What is your story ?

In all of my workshops, I spend ten to twenty minutes talking about my story, and I almost always get questions after I say my story, and even this passage doesnt really cover it. But if you are interested in knowing more about me, and have wondered what my path was leading into the Wim Hof Method, I wrote this passage about a year ago. Even though not much has changed, I feel like its been ten years since i wrote this - so much has happened since then - I have been on the Wim Hof Method path for some time now, and through that I have grown in ways I would never have imagined I could.

So what’s your story ?

I just finished 2 days in Stroe, Netherlands with the group that went through the advanced module that happens to be the first level to getting certified in the Wim Hof method. First of all let me begin by saying that I always leave such a gathering thinking - wow there were some really cool people. Whether it was getting a certification at Onnit academy - or doing a meditation retreat in India, I have met some really cool people. And what makes them really cool, are their stories. Over the last 2 Wim Hof trips I have made, I have come across a couple of story lines - people who are dare devils, have needed to go to the extremes in their physiology in some form or fashion, either with holding their breath, being in the freezing cold, or just areas where they have needed to over come fears of what they feel are their shortcomings; people who have gone through some serious downturns in their life - either in their physical health or their mental health - and they figured out a way to come back to perfect health through the WHM, and ofcourse those who have seen the healing happen in other people, have been inspired, tried it out for themselves and couldnt believe the impact it made on their bodies.

This has generally been my exposure to the stories that I have come across - and boy are some of these stories inspiring. This particular time, I actually met some one who got over PTSD and his bipolar issues using the WHM. I met another guy who taught his mother the breathing techniques and exposed her to cold showers when she was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. She is fully healed right now. Another story, where this lady had to be on constant medication to treat some of the diseases and issues that she had in her body , and one day her body started rejecting the medicines, she started feeling sick taking the medication, and instead of trying to figure out ways to change her medication, she decided to start “hoffing” , and at this point in time, she is barely on any medication at all - her goal is to completely get off of it. There was also a doctor, who is exploring other unconventional ways of treating people versus consistently trying to treat people through medication.

Just story after story after story, some brought tears to my eyes, some were inspiring, and that was when it hit me, I dont think I have ever taken the time to express my own story, of when and how I turned to the Wim Hof method.

So I decided - why not try and put my story down on paper.

The first time I heard of Wim Hof was actually on the Tim Ferriss show. I rememberd thinking wow this guy is interesting. The funny part was , it wasnt even on the podcast that Tim actually had with Wim, Tim was interviewing some one else and was detailing what some of Wim’s world records were. Now mind you, I am very aware of patterns. When things appear in my life, again and again - I take note of it because I feel that it is coming back in to my life again and again because I am supposed to do something about it - yup just how I am. So anyway , I remember making a 2 day trip to London in April 2017 (very sudden - because i wanted to go see my sister in law on her birthday) and on that trip I met my cousin, who is also a doctor, who told me he had started following WHM and it was insane how resilient he had become to the cold. I remember walking into his house, thinking oh my god it is freezing in here because he didn't have the heater in the house turned up, and he just had a shirt on. I had to wear my sweater. He said that he had started taking cold showers and it was crazy how he didnt feel cold anymore. This was the first time i thought - wow I could get rid of my “I feel cold all the time” issue. You see - I am always the person who hates winter, who needs a sweater in the shopping mall, or the theatre. Or essentially every time I know I am going to sit indoors some where, or in my office, I need a sweater because I am always cold. What makes matters worse, is that I love to hike - and climb mountains, yet whenever I am in the cold, my fingers hurt so bad. Classic example would be when I hiked everest base camp in winter - I remember one day my fingers were hurting so bad, that I wanted to cry. Or the time that I went skiing in Denver - I couldnt even feel my fingers. It didnt matter how many “hot hand” packets i used - it just never seemed to warm up fast enough without alot of pain. So I am listening to everything he was saying - but truly, cold showers??? are you kidding me ? I HATE the cold - and a hot shower is one of the ONLY things I do at home for relaxation on my own. And when I say hot, I mean HOT - my bathroom is steamed up for atleast 30 minutes after I take a shower. So yea, that was just a total put off for me.
Anyway fast forward into 2017, one of the toughest years of my life. I actually tore my ACL on my right knee at the start of the year, and it went on to being a year full of injuries, I had extreme pain in the metatarsal area on my left foot, right after I recovered from my ACL injury, and after that healed I went on to have neuroma in the right foot and once that healed I ended up spraining a ligament in the same foot.
I was so diligent in my recovery - in my therapy in all of them, yet every time one injury was over - boom! The next one happened.
If you know me personally, you are probably thinking, wow Shereen you really abused your body over the many many years of sports that you have been doing, in fact some of you may be thinking - thats what happens when you stress your body as much as you do later on in life, coz you aint no Spring chicken anymore Sher ! Maybe you are right in saying that, the truth is though - at the time, I genuinely felt like some one was slapping me and telling me to stop, just stop and sit down ! Because at the time, I didnt realize that I had always used sport to pick me up out of a rut, a failed relationship, a bad day at work, an argument, I always went and worked out - it was just what I always did, and I always gained stability in my thoughts after I did that.

