Personal story | The Happy Yeti

Feeling tired in the morning?

by Marius Helf

So do I. Often, when the alarm rings in the morning, all I want to do is to turn around and sleep another hour.

And if you occasionally wake up tired, too, I may have something for you.

Of course, you can work on your sleep hygiene. Your bedtime. The amount of sleep you get regularly. But if your alarm is already buzzing, it’s too late for that. So what can you do to be ready for your kids, your work, your hobbies, but you feel sooo tired?

The answer is as trivial as it is powerful:

// Do something that energizes you! //

It can be anything. Do 10 jumping jacks. Take a shower, maybe a cold one. And knowing my background, here’s the inevitable:

// Breathwork! That’s my go-to morning-energizer. //

Breathwork. That’s my go-to morning-energizer. Even before coffee. Sometimes even before I get up.

If you are following my posts, chances are that you are into the Wim Hof Method.

When have you last done the breathwork? Remember how powerful it can feel?

I try to do it every day, preferably in the morning.

And often I conclude it with one round of power breathing, an modification to the Wim Hof breathing that you learn in the advanced Wim Hof Method workshops.

When the regular WHM breathwork is sugar, then the power breathing is cocaine.

And that’s what I need at the moment. Since two weeks, we have renovations going on, and we live between dust, boxes and mess on what feels like 10 square meters between the bedroom and the kitchen. The rest is under construction, or temporary storage crammed with boxes. Not the ideal environment to feel rested. But I picked up my morning breathwork again.

Take this morning. The alarm went off much too early again, but after just two rounds of power breathing, I literally jumped out of bed, did a dance of joy, jumped in the shower, and I’m full of love and inspiration.

But enough about me. What is it that gets you going in the morning? What’s your little energizer in a long, busy day? And what are your struggles?

Much love,
Marius

How fear is the only thing holding you back

by Marius Helf

I learn a lot about my life and my approach to challenges when I do sports.

Last week I’ve been bouldering for the first in a while.
A few years ago, I got a knee injury from an unfortunate jump.

Since then, I have developed an unnatural fear of falling.

Even though falls in a boulder gym usually means a more or less controlled jump of no more than one meter onto padded ground.

I failed to climb some routes that I knew I could do. And I started to observe myself.

I would climb up. Then hang in the wall, just one meter above the ground, eyeing the next grip that looked just out of reach. Thinking I would fall if I reached for it.

Hanging there, watching, holding on to the grips and wasting my strength.

And then I’d fall off. No juice left in my arms. Thinking I couldn’t reach the next hold. Thinking I couldn’t climb that route.

I feared the fall, which resulted in exactly that. Falling.

Whether you think you can do it or whether you think you can’t, you are right.
Henry Ford (supposedly)

I thought I couldn’t do it. And I was right.

Until I realized what I was doing. I turned around, looked at the wall, and that next grip was not even far away!

So I told myself, Mr. Marius, that reach is absolutely doable. You can do it! And if you fall, it’s not even a meter. On padded ground! There is nothing to lose.

I changed my believe. The way I thought about myself.
I rationalized my fear. I knew I couldn’t hurt myself in the gym. I knew I could do it.

I stopped trying, and I started doing.

I climbed up to that reach again, and then I reached. And it held. And I finished.
And I finished many more routes, even some above my level.

Control your mind, control your fear, and you can do anything you want.

If you DO try, you may succeed.
Worst case, you fall into your safety net.

If you never try, you will NEVER succeed. You will stay on the ground, you won’t move forward.

I learn a lot about myself in the boulder gym.

And how to approach certain things in life.

It once again reminded me how important it is to try. Not even to try, but to DO it.

The importance of the environment

An average person in a good environment is more successful than a brilliant person in a bad environment
Taylor Welch

Overcome your fears.

Setup your environment.

When climbing, take a padded crash pad. Use a rope and take a buddy who will catch you.

In life, set your environment up for success. Build a good support network. Draw from it, and give back. Setup your crash pad.
And then, there is nothing to lose.

You only lose if you don’t try.

Much love
~Marius

Lessons from the mountain

by Marius Helf

3 years ago we climbed mount Sniezka as the final cornerstone of my WIm Hof Instructor course.

It was a unique experience. Intense, joyful. The last day of our retreat, and we would conquer the mountain. Some 30 freshly baked instructors. Our final walk up that path before going out and sharing this beautiful method with the world.

