Maintaining the Wim Hof Method: Discipline and Escalation
Discipline. It’s a pretty ironic idea, that is, in the way that it gets preached to us. Time and time again, I’ve heard that inspiration or motivation doesn’t just strike — and that’s true. You can’t go about writing a book thinking “I’ll write whenever I get inspired.” Who knows when inspiration will hit? Is inspiration just a miracle? Does it just happen for no apparent reason? That’s not the case.
Most inspiration does not come from mere happenstance, but instead emerges during hard work and discipline. Of course, I also realize that the way I’m describing the dynamic between discipline and motivation also falls under the contradictory intention that I have: I intend to inspire by explaining that inspiration won’t magically happen and that you should instead look to discipline (the very opposite of motivation). You might work out every day because you are motivated to look better by the time that school starts up again. In this case, you’ll likely enjoy working out regardless of the neurological benefits (releasing endorphins and thus relieving stress). But if you work out every day because you are disciplined, then you might not enjoy working out itself. Rather you are doing it for at least one of the following criteria:
- It would be good for yourself
- It would be good for your immediate family
- It would be good for the community
- It would be good for society as a whole
It’s important to note that “it would be good” does not refer to the completion or progress towards a goal, but instead correlates to the long-term benefit of (a) part(y/ies). Something “being good” for yourself does not mean that you seek a short-term goal such as looking better in a few months, but instead, means that there is some long-term benefit that does not serve as the main factor that pushes you to maintain it. Behind discipline there is a “hidden motivation,” but it is so muted by the sheer willpower to maintain said discipline (an exercise regimen, for example) that it does not push the individual to maintain a routine.
This hidden motivation is muffled mainly by the punishment that comes with discipline. Without punishment, there is no discipline. Regardless of its severity, punishment still serves as the invisible hand that guides the individual to maintain routine. The very definition of discipline from Google’s dictionary reads: “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.”
Forty Breaths, Four Times
If you haven’t read my blog post regarding Wim Hof, I would strongly recommend giving it a read before the following elaborations on his method.
When I first started practicing the Wim Hof Method, I didn’t exactly follow Wim’s recommendations for the breathing. I heard him say phrases like “3–4 rounds of breathing” and “30–40 deep breaths” and my mind was immediately drawn to the lower end. Even though I did my breathing exercises daily, I also didn’t push myself like I would with weightlifting, or swimming, or any other exercise for that matter. As Wim clarifies: “It’s a workout!” Though the breathing exercises serve as a form of meditation, it doesn’t mean that there needs to be a conscious effort to bring forth its ability to empty your mind. Wim Hof Breathing presents a paradox: On one hand, it is a practice of meditation that empties your mind and removes conscious effort from the equation. At the same time, it requires effort to bring forth into being — not fully committing to the breathing will ultimately allow stray thoughts to cross your mind and draw attention away from the lone task at hand.
The paradoxical nature of Wim Hof Breathing also aligns with the duality that the breath itself holds in regards to consciousness. Almost all of the time, we breathe unconsciously. We don’t need to make any conscious effort whatsoever to breathe; it may sound obvious and simple, but almost all of your breathing is automatic — even when you perform intensive activity, like running, your breath quickens without you actively thinking about it. At the same time, you can gain conscious control over your breath at any time.
You are now breathing manually.
Sorry. It’s fairly unlikely that you’re still breathing automatically. In fact, being reminded of any bodily function that is regularly automated but you can consciously control will usually result in you actively taking control over that function.
You are now blinking manually. You now realize that your nose is always in your line of sight.
And so I tried escalating the Wim Hof Method, particularly with the breathing portion of it by doing forty breaths, four times. Despite what you might initially think, I actually find the breathing more difficult than the cold therapy (which may be rooted in our deep biological history fighting the cold and our perception of it as evil). The difference lies primarily on the pushing factor of each one for me. Consider this: You have to take showers frequently; for simplicity’s sake, let’s create an obligation for ourselves to take one shower every day. No matter when that shower is, there is a period of preparation. You grab your towel, your clothes, and step in front of the shower to grab for the handle. What lies before you is an opportunity to challenge yourself (or to maintain your discipline), and taking a warm shower would be an act of tossing that opportunity aside. And with this thought process, I’ve found it straightforward (maybe not easy) to continue taking cold showers.
On the other hand, there are the breathing exercises. What pushes me to do that? Well, there isn’t an obligation that supports any form of manual breathing in the first place. It may sound ridiculous, but the only “obligation” is that you breathe automatically. So when I wake up in the morning, or before I take a cold shower, it never runs through my mind to do the breathing exercises. This isn’t to say that I don’t or never have, but it rarely happens because of some preexisting factor (like the necessity of taking a shower regularly).
So how do we get past this barrier? Unsurprisingly, the answer is discipline. You can think of it as routine: Your life is broken down into days, and only days. It’s not broken into hours or minutes or years. You can certainly find the cyclical nature of years, and maybe even hours and minutes, but the latter two are just too short. The former is simply too long to build routine over (though I would argue that it’s great for structuring long-term goals). So you live your life through days, and building routine into those days can get you over the hurdle of not wanting to do things (yes, we all struggle with this).
Though discipline doesn’t exactly categorize as a pushing factor, we need to consider the definition again. The pushing factor is instead, the punishment that comes with failure — a hidden pushing factor of sorts. Combine that with a pulling factor, and you become unstoppable. Find a Hell to run away from and a Heaven to chase after.
