The notes, p.19
Exposure, page 19
Exposure
Also by Wim Hof
The Wim Hof Method
The Way of the Iceman
Becoming the Iceman
Exposure
The Life of the Iceman in Photos
How an Outlier’s Journey Illuminates the Extremes of Power, Vitality, and Possibility
Wim Hof
Photography by Henny Boogert
The feats included in the following pages are not related to the Wim Hof Method protocol. These are extreme acts performed by a highly trained individual. Please speak with a professional whenever investigating and engaging in new modalities.
If you wish to learn more about the Wim Hof Method, please refer to the website and strictly follow the safety guidelines.
The Wim Hof Method breathing can affect motor control and, in rare cases, lead to loss of consciousness. Always sit or lie down when practicing the techniques. Never practice the Wim Hof Method breathing exercises in or near bodies of water—that includes before or during diving, swimming, or taking a bath—piloting a vehicle, or in any other situation where loss of consciousness could result in bodily harm.
Additionally, the cold is a powerful force, and extreme cold can be a shock to your body. We strongly advise to start slowly and gradually build up exposure. Be sure to follow the proper cold exposure protocol.
Contents
Introduction
A Note from Henny
Part One: Revealing Parts
Part Two: Fully Exposed
Acknowledgments
Wim Hof
Henny Boogert
About Wim Hof
About Henny Boogert
About Sounds True
Introduction
Within these pages are some of the moments, now frozen in time, that have made up my life.
Always a bit of an outcast, I sought to understand the Soul. To live life unconditionally, uninhibited, open to whatever came my way. It can be unforgiving terrain but glorious all the same. Looking back through these images, I would never have thought I would be where I am now. I had no reference point. I always just followed my feeling. In turn, life has taken me on an unforeseen journey, wandering like a river, with unexpected twists and turns, through valleys and mountaintops.
I’m very fortunate to have a visual record of some of these pivotal seasons and moments in my life, thanks to my friend Henny. We met in a squat in Amsterdam when he was a budding photographer who needed a subject for his portfolio, and I was the guy always doing crazy stuff! Two completely different personalities united by a common goal . . . freedom. It was an instant friendship. Henny challenged me to be my best, and having him with me made me challenge myself to get the best out of myself. It was a specific dynamic. Unique. Henny has been there through many of the challenges I put my mind and body through, photographing and documenting a life lived on the outskirts of society—the early years of fatherhood, the adventures in the mountains, the world records, the scientific triumphs.
My life, as you will see in this photo book, has not been straightforward. I wasn’t able to see around corners in life. I am no wizard. I’m just an ordinary guy following his feeling, but I always had faith and belief in myself, in living every moment fully no matter what was in front of me. It is as simple as that. That’s always been the heart of my method. Following your gut and feelings isn’t a magic bullet that makes everything easy, but it takes you on a path that unfurls you like a beautiful piece of nature. You become one with it. Whatever form it takes. My wish is for you to live life fully, no matter what is in front of you. To live life with heart and soul and a good laugh. You see, we are all unique and have the ability to live huge. I didn’t come from much, but my enduring belief in life got me here. Living life every day with playfulness, attention, and soul, while holding true to my belief that we are so much more than we think. If it has shown me anything, it is that life happens in a wondrous moment, beyond thoughts. Spontaneous being, that is where your ultimate potential resides.
This is a book for the dreamer. For the person who wants to discover new frontiers. Who knows there is something more not only out there but in here, in their own body and mind. It is for the many, many people who have found joy and strength in practicing my method for years. It is for first-timers who still shiver at the idea of jumping into a frozen lake or even just taking a cold shower. It is for every curious person in between. You’re capable of so much more than you know. Than what you give yourself credit for.
That doesn’t mean you should go free solo a mountain or run a half marathon barefoot in the arctic circle. I’ve done a lot of crazy things that no one else should do. Reaching your full potential isn’t about pushing the extreme to your breaking point. It’s more than just cold plunges. It’s about going inward. About tapping into the part of you that’s been buried. The part where you allow feeling and intuition to guide you. Where you trust yourself and your connection to the earth.
May you be inspired by the photos, poetry, and stories in this book. I took life on as something to be discovered. I had to go out there and experience it all. No thinking, just being. I went into the extremes, pushing past many perceived boundaries to bring you the simplest of truths. We can do more than we think! Life can be experienced by anyone, simply and without having to complicate it. It is all as nature provided, right there waiting.
Know that you are incredible, just as you are, a piece of beautiful nature. Cherish your mind, live fully and openly with all your heart, and let us shine bright like stars through our unrelenting radiating Soul.
There we are, here we go.
No ego, we go.
