Wim Hof teared up as he explained how cold water therapy helped him cope with the death of his wife – amid claims he is promoting ‘dangerous’ practices.

The Dutch motivational speaker and athlete, who is renowned for promoting cold water therapy, appeared on Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast.

The 65-year-old repeated his claims that breathing, meditation and cold water can fix trauma and boost your health while recalling the tragic loss of his wife Olaya in 1995.

Mother-of-four Olaya took her own life by leaping from the eighth floor of a building.

‘My wife took her own life and that led to depression, and I was not able to do anything,’ Hof said. 

Looking at a photograph of Olaya, he said: ‘Sweetheart, an amazing soul, very expressive, very talkative to everybody, very open and then she went into the shadows of her own mind and dysfunctioning of brain functioning and that led to her depression and then becoming manic and schizophrenia, it got worse and worse and worse.’  

The grandfather, who spend 15 years with Olaya, said he found out her mental health was deteriorating ‘too late’ and he had ‘no means of control.’

During the early days of their marriage, she suffered from what he thought was mild depression. By the time their four children had arrived, she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

He went onto explain she wanted to have a fifth child, and a month before she took her own life, she acknowledged that she needed to get better first.

He explained: ‘I was not able to do anything, so it turned into a defeat, it turned into me being hopeless, it turned me into being depressed, but I had no time to be depressed, I had to take care of four children on my own, with almost no money.

‘So, that’s where the cold came in. The cold is stronger than your mind, than your thinking.’

He went onto reveal the grief he felt after the death of his wife was ‘an inexplicable burden’ and ‘traumatised’ himself and his four children. 

Hof, who is nicknamed the ‘The Iceman’ went on to discuss how he used ice water therapy and breathing to control grief and anxiety. 

He said: ‘These breathing exercises were capable in 2014 to show scientifically, looking at the nervous system … we were able to tap into the autonomic nervous system and innate immune system which was considered to be impossible in science and now it is there.

‘It’s also the ability to solve, naturally, what is deeply stored up in our tissue, which could not be processed in the moment when it happened. Trauma.’

Hof said that, working with cardiologists, it has been shown that if you hold your breath after breathing out five times more oxygen flows to the brain and heart. 

He said: ‘We are able through these breathing techniques to change our blood’s chemistry. Bring up pH levels – way up.’ 

Hof demonstrated the technique. A short, sharp intake of breath, followed by a slower exhalation (breathing out), which you should repeat 30 times. 

He said the system is similar to the sharp intake of breath you take when you are scared or cold – and the breathing your body uses when you have exercised.

He added that these breathing techniques, done on a bed or sofa, help you ‘go past your conditioned mind’. 

‘I want you to take over the steering wheel. I want you to be conscious. Go into the deeper consciousness of the breathing and suddenly your trauma, your deeper feelings are able to come to the surface.’

‘Traumas are a stored-up chemistry. It’s unprocessed. It’s when experience happens and you can’t deal with it. It’s been stashed away and it becomes biochemical – the stored up capacity of the body is simply there in our deeper tissue.

‘But our conditioned mind and body is not able to get into that.’ 

He added: ‘We are thinking too much. We know something is wrong inside but we cannot connect with that. Now if we change the patterns we normally go into with our breathing and thinking … then suddenly we are able to get into this thought to regulate our mood.’

Hof also explained how to deal with stress, which he did through ice baths after the death of his wife to ‘get emotional agony out of the way’.

He said: ‘Stress can come in many ways – emotionally, physically, spiritually. It can come in many ways. In the end it is biochemical stress. It turns into biochemistry. 

‘Neurotoxins etc that accumulate, that get in the body, that create blockages, it drains and you don’t know what to do with it and then medicines come in and pills and it only deteriorates. It gets worse.’

‘I used the cold back when I was with my [wife], who died, to get my emotional agony out of the way. It was the doorway to open my healing, my spiritual healing of me as a Papi of my children just to be happy with them and to provide energy and wellbeing without this traumatising darkness around us.’