This time how ever, it was different - I couldnt work out any more and so I had to completely stop all activity. One thing I hadnt brought up yet was that in Akro addition to having a bad year full of injuries, I had just broken up with the person I was dating at the time. There was a lot that we needed to work on , on ourselves before we felt we were ready to be with each other, (which ended up lingering on for atleast 6 or 7 months more, and it wasnt till i diligently started following the WHM that , it truly ended - so yes WHM helps with relationship issues too :)) - we mutually agreed to part ways , and my recovery whenever a relationship ends has always been the same - throw myself back into the one thing that I love - sport. Well this time, that wasnt an option. And so I fell into depression, extreme loneliness - I couldnt understand why I was still in the US - I didnt feel like I belonged, i hadnt made lasting relationships that i could call my family. The person I was dating was American , and his family was incredibly nice to me so while he was in my life, I did have that feeling of potentially having a family in the future but when that relationship ended, I fellt an extreme sense of loss and loneliness and all that kept coming into my head again and again was that I needed to leave the U.S. - to run away - but where would I run away to? Where was home ? Where did I feel like I truly belonged ? Distraught, I decided I would start with Oman, and then go from there - atleast my parents were still there. This was in July, 2017. So I decided to go to the Ecstatic Dance gathering that we have in Houston, every Sunday - to tell a friend that I felt so lonely, that i had no sense of purpose, that I felt completely lost and I was hoping by talking to him, I would make some sense of how to solve my issues. Well on that particular day - he left early and I couldnt talk to him - and I was frustrated - because I wasnt really even in the mood to dance, I had come to the gathering for the sole purpose of talking to him about how I was feeling. So there I sat, thinking to myself - try and talk to some one who is lonely too Shereen, your heart will feel better. So i did - there was a girl who admitted during the closing circle that she was new to Houston and she would love to make some friends. So I went and talked to her, gave her my big smile and my number and told her she could call me whenever she wanted to hang out. And as soon as that conversation was done - I sat down , thinking - wow there are so many people around me, yet I feel so empty. And that was when the first angel came in. Up walked , who today is one of my best friends, this beautiful graceful woman - and she asked me - How are you Shereen ? And looked straight at me, and waited for my response. And I looked into her eyes and asked her - “can you talk ?” And she said “Yes ofcourse!” - and the first thing i said to her was “i feel like my time in the US is up, I just want to leave - i dont feel like I belong here anymore” - to which she replied - “oh absolutely - i know what you mean ! I wish i could leave this very second !” And that was when our love story started. We were inseperable for the next couple of hours - I told her everything about my life, all of the ups and downs since my childhood - no filter - just everything - and she told me all about her life - her ups and downs, there was no good , no bad - just everything as it was. And i felt this very deep connection with her. I asked her how old she was and she said,“58, i am turning 59 in a couple of months” - and i thought to myself oh wow, I am going to be ok - if she is who she is at 60, then I can continue to be this person that I am even when I am 60 - screw everyone who keeps asking me how long i could be as free spirited as I am - how long did I think I could keep jumping around, and going crazy , and partying and dancing, and yet here was a woman who was just that - she was absolutely gorgeous to look at, but she was also so beautiful on the inside , and when she danced, I was just awestruck. I knew I was going to be ok. So i told her two things - the first one -“ I miss meeting interesting people! I feel like I have to travel to meet them, I want to meet them here !” And the second one was “i miss having a family, in all of the countries I have lived in - i have always had a family that adopted me, i dont have one here” - so she took me home with her, and she introduced me to her sister and her mother, her mother loved me and hugged me and gave me motherly love. And I felt happy - after being in Houston for 5 years, I finally felt like I was home. She also introduced me to a guy who was bicycling around the world. He was from France originally and was put up in her sisters home for a bit, before he went on , on his exploration. I loved talking to him, and asked him about his experiences that he had had so