A Note from Henny
I first met Wim in a squat in Amsterdam Zuid (south) in the 1980s. We had occupied a former orphanage, and he was already living there when I moved in. You would usually see him sitting in the yard meditating, wearing nothing but a pair of undies, even in the snow. Or nothing at all! He could sit there and stare for hours with his eyes drifting away, softly om-ing. His wife was living in the squat, too. I believe they had had one or two young kids who were born in the squat during that time.
One day, my friend and I decided to have a chat with him. Wim immediately introduced us to some karate exercises and yoga. No one was busy with yoga at the time, so this was all new to us. But Wim was already weaving this into a lifestyle. He was always communicating with everybody, playing the guitar . . . he was just so full of life. Sometimes I’d bump into him in the park nearby, where he would be meditating or practicing yoga. In the winter, when the pond was frozen, he would make a hole in the ice and then enter the water through it, in nothing but his trunks. At some point, I saw him making two holes with a meter or so in between, and he went from one to the other. Underneath the ice. These were his first steps.
We gradually started doing more things together. We became kind of friends, but more action-minded friends. You wouldn’t see us sitting down and having a chat over tea. It seemed something was always happening when we spent time together. That’s when I started taking pictures of him. I was a photography student at Rietveld Academie, in Amsterdam, so I was always walking around with a camera. And I sure did find Wim an interesting motif!
I started photographing Wim more frequently in Spain. Wim’s wife was Spanish. Many times we’d visit her parents in Pamplona and spend time with some friends of hers living at an abandoned farm in the area, in the middle of nowhere. In yoga terms, Wim decided to make this place his ashram. He started inviting people from the Netherlands, including me. So we drove down to Spain by car, went swimming, climbing, even canyoning. We spent a lot of time there in the mid-1980s. All of the fun and excitement ended when back in Amsterdam our squat was evicted, and we each had to find new homes. Wim and Olaya decided to head to Spain, back to the farmhouse, and I moved south, about ten kilometers away. Although I was sad this part of my life was over, I was so thankful for the connection with Wim in my life then. I wished him well and went on my way.
And then a few years later, Wim appeared on my television screen in some footage broadcast by a local television station. The funny thing was, he was doing exactly the same thing that had caught my attention back in the squat years earlier. It was winter, and he was sitting in a local park in the ice. So, he’s still around, it struck me. After the eviction, each of us had been going about our own lives and hadn’t kept in contact. I was so excited to see him that I found out where he lived, got back in touch, and we continued right where we left off. It was as if no time had passed. We went to Spain, climbed some trees, swam in some lakes, went canyoning. Nothing had changed. I started photographing him again and following him around documenting the many travel outings he’d host for himself and others. We had plans to sell the pictures to papers and magazines, only no one wanted to pay for them.
But it turned out that Willibrord Frequin, a known reporter with one of the bigger local television stations, had seen the very footage I saw and decided they needed to film Wim. So they filmed Wim in the ice, swimming underneath the ice, while I photographed beside them. And that’s when things started getting big and the Iceman was born. They started doing challenges with Wim, making him sit in a box full of ice or taking him to Lapland to swim long distances. Wim finally got the audience and attention he deserved. And I was there every step of the way with my camera. I even went with him under the ice in Lapland!
Over the years, I have taken thousands of shots of Wim from all angles and perspectives. We’ve been to the US, Iceland, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Spain, and France, and probably a few othe
Henny Boogert
Part One
Revealing Parts
In 1999, I received my first Guinness World Record in Paris. I sat for thirty minutes, “full body contact in ice,” as they called it. This set off a frenzy of appearances around the world, and “the Iceman” was born. I was seen as a daredevil, an anomaly, but these extreme appearances are what led to the scientific discoveries that have since remapped our understanding of the natural capabilities of the human body and mind. Incredible how that all happened! For years I had practiced on my own in the lakes and canals of Amsterdam, a family man trying to make ends meet, and now there is a global movement even outside of the Wim Hof Method.
But I have had my fair share of light and darkness. As you will see in these pages, I have lived many lives. Not being locked into a nine-to-five daily routine, I followed my ideas, the drive to think freely, be free, and realize my dreams. That was always deeply ingrained in my psyche. It has always been a subcurrent and never left.
Looking back, you could say the squat set the course of my life. It was in that neighborhood that I had my first deep conscious encounter with the cold. I met Olaya there in 1980 and had two of our four children there. So much of my thinking was founded within those walls. We lived in freedom. Society was outside those walls. Inside we had space to think freely, without the normal pressures of daily life. That space for thought allowed for natural contemplations. I developed a discipline that was my liberation. The value of that became the foundation of all my philosophical goals. That was where my spiritual destiny sprouted, without me even knowing it. I just went with the flow of it all.
