Are you brave enough to freeze yourself fitter? KATE SPICER takes the plunge

The words I’ve been dreading come without warning. ‘Now get yourself into your swimmers. You can undress here or by the water, it’s up to you.’

At this instruction — uttered unnervingly calmly by our retreat leader Allan Brownlie — we all go silently about the lodge getting into our beach gear.

Except we’re not heading to the beach, but to a small river (a ‘burn’, in the Scots dialect) nearby in the Highlands, and it’s certainly not beach weather outside. It’s around 6c and the fast-running burn is fringed with frost and ice.

Exposed human flesh won’t survive long in these conditions. I wear a down jacket and bobble hat over my swimming costume — but they’ll have to come off before I get into the water.

Kate Spicer (pictured braving the icy River Carron) gave verdict on the Wim Hof Method retreat at Alladale Wilderness Reserve Sutherland

And however cold the river, I will be going in, as I am on a Wim Hof Method retreat, the central principle of which is the power of immersing yourself in freezing water. Frequently, and for prolonged periods.

This is not for thrills, derring-do or laughs, but for the lessons provided by ‘cold, the harshest teacher there is’, according to Allan, one of 560 instructors teaching the method worldwide.

Harnessing the cold for health and well-being treatments is extremely fashionable at the moment, and the Wim Hof Method (WHM) is the toughest and most notorious cold therapy programme out there.

Health claims for the method are quite something: using it, we can gain mastery over our normally autonomic (unconscious) nervous system, meaning we can choose when we do and don’t go into the adrenalised ‘sympathetic’ fight or flight mode, or the calm ‘rest and digest’ parasympathetic mode.

Cold therapy can boost our immunity, raise our metabolism, squash laziness, reduce inflammation, protect our heart from cardiovascular disease and help us become mentally strong.

Wim Hof himself, the Dutchman who devised the method, is known as the ‘Iceman’. He has broken world records for swimming under ice (57 metres), being packed in ice (his longest attempt just short of two hours) and climbing Everest in only shorts and shoes.

When he runs marathons it’s barefoot and, you guessed it, on ice (and once in a desert without any water).

Hof, now 60, investigated cold therapy and developed the programme after his depressive wife, despite heavy medication, killed herself in 1995. His goal, he says, is to make people, ‘happy, strong and healthy’.

Kate (pictured) revealed there are no firm figures on the number of people practising the Wim Hof method, developed to make people, ¿happy, strong and healthy¿

Kate (pictured) revealed there are no firm figures on the number of people practising the Wim Hof method, developed to make people, ‘happy, strong and healthy’

On his website you’ll find testimonials from fans of its positive impact on multiple sclerosis, grief and self-discipline.

He also makes much of the science that backs up his method: in one small study in 2014, 12 people instructed in Wim Hof for just one week appeared to shrug off the injection of a flu-causing E-coli bacteria; while another 12 not instructed in WHM, the control group, went down with the bug.

Research at the University of Amsterdam into the regime’s effects on people with axial spondyloarthritis, an arthritis of the lower back, had similarly positive results, finding it reduced inflammatory proteins and warranted further study as a ‘novel therapeutic approach in patients with inflammatory conditions’.

Recent Nobel Prize-winning research, Hof says, further validates his breathing methods.

But many have tried to debunk it, too, including a cynical New York Times journalist called Scott Carney who set out to unpick and expose the method, but ended up writing a book, What Doesn’t Kill Us, in celebration of all it can do.

While there are no firm figures on the number of people practising it, Wim Hof has 700,000 followers on Instagram, 250,000 downloads of his Wim Hof Method app and a further half a million registered to the website. The methods he devised are now a business; you can unlock basic teachings online for free — after that, you pay. Or, like me, you can attend a retreat.

Hof may be a superhuman freak of nature, but his methods are not those of a health outlier.

Brutal school traditions of cold showers to toughen kids up may have gone out of fashion, but cryo (from the ancient greek for ‘icy cold’), remains a buzzword in wellness circles.

Kate (pictured) said they were warned on the first morning of the retreat that they're hours away from the nearest hospital

Kate (pictured) said they were warned on the first morning of the retreat that they’re hours away from the nearest hospital

Cryofacials and skin icing are used in beauty treatments; subzero cryochambers. including the 111Cryo at Harrods, are growing in popularity; and diets, like the eminently sensible fitness expert Peta Bee’s The Ice Diet (Penguin), extol the benefits of cold on weight loss and well-being.