far. I remember feeling rejuvenated , and excited - this beautiful woman took care of both my needs on the same day and i felt so grateful. When I left much later that evening - after being together for several hours, she said to me ,”I understand your pain of wanting to leave the US, believe me , I have this pain too.” And I remembered thinking - wow I dont know - i feel like i found what i was looking for here - and i dont know if i want to leave anymore. But i didnt say it at the time. 2 weekends later, on a Sunday again, in walked the next angel in my life - who i didnt know at the time would become such a significant part of my life. My first angel introduced me to my second angel, and then two weekends later , once again on a Sunday - during Harvey - the third one entered. So as ridiculous as it sounds - the 3 people I call my family right now - all of them entered my life within 2 weeks of each other, all of them on a Sunday. And our friendship developed incredibly fast. They loved me and were there for me in a ways that i had never experienced before. I made multiple trips with them - to Oman, Dubai, India, Seattle, Mexico - and through all of these trips, we had our ups and downs but love always prevailed. It was during this time, that I realized I had never taken the time to understand God. You see, I grew up Muslim - and so I read and write Arabic, but I dont speak Arabic, and so I never really understood what I was reading or saying when I prayed. I could have read an english translation but I never really did in my youth and when I grew older, i never seemed to have the time or the interest to read an english translation of the Quran. During the time that I had these angels ener my life, I remembered thanking God alot and then it hit me - that i had never taken the time to actually understand what God meant to me. The third angel , is Christian , and so I started reading the Bible with him. He told me that he had read the Quran and the Bhagvad Gita as well. So i was inspired to pick up those books as well - I added Buddhism to the mix - and started reading about all of them. And after a couple of months - i realized that the undertone of love was in all of them. It didnt matter , if one sounded fatalistic and the other sounded peaceful, it didnt matter if it was Jesus, or Buddha or Krishna or Prophet Muhammad. In all of them, i felt a lot of love. And reading all of them brought me a lot of peace and calmness into my life. I felt less agitated, more at ease. At one point i remembered being frustrated thinking, why wasnt i introduced to all of this before - why did this have to happen in my early thirties , not my early twenties - I would have saved myself so much pain and agitation that I went through in those years. And I remembered a voice within me saying - it is because you had to go through that pain to be ready now Shereen, you werent ready back then. So I let go, and kept reading. And the more I read - the more i felt alive, the more i felt love flowing through my body. But this love came out towards everyone around me. Not necessarily towards myself. I felt a lot of happiness, loving everyone else around me - expressing myself freely with the people that I loved and cherished. At the time I was also receiving a lot of love from these 3 angels - and I remembered feeling a little dependent on them. Almost worried that if they were to leave me , what would happen then ? But for the time being i decided not to let that hinder anything - to just enjoy the moment as it was and to let go. One day, in March, 2018 - the first angel tells me that her son in law , who also practices martial arts, follows this guy called Wim Hof, and she felt that I would be really interested in his stuff. She said that Wim’s energy and personality reminded her alot of me and that her son-in-laws retention times after doing the breathing exercises were really crazy. Boom , the trigger went off in my head - it was the 3rd time that I had heard Wim’s name - and this time I was going to really look into this. So I went home, and started looking up stuff about him and I found this research paper about how he had an endotoxin injected into him and he wasnt affected by it, and when the doctors called him the exception not the norm, he trained a bunch of other people in Poland, and got them all to do the same test and it didnt affect any one of them. That research paper blew my mind. Not because of the science associated with it - but because this man had the guts to essentially get a bunch of people to believe in him , to convince them that they were going to be ok if they followed him to a T - it takes a lot of balls to do that, and I was intrigued that anyone could have that level of self confidence. The next thing I did was to look up a workshop, so I went to the website, and there was one right the next weekend ! in Austin ! how crazy was that?

