Breaking the Ice with Wim Hof

Of all Wim’s stunts, it was one in which he almost lost his life that he says taught him the most. Stood on a frozen lake in Pello, Finland, just miles from the Arctic Circle, his task was to swim 180 feet under the ice, down one hole and out of the other. You can watch the eventual successful attempt on YouTube: there’s Wim, blue-eyed and thick-bearded, a man wearing nothing but swimming trunks, surrounded by a film crew in sensible thick coats. A few breathing exercises and in he goes, launching into an elegant breaststroke under the ice before emerging out of the other end. But the first time he tried, he forgot something.

“I lost track of the way because I had no goggles on,” he says. Wim’s eyes began to freeze over until, trapped beneath the frozen lake, he went blind. “But you know what? Because I did the breathing so thoroughly before going in the ice, I still had the right chemistry in my body, even though I didn’t have any oxygen anymore,” he says. “I never felt the agony of drowning. I realized in that moment I had conquered the fear of death. And then a diver took me back by my ankles!” The next day, Wim returned with protection for his eyes and set a new World Record.