Athletes have long used post-match ice baths to flush their muscles with blood. Heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill used to stand in a wheelie bin of iced water, while Andy Murray takes baths at 8-10c after a game. Well, all I can say is, lightweights!

On the first morning of the retreat at the remote Alladale Wilderness Reserve in Sutherland, Allan tells us not to do anything stupid as there’s no one to help you here and we are hours from the nearest hospital.

Once in our swimming gear, we (me, Brownlie and two Wim Hof converts also on the retreat) walk down to the burn, past the shaggy Highland ponies who watch with confusion as we wade into the water.

When we reach waist height, we crouch down so only the tops of our shoulders are visible and look up at the snow-capped mountains around us.

From the shore, Allan reminds us to breathe long and steady through the nose. By steering our breath from a stressed fight-or-flight mouth pant to a slow, steady calming nostril breath, we dominate our autonomic response to scream and cry and run.

I say ‘we’ — the others do. The two of them sit looking peacefully into the distance like subaquatic Easter Island statues. They are mastering that biting fear of cold, learning to dominate the base instincts to flee from it.

I sit on the river bed shrieking and panting, crying out to a seasoned Wim Hofer, an army officer also on the retreat: ‘How the hell did you manage this for 20 minutes?’

Kate (pictured) expected that cold water immersion would be doable, as she's previously done open-water swimming

Kate (pictured) expected that cold water immersion would be doable, as she’s previously done open-water swimming

He continues to stare ahead as if I do not exist. (Later he says, politely, that I was being annoying, distracting his focus.)

‘Stop talking,’ says Allan. ‘Breathe. Relax your gaze. Soften your gaze. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the glorious sunshine.’

I stop yelping, but don’t manage the soft breathing through my nose thing. Instead, I just pant with my mouth open like a dog locked in a hot car, as the intense cold sets off a chaos of panicked fireworks in my body.

As someone who has done a fair bit of open-water swimming, I had expected the cold immersion would be, if not easy, then doable. But it tests me.

It’s fine when it’s just our socks we take off to walk barefoot in the frost till our feet turn numb, or when we remove our mittens to splash our faces with stream water, or submerge our hands until they sizzle with cold.

What I dread is that at least once a day, we place our entire bodies in the icy River Carron, which flows from the snow-topped Highland mountains I can see around us.

On the second day it only challenges me more.

I manage to submerge quietly, but the physical sensations are just as tough, and I am nervous and insecure this time: I know what is coming. Again, the cold throttles the breath from my body and attacks me to my core, but I manage to get some nose breathing in. I appear calm, even if it’s chaos inside.

There is a feeling inside me like a bubble moving around, an unfamiliar queasy and non-specific emotional feeling.

‘OK, two minutes, you can come out now Kate.’

Two minutes! Is that all?

Kate (pictured) admits the experience released old trauma and at times left her feeling embarrassed

Kate (pictured) admits the experience released old trauma and at times left her feeling embarrassed 

My fellow Wim Hofers, the army officer, 31, and Rachel, a glowing 25-year-old, beach volleyball-playing maths tutor from San Diego, have travelled 20,000 miles between them to be here and appear unfazed by the temperature.

They sit it out for six minutes as if the Carron’s ice-edged, peat‑tinted crystalline waters were 27 c not hovering icily round freezing point.

I’d been warned by Allan that ‘the cold can cause mechanical things to fall apart’, but physically I am OK. Mentally, however, something’s not right.

For five minutes I just about hold it together. I head past the growling generator and the non-plussed Highland ponies back to the house we all share, Deanich Lodge. The others start doing press-ups. I walk straight upstairs and hide under a duvet and some blankets and start to writhe uncontrollably.

What is happening? Is it just the cold? Sure, my fingers are burning with pain as the warm blood re-enters my extremities, but this is something else. It’s like I’m possessed.

I continue to convulse in the foetal position while making weird growling sounds. Then, five or 15 minutes later (I have no idea), it stops. I bounce out of bed and go downstairs, bumping into Allan.

‘Is there anything you would like to talk about?’ he asks. ‘The harsh teacher of the cold combined with the breathing unlocks and releases old trauma. You are free to talk here if you need to.’

‘No thanks,’ I say, feeling embarrassed.

Later, eating the supper we all prepare together in the evening, I feel brave enough to share my cold-induced episode. Vibrant, uncomplaining Rachel admits she, too, felt a bubble of alarming emotion rise in her body as she was submerged. Allan says that recognising and acknowledging vulnerability is a good thing.

Breathing, he says, can help with this.