So I signed up immediately. By that time I had already known enough about the method, to know what was going to happen - I knew there was going to be a lot breathwork, that was no issue, and an ice bath - that sounded daunting, but not impossible.
The next weekend, there i was in Austin, with a friend of mine who decided to sign up last minute as well - and when the breathing exercises came around, I was surprised that all i felt was tingling in my extremities, i didnt feel any pain, or any contraction - nothing, just that my whole body was tingling ALOT, especially in the extremities. Everyone else had a different experience - some of them experienced T-Rex hands, some saw lights, some felt an electric shock go down their spine - it was crazy and I was really intrigued that just breathing could take us into this state. One thing i did notice was that I felt REALLY warm - during the breathing, but also much after - there was a definite shift in my body temperature and i felt that my body was getting me ready for the ice. That afternoon we got into the ice for 2 minutes and it was a piece of cake for me, I didnt feel like i was in pain - i didnt feel that i couldnt do it , i just felt relaxed from the moment i got in there. That really surprised me, I think at the time it really surprised the instructor too. I remembered thinking to my self, this is supposed to be hard, but I feel fine.

So I left the workshop still hungry for more. This workshop was held by a certified instructor, but I felt I needed to meet the master himself. She talked alot about him ,and i felt a certain drive to go meet him and be around him. So I went to their website and looked up expeditions and saw that there were 2 coming up in the year, and I decided to sign up for the one that was taking place in Spain. That was the time when I started taking the cold showers , and boy were they painful. The ice baths didnt faze me at all - I started doing them in my own bathroom because i didnt know of a place that had the ability to have ice baths. The cold showers how ever, they really made an impact on me - and ended up in some other interesting attributes, which I covered in my other blogs, namely the one about Ice (The blog named - so why are you dunking yourself in Ice again?)

During all of this, I started doing some other breathing techniques including holotropic breathwork and some other very long meditation gatherings. On one of these occasions, I set 3 intentions - I wanted to feel what unconditional love meant; I wanted to love myself the way I love my family and friends, and I wanted to see me for me - with no ego, fear, pride, etc. The reason I asked for these 3, is because I realized I didnt understand what unconditional love meant, and my friends who i consider my family, always told me things about myself that I couldnt really relate to - or in other words, they saw me differently from how I saw myself and lastly, i realized that the compassion that i have for my friends, the way I loved them - I didnt love myself like that - not even close. And that day, after many hours , I received the answer to all 3. It was like I had exploded into a million bits and got put back together the way I was , the way I always was - the way I had forgotten to be. I felt love flowing through me, inside to outside, outside to inside - it was a constantly flowing huge river , and there was so much of it around - there was so much available, for me, for everyone I met - I fell in love with the person I was, and i felt an immense amount of love for everyone around me. Since that time I have had a similar experience two other times, and one of those times happened at the advanced module this time - they say there is a lot of strength in numbers, and maybe it was for that reason that it happened there.

This particular day, when I had this experience for the first time, it was a turning point in my life - I started understanding what people saw when they saw me, I started feeling love for myself - and from that started undying belief and love for others. The ability to let go became easier. Because when you truly start loving with the purest of intentions, you realize that love stems from the ability of being able to let go of the outcome. Our behaviour is very often driven by society, or expectations from a loved one, and more often than not - dependency. But the undying faith and love you have in your self is the one that gives you the strength of knowing that you are on the right path of letting go, regardless of how scary it can seem at the time. Of remembering what it was like to not have biases - to lose judgement, to see people as they are, regardless of what comes out of their mouth as words. I started understanding what unconditional love meant, or rather how it felt. And understanding why being able to give and to receive such love was so difficult. Alot of parents say that love their children unconditionally - and that they didnt even know what love meant till they had children, and yet alot of people still dont even understand what unconditional love means. The ability to love ourselves unconditionally is the only way that we can understand what loving others unconditionally means. And most people dont love themselves unconditionally, so how do we expect to love unconditionally ? Love isnt a sacrifice, or a compromise, or an offering, an expectation, or sexual, or a commitment, or narcicissism, or being selfish - Love is pure, it is gentle, it is forgiving, it is accepting ourselves as we are for who we are, it prevails and it comes from the heart - it comes from feeling , it comes from the transference of energy, it comes from undying belief in ourselves and in others and it is omni present.

The opposite of love isnt hate, it is fear. A true warrior is one who loves, with no prejudice, no bias, and no ego. I call this person a warrior - because it is an uphill road that one walks, when they take the decision that they will keep their wounds open, strip themselves bare, and realize that despite the wounds that are inflicted on them, that the wounds will heal and the love and belief they have for themselves will be what carries them on.

