The Origins of Breathwork
Breathwork is recognized as a tremendously powerful, yet easy and fast way to up your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It has become such a household phenomenon that you might think it always had a prominent place in popular culture. But it wasn’t always so.
Let's explore the history of breathwork, tracing its roots from ancient civilizations in the East to the more recent discovery in the West, to finally Wim Hof’s instrumental role in resurrecting the practice, and with the help of a scientific breakthrough making it a staple of modern wellness practices in the 21st century.
Breath is Life
The vital role of the breath and its mindful manipulation has been recognized for millenia, going back perhaps as far as human culture itself.
Evidence of breath and the spirit or energy of life itself as two sides of the same coin can be found across every continent. The Greek word pneuma refers to both breath and spirit, and the Latin equivalent of pneuma is spiritus. In the Iliad, Homer speaks of thumos to express the notion of a life breath that resides in the lungs, and to lose thumos is to have lost life. In Quechua — the Incan language still spoken today — the word for breath is also directly synonymous with spirit, soul, or life energy.
Written record of consciously modifying our regular breathing pattern in order to foster physical or mental wellbeing dates back at least three thousand years, to yogic and ayurvedic traditions in India. There, the Sanskrit pranayama was and still is a form of breath control by which to attain higher states of consciousness, and ultimately find inner peace as you come to understand your place in the universe. In ancient China, qi or chi refers to both the breath and a vital life energy, and qigong and tai chi are the accompanying movement-based practices whereby deep, rhythmic breathing is a fundamental part of bringing the body’s energy back into balance.
Breathwork, in form or another, has played a critical role in civilizations from the Himalayas to the Amazon rainforest. The specific breathing techniques vary from one culture to the next, but there is a common understanding that modifying and controlling the breath is a vital ingredient for a healthy and balanced life.
Peace, Love & Breathwork
For as universal as this wisdom seems, modified forms of breathing didn’t really take a firm foothold in the West until the 1960’s, where it developed as part of the broader interest in alternative healing and spirituality that characterized the period. Many of the breathing modalities that arose during this time were influenced by contemporary phenomena like Freudian psychoanalysis, altered states of consciousness and the use of LSD.
A key example is Leonard Orr’s Rebirthing. Orr believed that being born is inherently traumatic, and that through breathwork, one can subconsciously revisit that event and begin to resolve one’s trauma. Holotropic breathwork, originated by Stanislav Grof, similarly aims to use breathing to access the unconscious mind, and in so doing address traumas and repressed emotions. As a psychiatrist, Grof used LSD in his practice, and he developed his breathing method as a result of the drug being outlawed.
Konstantin Buteyko developed his signature breathing method around the same time, although he wasn’t inspired by the free love movement. Developed in the 1950’s, the Buteyko method posits that many respiratory ailments come from breathing too fast, and too much through the mouth. By focusing on nasal breathing, the breathing pace stays low and thus CO2 relatively high, restoring acid balance.
A New Breath
As the New Age came to an end in the 1980’s, so did breathwork by and large disappear from the popular conscience. Biohacking, hot yoga, and diets ranging from all-plants to all-meat captured the imagination of the wellness-conscious for the next two decades.
That is, until a bearded man from the Netherlands showed up on tv screens, encased in ice cubes. Wim Hof was actually already soaking up all he could about Buddhism, zen, and yoga at 9 years old. His insatiable curiosity took him to India — the cradle of breathwork — to deepen his insights. Back in the Netherlands, he discovered another powerful natural force: the cold. Wim would eventually synthesize his accrued wisdom into what we now know as the Wim Hof Method.
But it would take more than a decade— not only to go from vision to a fully realized service that could reach everyone, but also for the public to get on board. Unlike the various breathing trends that were in vogue during the flower power days, Wim Hof didn’t have the benefit of riding the current zeitgeist. Throughout much of the journey, media and scientists were skeptical if not dismissive. But Wim knew in his bones that he had found something that the world needed to know about, and that they would eventually come to embrace.
A key milestone came in 2011: Radboud University researchers subjected Wim to E. Coli bacteria in an effort to test the power of his breathing technique. To their utter surprise, Wim was able to stave off the fever symptoms that normally arise with a clinically induced infection. Thinking that Wim might be some kind of outlier, the experiment was repeated on “regular folk” three years later, with the same results. This was a revelation, as it upended the longstanding belief that one could not voluntarily influence one's autonomic nervous system or innate immune response.
The growing acknowledgement from the scientific community in turn made the Wim Hof Method that much more palatable for a more analytical, evidence-minded Western audience. More and more people were intrigued to give it a try, spurred on also by the countless stories from those who were already on board. The groups going to Poland first numbered 4, then 40, and are now 400. Attendees with a wide range of auto-immune conditions improved leaps and bounds after just a week in the pure, fresh tundra air. Athletes saw their sports performance improve. Executives got rid of stress and gained restful sleep.
Wim’s mission is and always has been to bring happiness, strength and health to the whole planet, and he realized that if he was serious about that quest, the age-old wisdom that he had brought back from India had to be adapted to today’s world of TikTok, antidepressants, and the 48-hour work week. And so what started as little more than the occasional bootcamp was slowly built out into a website, then a video course, and eventually a whole infrastructure to bring people the Wim Hof Method in whatever way most fit their modern lifestyles.
Today, you can find Wim Hof Method courses, workshops, retreats, and a mobile app to learn and practice however and wherever you want. Our Academy has been training aspiring instructors from every continent since 2013, ensuring that anybody anywhere can enjoy Wim’s teachings.
The Breathwork Boom
The growing popularity and acceptance of the Wim Hof Method as an effective, legitimate wellness practice opened the door for a flood of entrepreneurs to follow in its wake. The past decade has seen an explosion of cryotherapy outfits, custommade chest freezers, breathwork retreats and breathing apps.
Both breathwork and cold exposure are now commonplace on a level well beyond anything seen in the 1960’s. More than a passing, esoteric fad, cold showers and breathing sessions have become part of everyday health routines as readily as morning stretches or a kale smoothie. Wim Hof is truly spreading happiness, strength and health all across the globe.
Jump on board!
Hopefully you are part of the hundreds of thousands who practice the Wim Hof Method daily to enjoy its many physical and mental benefits.
If you’re curious and want to get started for free, you can sign up for the MiniClass to receive your first lesson: the Power of Breathing, today.