The Wim Hof Method is founded on three pillars: cold therapy, breathing and commitment (to the first two pillars).

Every day on the retreat we do several rounds of Wim Hof breathing. Through the nose first, fast breath in and out 40 times, then hold the breath on an exhalation for as long as possible. (I never make it past two minutes 15 seconds; Wim Hof can hold his breath for ten minutes without trying.)

Kate (pictured) said she left the retreat with mixed feelings and used Wim Hof nostril breathing as she returned to daily life

Kate (pictured) said she left the retreat with mixed feelings and used Wim Hof nostril breathing as she returned to daily life

This is followed by a deep inhale, which we hold as we direct our attention to different parts of our body.

We do the same again for mouth breathing until my ears ring and arms tingle. I guess it’s controlled hyperventilation.

Nutrition, surprisingly, is not one of the pillars. In fact, this must be the first retreat I have ever been on (and I’ve done a few) where the food is so, well, normal. There’s no junk food, but there’s no plant-based prescription or low-carb message either.

We have chicken, bacon, eggs, coffee, bread, butter, cheese, jam, peanut butter and lots of fruit and veg.

Allan says nutrition is an overstated aspect to human health, and I agree with him to an extent. His retreat goes somewhere far darker and deeper than diet, to the very heart of what we are.

Allan is living, breathing evidence of what cold therapy can do for your appetite. Wiry like a mountain goat, he eats an entire pack of bacon and numerous eggs every day for breakfast. Regular cold therapy is clearly more effective than dieting.

Over breakfast and supper we talk surprisingly deeply about our own lives. Just two years ago Rachel was suffering severe symptoms of a kidney-related, auto-immune disease and the side-effects of drugs given to treat it. She retained so many kilos of water that she could not open her eyes.

This smiley California girl spent months reading around her illness and came across Wim Hof on YouTube. She started to practise his method, stopped taking huge quantities of medication and says she remains well to this day. For some, it is simply a wellness tool; for others, a lifestyle trend; and for those like Rachel, it is life-changing.

I leave Alladale with mixed feelings. The retreat has been an object lesson in what Allan calls type two fun, meaning the deferred satisfaction and enjoyment in confronting sometimes painful challenges to body and mind, and the highs and rewards that eventually brings.

Re-entering the real world is the test of any retreat’s success. As we leave the reserve, a ping of text messages indicates that reception has reactivated my dormant phone. The involuntary squirt of adrenaline caused by all these emails and texts makes me aware of how incessantly our fight-or-flight mode is engaged in daily life.

Kate (pictured) said although the retreat made her feel fragile and vulnerable at times, the method has been invaluable

Kate (pictured) said although the retreat made her feel fragile and vulnerable at times, the method has been invaluable

But I have an antidote. I sit and do a round of Wim Hof nostril breathing.

As Allan said to me as I left the lodge: ‘Think of the Wim Hof as a tool you can deploy in your life. Own your private Wim Hof practice. It can be short, medium, or long, but you must commit and do it on a regular basis.’

Back in London, the following day I wake up groggy, so do a bit of energising mouth breathing then take the dog and jump in the Serpentine Lido, a balmy 3.6 degrees after Scotland’s closer to 1c. All around me other Serpentine Swimming Club members are proof humans can acclimatise to the cold. I swim about 25 metres. A 75-year-old man gets out next to me, his body a shivering, vital, livid red.He has done about 400.

I do the same the next day. Cold water makes coffee look like a sleeping tablet. Get up and go is swiftly restored. It acts like a reboot.

A few days later I come down with an achy, sore throaty bug. Drat! Or not? Could I beat it off with some Wim Hof mouth breathing? I sit on my bed feeling bunged up and do three rounds of the hyperventilating breath used in the trial. And I do feel much better.

A week later I have a panic attack at night because I am tired and dealing with an ongoing stressful situation. My long-term relationship is coming to an end. I am facing a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity.

After a sleepless night I drag myself out of bed, tired and vibrating with anxiety, and head down to the Serpentine. I swim a tiny distance, maybe 20 metres.

As I walk back afterwards, I calmly unravel what stressed me, work out what is a real problem and what is just fear of the unknown, I find a solution, and feel re-grounded.

Learning Wim Hof for five days was tough. It made me feel very fragile and vulnerable at times. I will never swim 57 metres under ice. But since the retreat, using the method in my own small way has been invaluable.

WIM Hof at Alladale costs £900 for five days and four nights, all food included. Book through allanbrownlie.com

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