The Wim Hof Method for Beginners: What It Is and What the Research Shows

A few years ago, a Dutch man named Wim Hof started showing up everywhere. Climbing a snowy mountain in shorts. Swimming under ice. Running barefoot through frozen forests. He had a method, he said, and anyone could learn it.

The method is simple. Three pillars: a particular breathing pattern, exposure to cold, and a mental commitment piece that mostly comes down to consistency. It has built a global following, become a Netflix series, and produced more anecdotes than a single review can fit. The research community has slowly caught up. The picture that has emerged is more nuanced than the marketing, and more interesting than the skeptics suggest.

If you want to try the breathing protocol with proper pacing, our Wim Hof Breathing tool guides you through the standard rounds.

The breathing protocol

The Wim Hof breathing exercise is what most people start with, because it does not require a cold plunge. You can do it on a yoga mat.

1. Sit or lie comfortably. Take 30 to 40 fast, deep breaths. Inhale fully through the nose, exhale loosely through the mouth. Do not strain. The exhales are passive, like letting a balloon deflate.
2. After the last exhale, stop breathing. Hold your breath out until you feel a clear urge to breathe again. This is the "retention" phase. It can be anywhere from 30 seconds to over two minutes depending on practice.
3. When you need to breathe, take one big inhale. Hold the inhale for about 15 seconds.
4. Exhale and relax for one normal breath.
5. Repeat the whole cycle three or four times.

That is one session. It usually takes ten to fifteen minutes. Most people finish feeling tingly, lightheaded, and unusually alert. Some feel emotional. Some feel sleepy. Reactions vary.

A safety rule that everyone should know but few articles emphasise: never do this in or near water, and never while driving. The cyclic hyperventilation can cause a brief loss of consciousness, especially during the breath retention. People have drowned doing it in pools. The standard practice is on the floor, on a couch, or on the ground outside in safe conditions.

What is happening in the body

The fast deep breathing reduces carbon dioxide in the blood (mild hyperventilation). This produces lightheadedness, tingling, and the familiar "buzzed" feeling. Because the urge to breathe is triggered mostly by rising CO2 rather than falling oxygen, the subsequent breath hold can last much longer than a normal hold. You temporarily fool your respiratory centre.

The breath retention with low CO2 also briefly drops oxygen saturation, sometimes dramatically. Smartwatches and pulse oximeters will show readings in the 60s and 70s during long retentions. This is alarming on paper. In healthy people doing the practice on land for short periods, it appears to be safe; the body recovers quickly with the recovery inhale.

The 2014 Kox study in PNAS is the headline study people quote. Trained Wim Hof practitioners were injected with a bacterial endotoxin (E. coli LPS) that normally produces flu-like symptoms. Those who had trained with the method showed reduced inflammatory response and less severe symptoms compared to untrained controls. Notably, they also showed elevated adrenaline during the breathing exercise, which is the proposed mechanism. The study was small but rigorous and started the modern research wave.

The most recent systematic review, Almahayni and Hammond's 2024 paper in PLOS ONE, pulled together the available studies. Their cautious conclusion: there is some evidence that the Wim Hof method may reduce inflammation in healthy participants, and weaker evidence for benefits on mood and stress. The evidence base is small, the studies are mostly short-term, and many have methodological issues. We are roughly where meditation research was twenty years ago. Promising and worth more rigorous work.

The cold piece

The second pillar is cold exposure. Cold showers, ice baths, immersion in cold water, walks in winter without a jacket. The cold work and the breathing reinforce each other in the official curriculum, but the published cold-exposure research is mostly separate.

Buijze and colleagues' 2016 randomised trial in PLOS ONE looked at cold showering and found that participants assigned to end their daily shower with a cold spray took fewer sick days from work over the following months than the warm-shower control group. They did not report fewer illnesses overall, just fewer sick days. The effect was small but reached statistical significance.

Other studies have shown that cold exposure increases circulating norepinephrine sharply, which is associated with improved mood and alertness in the hours afterward. Brown fat activation, a small but metabolically active type of fat tissue, also responds to repeated cold exposure.

The cardiovascular risks of cold exposure are real, though. Cold-water immersion sharply increases blood pressure and heart rate in the first seconds, which is dangerous for people with uncontrolled heart conditions. Start with cold showers, not ice baths.

A simple way to begin

If you want to try the method without overcommitting, here is a low-friction starting plan for two weeks.

Days 1 to 7: Three rounds of Wim Hof breathing in the morning. End your daily shower with 30 seconds of cold water. No ice baths.

Days 8 to 14: Three to four rounds of breathing. Extend the cold portion of your shower to a minute. Optional: a short walk outside in cold clothes if your climate allows.

Two weeks is enough to know whether the method clicks for you. Some people feel a clear difference in energy, mood, and stress tolerance. Others find the breathing uncomfortable and the cold miserable. Both are valid responses.

Who should be careful

This is the part most introductory articles skip.

Do not do the Wim Hof breathing if:

• You are pregnant. The hyperventilation and CO2 changes are not recommended.
• You have epilepsy or a history of seizures. The CO2 changes can trigger seizures in susceptible people.
• You have uncontrolled cardiovascular disease, severe hypertension, or arrhythmias.
• You have a history of fainting or vasovagal syncope.
• You are recovering from a recent stroke.

Do not do cold-water immersion if:

• You have uncontrolled heart disease or a history of cardiac arrhythmias.
• You have Raynaud's syndrome (cold may exacerbate it).
• You are alone in deep cold water (always have a buddy, always be near safety).

Never do the breathing in or near water. Pool drownings during static apnea practice are documented and tragic. Do it on land.

These cautions are not hypothetical. The 2024 review noted several case reports of adverse events tied to inappropriate practice. The method is reasonably safe for healthy adults who follow the rules. It is not appropriate for everyone.

What the breathing alone is good for

If you do not want to do the cold, the breathing alone seems to have value. It produces a brief, intense parasympathetic-then-sympathetic shift that many people find energising and emotionally clarifying. Some describe it as the closest legal experience to a mild psychedelic state.

For everyday stress and anxiety, gentler patterns like coherent breathing or 4-7-8 usually work better and are far safer. The Wim Hof breathing is a special-occasion tool, not an everyday wind-down. Doing it once or twice a week is more typical than daily.

What the research does not yet show

It is worth being honest about what is unproven.

• We do not have strong evidence that the method prevents or treats specific medical conditions.
• We do not have evidence that it boosts the immune system in any clinically meaningful long-term way for healthy people.
• We do not have evidence that it produces unique benefits compared to other slow-breathing practices and cold exposure done separately.
• We do not have evidence that the "mental commitment" pillar is doing anything beyond the placebo and self-efficacy effects that show up in any disciplined practice.

The method is interesting. It may be helpful for some people. It is not a miracle. Treat the marketing accordingly.

FAQ

For other breathwork practices to compare with, the breathing techniques hub shows the full menu side by side. If you are curious about the underlying ideas of cold exposure and stress conditioning, our piece on nasal vs mouth breathing covers the related research on slow versus fast respiratory patterns.