He said: ‘We should be able to control our emotional state of wellbeing whenever we feel bad.’ 

Hof met Olaya, whose full name was Marivelle-Maria, in 1982 when he was living a carefree, hippy-style life in a squat in Amsterdam.

Originally from Pamplona in Spain, she had just finished her studies and loved his bohemian kookiness; he thought she was the most amazing woman he’d ever met.

They got married and started their family, having four children — Enahm, Isa, Laura and Michael — over the next six years. 

The family were living in an apartment by this point, which meant compromising on his bohemian lifestyle. He took a series of jobs — from tour guide to postman — to pay the bills.

Yet by the time their family was complete there were serious problems. What he thought were depressive tendencies in his wife were becoming something else.

He believes the stress on the body and hormonal balance that pregnancy exerts affected her mind.

He said he was the main carer for the four children long before Olaya died, saying  she would go to stay with her parents in Spain for lengthy periods. 

Having eventually received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, there were appointments with psychiatrists. Pills were administered but they only made things worse. 

Previously speaking to the Mail Online Hof said: ‘If I’d known then what I know now, I could have done something. But I was powerless. I felt completely alone. We didn’t know as much about mental illness then as we do now.’

Olaya was staying with her parents in Spain on that fateful night in 1995 when she eventually took her own life, aged just 35, having kissed her children goodbye only moments before. 

He was leading a tour party when he received a message to call his wife’s family in Spain urgently. She had leapt to her death at 2am. 

Although cold water therapy and breathing methods have helped Hof and many others through anxiety and depression, he has recently been accused of promoting ‘dangerous’ therapies after a string of families claimed their loved ones died after performing the breathing method.

The Sunday Times reports the unusual method is alleged to have led to people dying – accusing Wim of acting recklessly by failing to warn of the risks.  

The newspaper reported that Kellie Poole, a mother-of-three, collapsed and died in a river in Derbyshire after embracing the trend.

In April 2022 the 39-year-old joined her friend Victoria Fielding at the River Goyt in the Peak District for a two-hour class on the method.

Soon after entering the cold water she began complaining of a headache before collapsing.

She was pulled from the water and another member of the class desperately tried to resuscitate her but she tragically died at the scene.

Her inquest heard that she had an undiagnosed heart condition and the cold water ‘might have had an effect on cardiac function and might link to sudden death’.

A prevention of future deaths report was issued to warn that some people may ‘experience an adverse physiological reaction to cold water immersion’ which could potentially threaten their life.

The Sunday Times used coroners’ reports and interviews as well as public statements from families, to identify 11 deaths in which the victim is believed to have tried to copy the Hof method or a similar technique.

In August 2022, 17-year-old Madelyn Metzger drowned in the family swimming pool in California trying, her father believes, to copy Hof’s method.

Raphael found his daughter face down in water and he dragged her out, tried to perform CPR and called paramedics but she sadly passed away.

He later discovered Maddie had been researching the method since 2020 and had downloaded his app the month before the incident occurred.

Her father has filed a £67 million lawsuit and is seeking an injunction that would ban Hof and his businesses from promoting his breathing method in California.

Mr Metzger argues Wim is negligent in promoting his technique and caused death by failing to properly warn people of the risk of drowning.

Hof and his business deny the allegations, arguing they had no duty of care over Maddie.

They said: ‘We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and extend our sympathies to all who have lost loved ones. The safety and wellbeing of everyone practising the Wim Hof Method is of utmost importance to us.

‘That is why we consistently emphasise safety across all our platforms, products and in every aspect of our training,’ the Times reported.

They said warnings and disclaimers are used anywhere the Wim Hof Method is advertised.

But a spokesperson added: ‘It’s important to note, however, that we advise against practising the Wim Hof Method for those with certain health conditions and always recommend consulting a doctor if you’re unsure.’

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