// But The Mountain had a lesson for us. //

Not all of us made it up the mountain. But all of us made it down. And all of us learned the most important lesson of the whole instructor training.

The first part of the hike was beautiful. Wide gently-sloped paths through snow-covered trees. Some degrees below zero, but nothing too serious. Everyone was fine stomping up that mountain in just shorts and boots.At one point the path reaches the tree line, and the wind started to hit us hard. No problem, we were in our focus, our inner fire was switched on. It started snowing. Beautiful!

The final part of the ascent leads over an exposed ridge. Half way up that ridge, the weather changed. The wind took up. The windchill decreased to -30 degrees C. And with it, the storm brought frozen rain. The rain covered everything. The stones, the rails that gave us support. The spikes under our boots started to fail. Our feet slipped on the stones, and our hands slipped on the frozen rails. And with the slipping feet our focus started to slip.

And focus is what keeps the inner fire going. When the focus goes, the cold creeps in. In our case, it didn’t creep, it was hammered into us by hale, frozen rain and wind gusts of 80 km/h. From there it was chaos. Some managed to get dressed. Others were shivering too much to even put a jacket on. Everyone was at their limit. Everyone started their descend back to the last shelter, the Yellow House at the beginning of the crest. It’s only thanks to good luck and individuals who helped some others back down to safety. I personally have half pushed, half pulled, half carried a severely hypothermic person down the crest. I was at the end of my own power when finally he was taken off me by a helper and carried the last few meters to the shelter.

So we didn’t make it up the mountain that day, and barely down. In the beginning, I was almost ashamed that I didn’t make it up. Now, 3 years later, I know that The Mountain taught us an important message that day:

// YOU NEVER CONQUER THE COLD. //

The cold is always stronger. It does not differentiate between a Wim Hof Instructor, a practitioner or any person in the world. Even Wim Hof himself had some close calls. The cold always wins.Nature always wins.

You can use the cold as a tool. It can make you stronger. But if you challenge it, it will win. Always.

Does that make the cold bad? Of course not. It’s like a weight. You wouldn’t walk around all day with a barbell with 100 pound on each side on your back. But if you build up to it, squatting it a few times in the gym will make you stronger. And after training, you need recovery and rest to give the muscles time to recover and grow.

And the cold works the same way. Use it a few times a week to train your body and mind. Respect it. Know your limits. And slowly, and steadily, build up, expand your limits.

The cold can make you happier, healthier, and stronger. Together with a healthy lifestyle, rest and recovery.

This is the lesson I have been teaching in my classes in the last 3 years to hundreds people from a dozen countries. And I hope I have made every single one a happier, stronger and healthier person.

Much love.
Marius

How I relearned to breathe – and how it…

by Marius Helf

In 2017 I was feeling exhausted.

I had just moved to a new city in a new country. I was in multitasking hell in my job, where I was juggling a plethora of technical projects in addition to managing a team of Data Scientists and helping a startup grow to maturity. In addition, I was suffering from frequent and heavy cold and flu, a condition I have been struggling with for the better part of my adult life. In 2017, my sick leave accumulated to a level that was not acceptable to neither me nor my boss.

Six months later, I am standing bare-chested on the ice of a frozen lake in winter Sweden, cutting a hole into the thick layer of ice and getting ready to jump in.

Today, I am teaching how to leverage extreme cold, a powerful breathing technique and forging a strong mindset to become a happier, healthier and stronger version of yourself – how to unleash the Happy Yeti within.

How I started to love the cold

by Marius Helf

My first encounter with the cold was in my first year at university. For some reason I decided to wear shorts — one complete year long. And in my home and study town of Dortmund, we have seasons, including a winter. Not too cold of a winter, but cold enough to make my daily 10k cycle to uni challenging. Still, all went well for about 10 months. Then, one day in December, the flu got me. I was more or less in bed for the better of 2 weeks, and I have been struggling with frequent colds ever since.

So what brought me back to the cold? What has driven me to even go on a five day expedition to Sweden to swim in ice water and hike for 2 hours through the snow covered wilderness south of Stockholm, with nothing but shoes, shorts and a woolen hat on me?

And even more, why did I feel reborn after these 5 days, instead of being in bed with a fever?