's okay i can breathe i can always breathe no matter where i am yeah so um another method that here that we're gonna run you through here is called interceptive focus all right so interceptive focus is the focus interceptive means focus on what's within right so this is uh also something that i use to lead into the breath work rounds right so so typically we'll we'll do three to four breath work rounds which are 30 to 40 breaths right so that's not what we're getting into today because each one of those rounds take you know anywhere from five to ten minutes a piece so we won't get into that so but the interceptive focus here is what it is it's 10 breaths right so we're going to breathe in through our nose nice long exhalation out of our mouth or your nose doesn't really matter right but nice long exhalation right so we're going to do 10 big breaths and at the end of the big breath what i'm going to get you to do is just hold it in so we're going to do it like a 30 second breath retention right or breath hold for 30 seconds right and doing during that 30 seconds you're gonna focus on feeling your heart so so just i'll get to start your breathing so we're going to do 10 breaths and as you breathe you want to fill in from your belly to your chest and let go

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into the belly into the chest letting go belly belly chest there we go belly belly chest letting go belly belly chest go two more belly belly test letting go one more belly chest letting go and a big inhalation and hold and while you hold let me get you to feel your heart in your chest feel its beat feel its rhythm tune into it after you feel it and tuned into it i want you to pick another spot on your body whether it's your leg or your toes or your wrists and feel that heartbeat there silence the mind to feel the heart within at any point you feel the urge to breathe do so

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focusing on the heart wherever the spot is that you've chosen whenever you're ready you can open your eyes and come back so this is another great tool that uh you gotta be sitting down or ideally laying down is probably one of the best ways to do it right yoga mat right yeah and uh yeah just really dial you down a notch there and it helps tune you in one of the things that wim has planned here to do is he wants to break another world record he has 26 right now so he's got to break another world record most amount of people doing breath work at the same time again like i mentioned he's a man of plans so when he says something he does it uh so he's talking 60 70 000 people all doing breath work at the same time and then from there he wants to do 250 love thousands that's right that's how you spread the the actual like you know technique and the yeah so all i can imagine is how powerful uh the breathwork was as a group of 60 right you know because as a group of 60 we're carrying each other's emotions we all feel we're all kind of one at that point oh one body right one breath and uh so 60 people was like mind blown wow 60 000 people all breathing together right what a great way to to get us all to connect right love that so really looking forward to that and and hopefully we're going to be part

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and and hopefully we're going to be part of that you know usually like our workshops are kind of restricted to like 25 people right um for you know like because we need to keep an eye on on everybody right things things do happen because we are breathing on a um you know a hypoxic hypoxic state right so sixty thousand people and i said the whim there at a campfire that we had with them i think you're gonna need quite a few instructors for that just remember i'd like to be there right not only that but i feel like it could be uh like actual people in one place but we could all like this invitation should be extended outward and also virtually people in different countries breathing at the same time it could be like a mass manifestation like of whatever you're manifesting together i think that's so beautiful because there's mass meditations why not mass breath breathathons all over the world you know yeah no that'd be beautiful there but i'll definitely have to suggest that next time yeah why not i'm in like i will be on my zoom perfect well i um we have a reunion coming up in september there and he'll be there so i'll bring it up with him then and uh we'll see what we can do here oh i love that um okay so two more things so one how is the best way for people to start with this app or to work with you or both how can people start and also how can people find you if they do want to work with you okay perfect so if this was something that interested you i would suggest to start with the app uh the app kind of breaks it right down and and makes it pretty you know straightforward and easy to follow right you don't have to take it to the paid level of the app there i mean that that's completely up to yourself if you do great um but not necessary right um and then also on google there there's lots of good breath work sessions uh you know a recorded 10-minute loop session uh this is something that i used at the beginning of this right uh and then i stopped using it all the other uh but

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stopped using it all the other uh but either way let's start with the app that's great and it'll start you off with some basic breath work it's going to start you off with 30 second cold showers right because uh i do not advise for any of your your viewers here that could just go out into the canadian arctic and jump in cold water right and stay in it right um you know and one of the things that i learned here the hard way the first time that i did when i was two minutes and 30 seconds is i dropped my body temp down to 32. 4 right so i was borderline hypothermic hypothermic right and it was a really big wake-up call that uh what i was doing could potentially be very dangerous right so if you're gonna go out in a body of cold water even if it's an ice bath make sure somebody's there with you right another thing is if you're doing the breath work um never while driving and never while in the water not even the tub right there's a thing called shallow water blackout right and um unfortunately there there has been a death or two that have occurred from it right some of one of the the things that it's just not good so just make sure you're always with somebody if you're going to do the cold water that that's the bottom line key to it right you know you always want to you want to work on a body system right and uh so so either way breath work uh cold water right through the app is a great way to start otherwise if you go on the wimhoffmethod. com there on the website there is an instructor's portal that can let you know where there are workshops on the go and when unless you sign up for them right and beyond that you can also reach me unfortunately i don't have a website yet together it's in in the works right uh i do have a facebook page it's called alternative breath and cold survival therapies right so alternative breath and cold