Before embarking on this journey, I took the time to sit down and wonder what it is that I wanted from my life ? And the answer to that was, no matter where I am or where I go , the people who I spend time with , I would like them to feel loved. And no matter what, that I would love myself the way I love my friends and family. That’s it - sounds very simple - but I knew that the way ahead was going to be filled with a lot of instances of butting heads with my own ego and attachments.

And so it has - and sitting down and writing all of this down, is a way of stripping myself bare and telling everyone my story, the uphill road that I am walking. This time at the advanced module - I didnt share this with a lot of people - because there is only so much time over the course of 2 days that you get to spend time and really conect with some one - yet I had the pleasure of connecting very intently with a few, and when I left , I remembered their words, that they felt love when they were around me, one of them said that I reminded her of “amma” the hugging saint - yes I am a hugger (funny note - i grew up not knowing who amma was, found out about her when I came to the US, and she is from the same state as I am in India, about 30 mins from the city that I visit whenever I go to Kerala - goes to show the power of the internet :)) and I felt contentment within me, for this is only the start of the long journey that I know i have ahead of me, and it feels reassuring when people respond to me in a loving fashion. I admit that I am only human and no matter how strongly I believe in my self, I do still need affirmation at times.

So fast forward to Spain in July 2018, I meet Wim - and immediately I sensed the love radiating out of him- he emanates it. You can feel it even when you dont talk to him, he just is - he is pure love. And that was when I felt the urge to spread his message of every human being striving to be happy, healthy and strong. What really was an affirmation for me , was when he asked me over dinner one day - who I was? And after a couple of back and forths of giving him the answer he wasnt expecting- and him pushing me again and again to tell me who I was - out of no where I screamed back at him - I am love ! And he nodded his head and said “yes ... you are Shudh Prem” - since I understand hindi, I knew that meant pure love. And it really hit me like a ton of bricks, here was some one who didnt know me at all , and yet he acknowledged the journey that I was on.

Later on that week - the time that I spent in Spain, reinforced the fact that I had to go home and work on ways to get closer to people - To help others understand what feeling means again , to help them become happy, healthy and strong, and from there, help them find their purpose in life, and to love them through their journeys, just like Wim, my 3 angels and the voice within me played that role for me.

I had been working on the idea with my friend for a couple of months by then, of putting an exercise class together that is holistic - that helps build conscious athletes. I believe that every human being is an athlete, because we all have muscles and we all have to squat to sit on our toilet seats and do spinal twists to get out of bed. And in pursuit of putting this class together - I found my love for joint mobility. So I decided to go get certified by Onnit to be able to start teaching good form and posture while exercising and joint mobility, and this is where I am right now. I dont know where this journey will take me, but one thing I do know is I have undying faith in my self - that as long as Love for other beings and for myself stays at the core of my existence, I will always be on the right path. Joint mobility is a way of keeping our bodies healthy and strong from an anatomical stand point, and incorporating this with Wim Hofs breathing and eventually, cold exposure will definitely help us stay healthy and strong in a more physiological fashion (I havent fallen sick ever since I have started following the method). And ofcourse being healthy and strong, also helps us engage in more activites that make us happy - be it spending quality time with our loved ones, or playing a favorite sport. It is when we are in this state, that our purpose in life becomes clearer - because at that time, our senses are de-fogged. We arent worried about what others think about us, or our personal image. We understand what our mission in life is and working towards that is what instils meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose in our lives.

If you have come this far, thank you for sharing this journey with me. I made a friend on this trip - who initially asked me what my story was - and I said to him that I didnt really have a story worth telling - and several hours later after sharing a lot about my life - he stared at me in disbelief and said - you have no story ? I think you need to do us a favor and put that all down. And this is what has driven me to put this all down. Who I was a year ago, had a lot to do with the society around me, others people’s opinion about me, who I needed to be to match THEIR image of what beauty is, what happiness is, what intelligence is, the religion I grew up with, the expectations that were put on me, the rules and regulations that I had to follow, the countries I lived in, the connections I made, the heart breaks I have had, and the expectations that I had from myself to behave a certain way and to be a certain me. I am grateful to the people who loved me along the way , who had faith in me - to help me get to the point where I had to make that last leap of faith in believing in myself and loving myself for who I am as I am before I started feeling that I was finally beginning to understand what my mission in life is. I do still have a long way to go in loving myself unconditionally, but I do know I am on the path to getting there, and that in it self for me is a win.