03/10/2026
This past Sunday, after 18 years, we finally got the band back together.
In January 2008, I was alongside when he broke his own world record — sitting in a box of ice for 72 minutes. With us was Dr. Ken Kamler, who practices what he calls “extreme medicine” and consults for NASA and invited me along, and his partner Granis, a world champion free diver and nurse who monitored Wim’s vitals throughout. Ken was there to narrate and observe in case anything went sideways.
Sunday was the first time the four of us had been in the same room since. Wim is now a globally recognized icon of cold therapy and breathwork, but he’s exactly who he was in 2008 — just with better PR.
My EARTH WORKS show at the mapped what we’re losing — glaciers, coastlines, the living systems we’ve stopped paying attention to. Wim’s work starts somewhere more intimate: the body you’ve stopped paying attention to. Different scales, same disconnection. As a society we’ve drifted from ourselves, from our bodies, from the natural world, and Sunday felt like a reunion of people who’ve been steadily working on that same rupture from opposite ends.
If you haven’t tried a cold shower or plunge, I highly recommend it. The science behind Wim’s work is more solid than the remaining glaciers on our planet.