Those times were filled with a lot of idealism and created a founding land to build upon—a kind of heaven in a way. Still, as we were a growing family, when everyone at the squat was evicted, we decided to leave for Spain to build an ashram in the mountains, a place for Souls to meet and live creatively. We had hoped we could do this. But the dream was short-lived. Olaya’s condition took a turn for the worse, so we packed up and returned to the Netherlands. That initiated one of the darker periods of my and Olaya’s life. A heaven and a hell. From the idealism of the squat and the dream of the ashram to the reality of living in the real world with a small family and a wife who was getting deeper and deeper into the shadows, until she took her life in 1995.
Can you imagine the pain she was in? And I couldn’t help her. And now here I was with four children and no idea of what to do. We were helpless. But I just kept going. I had to. It was a very dark period. The through line, the thread that held me together, was one of faith and discipline. Of facing the here and now with heart. The cold and the breathing enabled me to have enough energy to face life as it was, and it made me feel good. I would wake at four every morning to do my breathing. I would practice in the colder months in the lake, doing all my crazy exercises that helped me feel my body and the energy. This let me see through it all to the Soul of the moments right in front of me.
It’s easy to succumb to what you think your reality is, to fall into the illusion of it all. The struggle. But I had no space for that. I had to take care of my kids. And I found that my discipline pulled me through.
I took on life! I used anything I could to explore my body and mind. In Amsterdam, I scaled the trees and kayaked in the harbor, climbed rock walls and dipped in icy waters. In the mountains and canyons of the Spanish Pyrenees, the abundance of nature provided me with a testing ground to push past my perceived limits and just bask in the beauty of it all. I’m not encouraging anyone to go to the extremes I did. It’s imperative you listen to your body and mind and care for the limits that are right for you. Tuning into your innate energy holds the opportunity to crack you open in all the right ways.
Henny joined me on many of my adventures in Spain and Amsterdam. We lost contact for some years after that, but we picked up where we left off after he saw me on a local Amsterdam TV station doing my training in the cold. From there, he often joined me in the Pyrenees where I took groups to explore with me. We even made it into a couple of outdoor adventure magazines. These early years enabled me to act when opportunity came knocking. I was ready. I had been through it all, and it felt like the energy was ascending.
The Iceman was about to be born.
Getting into Utthita Utthana Padmasana.
Every day I would go to the park and do asanas. Discipline was my liberation. I was a young man but also very curious about everything I could do. I was very focused on that. I trained every day without a pretense of what to do, always following my feeling. It is that simple. I wasn’t locked into a certain regime. I just kept at it, no matter what it was. If you keep a discipline, slowly but surely, the reward of that is huge.
My discipline in the earlier years began with my fascination with Eastern thought. I stumbled across a yoga book in the local library in my hometown and began to make a practice out of the poses. It was about creating flow. Hatha yoga is about decluttering and removing blockages in the physical body. This has an amazing impact on the mind. Perfect!
In the kitchen of the old farmhouse we rented, our little ashram. Enahm and Isa by my side.
In 1985, we left the squat in search of a place of our own. We headed for Spain with the dream of creating an ashram in the mountains. Inspired by our freethinking in the squat, we wanted to manifest it for ourselves. We wanted to revive an old farm and make it a community. Just like-minded people, living together, sharing, no individualism.
One of the few photos we have of Olaya. Here holding baby Laura on the balcony.
The innocence of children. Isa enjoying an apple in the farmhouse kitchen.
As the firstborn, Enahm had an intimate bond with his mother. Here he is around the age of five or so. An energetic kid, he was always pushing past himself. He developed his distinct identity very early on.
Daily life. Little kids and boxes. Classic. The simple pleasures. Love binds it all.
We found this fox skin when we were building the ashram. Just playing the part.
Turtle
As fast as a slow turtle
Signs
Science
Patients patience
Where stress becomes second
Time has gone
Until its done
Results in publishing
Patience exercised
Patients helped
Bless the stress
That made this possible
As fast as a slow turtle another hurdle
A leap of consciousness
Factual awareness
Where stress is channeled
Into oceans of understanding
That I know nothing
Here we are in Burlada, Spain.
I have Laura on my lap, and Isa is there also. Olaya by the waterside. By that point, we had tried everything and anything to help Olaya get out of the shadows. Nothing worked, and it became difficult to uphold my own emotional and mental state with the children. It wasn’t long before we decided to go back to the Netherlands, and I set off on quite a downward spiral trying to find more safety and stability for the children. I lost contact with Henny. But I always continued to keep my discipline, exercising, and I had my idealistic, utopian ideas somehow frozen.
