Iceman cometh: climbing Mt. Everest in shorts

Yogi Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Wim Hof; A Martinez, Alex Cohen (Take Two, scpr.org); Scott Carney (degrading gynecological guide known as Playboy porno magazine)

He can't make it! We're cold in Gortex. He'll freeze to death. Who does he think he is, a barefoot Sherpa? (Kristoffer Erickson/news.nationalgeographic.com). Hey, is that Iceman?

Yogic pranayama (chi-energy manipulation by "breath regulation") makes it possible.

 

Gird your loins and get to the top.

[Dutch Yogi Master] Dutchman Wim Hof, better known as "Iceman" for his ability to withstand seemingly impossible levels of cold, spoke at a hotel in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2007 after successfully climbing Mt. Everest in shorts.

He didn't succeed in peaking, scaling to the top; he succeeded in not freezing to death in a place most people need oxygen tanks and layers of high tech thermal clothing to stave off frostbite.

Majestic Mt. Everest (Sagaramatha)

The "Iceman" climbed Mt. Everest wearing just shorts with the intention of making it all the way to the top. Although not reaching the summit, he vowed to have another half-naked crack at [allegedly] the world's highest peak. Hof said that next year he would try Everest again, and then with a paraglider and two French people they would fly down.

 

Huh, how?!

"Iceman" Wim Hof (scpr.org)

Wim Hof is a Dutch extremeophile, who claims he can consciously train his mind and body to withstand cold that would kill other humans.

 

He has hiked two-thirds up Mt. Everest in only shorts, run marathons barefoot in the Arctic Circle, and submerged himself below ice for 72 minutes.

Scientific study of Hof has borne out his claims. It is thought he has built up so-called "brown fat," a type of fat that can be burned easily by the body to generate heat [which we are born with but lose in favor of storing white fat around the belly and other "problem" areas].

 

It has articles? We just look at it...

All humans have brown fat when they are babies, which allows them to live without getting hypothermia, but most people lose their brown fat cells unless they are exposed to extreme cold temperatures.

 

Hof is the subject of a profile by Scott Carney, in this month's Playboy magazine. Carney visited Hof's training school in the Polish wilderness where he learned to lie in snow for extended periods and eventually climbed a mountain bare-chested in below freezing weather. LISTEN

Iceman Cometh

Scott Carney (playboy.com)

Sounds like Wim knows Indian yoga! (HuffPo)

A dilapidated farmhouse in the Polish countryside creaks and groans on its foundation as six men hyperventilate inside one of its frigid rooms.

The windows are caked with frost and snow piles up outside the front door. Wim Hof surveys his students with stern blue eyes as he counts their breaths. They are lying in sleeping bags and covered in blankets. Every breath they expel appears as a tiny puff of mist as the heat of their bodies crystallizes in the near-arctic air.

When the students are bleached white from exhaustion, Hof commands them to let all the air out of their lungs and hold their breath until their bodies shake and shudder. I exhale all my breath into the frigid air.

 

“Fainting is okay,” he says. “It just means you went deep.”

 

Hof is one of the world’s most recognized extremophiles. In 2007 he made headlines around the world when he attempted to summit Mount Everest wearing nothing but spandex shorts and hiking boots.

He has run barefoot marathons in the arctic circle and submerged his entire body beneath the ice for almost two hours. Every feat defies the boundaries of what medical science says is possible. Hof believes he is much more than a stuntman performing tricks; he thinks he has stumbled on hidden evolutionary potential locked inside every human body. More