My Why!

The Wim Hof Method and Me

I discovered the Wim Hof Method a few years back. Jody Hatton suggested him to me, he thought I might find him interesting. So me being me, I had YouTube playing on my tablet while I was working on my laptop… I am the Queen of bad multi-tasking.

Needless to say half hearted breathing, while focusing on work, just doesn’t cut it and I didn’t really grasp the importance of Wim’s message.

I decided it wasn’t for me!

Forward Wind to 2021

February 23rd 2021 to be precise.

I stood in the queue to get the first of two COVID vaccinations. I was so happy that living in Bulgaria meant that I didn’t have to wait for my age group to be called to qualify. Just stand in a queue and voila!

That smugness was short-lived as a few days later, while mixing concrete for our new breathwork platform (my life is anything but sedentary), I felt that something was wrong. My leg was hurting more than just muscular strain.

I was quickly diagnosed with blood clots in my leg and found myself taking blood thinners and injecting the same into my stomach daily…if you’ve ever had to do this, you’ll know how ‘rubbish’ this feels.

The consultant told me to keep my leg elevated and to do nothing for 10 days. Anyone that knows me, will understand how hard this was for me (sitting still for 10 mins is a push), but I did it.

Long story short things seemed to be getting worse, so I took a 3 hour drive (well passenger ride) to Sofia to get a second opinion.

My Angiologist was/is amazing. Things started to stabilize. But, and here’s the thing, it wasn’t getting better quick enough for me. Just walking up the 54 stone steps between our two properties was so painful I had to take several breaks on the way up…I felt like my life was over. I wasn’t sure if tomorrow would even come. That might seem dramatic, but during all this, a friend of a friend in Scotland was going through the exact same thing and had just had her leg amputated, so the fear was real.

Going from my active life to an inability to function put everything on hold, but when I got the news that the lady in Scotland had passed away, I knew I had to do something for myself and decided to Google natural pain management.

That’s when I stumbled on Wim Hof once again.

This time I listened.

I started the breathing and the cold showers and started to believe in my recovery. Just six weeks later I climbed the 7 lakes of Rila (2500m) and sat on a rock and cried. Tears of joy. I had my life back.

I vowed at that point that if I could help one person change their life, like this had changed mine then I would.

Here we are in September 2022, one year later and I’m deep into my training to become a Wim Hof Instructor.

My aim is to change lives, one breath, one cold dip at a time… and have fun doing it.

So tell me. How did you find me? What are you searching for? How can I help? What is your story… please share your ‘Why’ with me and let’s see if we can kick this thing down the road together.