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right so alternative breath and cold survivor survival therapies or you can email me at abcoldst outlook. com and i'm charlie clements awesome i love that oh my goodness i'm very excited and i think it's important exactly to just start simple just do the shower and then go from there and then if your interest is is deep then then keep going but i feel like for me with so many things on the go i literally like three kids that are tiny like it's like the shower is the best because it's like short 30 seconds i can do that i can probably make that happen yeah absolutely and look um a lot of people say or if you get into the groups a lot of people try to impress that this needs to be done in the morning this can be done at any time of day right it's good in the morning because of what the science that we've talked about does right um you know so you do the breathing in the morning great um you do the cold shower in the morning great it's just going to be like it's going to replace your cup of coffee i generally do it mid afternoon evening right so usually you know when you'd be looking for that second cup of coffee third cup of coffee four cup of coffee right um i'll do it then right i'll i'll do my my breath work and then i'll go and do my ice bath or typically i'll go do a run and then go do my ice bath there and use that as an absolute recharge for the rest of my diet beautiful well thank you so much charlie for joining us here this was incredible and i'm very excited to keep following you on your page and you should definitely start a youtube channel because i feel like all the videos you make should be seen by more people so yeah you know it's more permanent yeah definitely i thought our consideration i think somebody's probably suggested that to me here it's just uh not very savvy with the with all the media social media they're starting to get it together you're so

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starting to get it together you're so consistent you're like you show up constantly and i that's one of the best ways to get a following i think is when you're being very consistent and so yeah don't be shy get yourself out there because like people need this people need to see this and people need to know that there's somebody in canada that's doing this that can help support them if they want to work with you yeah absolutely and look um i reach out to people personally every day people reach out to me personally maybe not every day but every once in a while um so if somebody has a simple question or whatever just reach out right yeah i might not answer you like on the spot yeah but as soon as i have a minute i'll gladly answer and help right that's what i'm here to do i'm here to help people right i'm out here to help i'm here to heal right and through wim hof method you can do both right you just got to choose to get on board with it yeah it's as simple as that but again you have to choose yeah you have to choose right it's there's no pressure here right you have to choose to do the breath work you have to choose especially choose to get into the cold but if you do you're going to be so rewarded guaranteed or money back i love that um one thing that i do want to research a little bit more that i'm not sure about and i'm not sure if you know this but um for women especially in their postpartum time that are going through like um this healing and in the childbearing years i'm not sure about the safety of cold plunging at that point or especially like when you're breastfeeding or maybe even after you're done breastfeeding but maybe your body's not healed yet from having kids that's the part that i'm a bit like i need to know more information on that and i'm wondering if you know where i could find that information uh there's nothing technical out there in the studies yet other than what our instructors kind of talk about amongst ourselves but you know through our participants right um the the breath work while pregnant definitely a great thing yeah um

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definitely a great thing yeah um the cold water yeah probably not well the science isn't really there yeah it's not recommended and we don't recommend it it's kind of the bottom line to it right um now postpartum both absolutely fabulous for you okay great um and uh so i'm just trying to think of through the range of conversations that we've had about the breastfeeding there there hasn't been uh any real negatives per se okay you know like this has occurred or that's occurred it's going to be different for everybody yeah right so what i would say about it is to to tr you know try it don't force right um and see if it helps you right be aware of what it does for you right judge one day from the next day right so today i didn't do breathing today i did do breathing how i felt right one versus the other but on the postpartum uh just dealing with the anxiety yeah everything that you guys i have five kids right so so i look i i'm not i didn't bear any of them but you go through a lot right so any kind of tool that can help you 100 yeah grab onto it take hold of it yeah and that's why i started this channel it's all about like postpartum sanity like how and like mom sanity like how do we use all the tools that we can find in order to help align ourselves and be sane for as many hours of the day as humanly possible considering everything going on right right and bottom line to this here is if it helps reduce your anxiety right it alkalizes you right and it brings you to a better place and a better mental state it's going to bring your child there too yes your child's only going to feed off off of your state yeah right so if

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off of your state yeah right so if you're in a better brain state you're in a better body state a better state of consciousness your child's going to carry all that with you as well that's powerful yeah yeah that's definitely something i'm going to have to research more because a lot of cultures have a thing about staying warm when you're healing so i'm gonna have to really dive in there but but yeah i love it and i love the conversation and yeah i feel like especially when you're done breastfeeding and you're still experiencing some anxiety symptoms and you know you could definitely benefit from trying it exactly and like use yourself as a guinea pig and see see what happens yeah and look if any official science comes out i mean it's exactly the problem is you know testing on the human bodies right uh and you know testing on somebody who's pregnant um you know it gets into some gray areas right we can safely rule out doing it in pregnancy but i do but like like you said i think breath work is always advantageous yeah absolutely anything that gets you your mind into a better place and look this breathing i do it daily right um and it always gets me into a better place after breath work than before i stop it's the best one of the best 20 minute investments i have every day that's right the ice bath my ice bath is only five minutes you know it's even quicker right but yes a little bit more to it again uh you know the breath is easy we all breathe so yeah thank you so much i am so excited to keep following your journey and i cannot wait to see you soar and help as many people as possible thank you so much i appreciate the opportunity and the wonderful interviewer today thank you charlie have a beautiful day take care bye