The most common thing I am asked about Effiji is how it compares to the Wim Hof method.
Recently, I bought a chest freezer and filled it with water and have been going in about 5 minutes a day at 40 degrees, which is part of the Wim Hof Method. I have also tried his breathwork practice.
I haven’t met or worked with Wim Hof so I only know what most people know by watching videos. But he feels like a mystic man living in his heart sharing what he knows with the world.
Why judge anyway? Any method, teacher, community is ultimately offering a way to help people make their life better. Any practitioner, whatever path they choose, is doing the same.
What I noticed about the Wim Hof method is that it’s quite challenging to simply get into cold water, especially if you’re already cold and you learn to use your breath to overcome the body’s impulse to panic. You can shiver and shake and the mind can have an impulse to flee from the experience and get out, but you use the breathing to overcome it. And when I get out, I feel a hit of energy.
It’s sort of a game one plays between mind and body. You are learning how to overcome impulses to freak out, but ultimately, for me it’s not that hard. It’s the game of mastering the animal nature so you can control your animal side and have good health.
I am not saying anything negative about the message, because I do it everyday and it’s fun and I love it. But it’s quite different from Effiji.
Effiji Breathwork addresses a different fear, one that comes from one’s emotional and spiritual pain. Effiji deals with the fear of feeling and the fear of vulnerability.
Effiji has an inherent spiritual element to it. It has to do with your relationship to God. While I can’t prove the existence of God, I have my experiences and many spiritual experiences and Awakenings that came during breathwork sessions. This connection to a higher power has informed almost every important experience of my life. So my life’s work is not going to be about hacking the body for good health and self mastery. Again, nothing negative about other methods, because I will get in that cold water today and enjoy what it does for me.
I’ve had my heart broken in a thousand ways, just like everyone else and it has colored my life. Effiji helped me to heal that. That is what I want to use hyperventilating mouth breathing for. If you’ve lost faith, connection to spirit, connection to yourself, are going through the motions, are in wrong relationships, relationships of servitude or abuse, then Effiji can help you.
When you do Effiji, you are unlocking the energy that was compartmentalized during trauma. This is much harder to face than cold water.
Like the Wim Hof method, Effiji also faces a fear of dying, because the more trauma you have the more resistance you will have to the breathwork. All that sweating and tetany is something you have to allow, and being willing to go through it is like being willing to die.
My teacher used to like to play the song “it’s good day to die” around the 2nd or 3rd song of the breathwork session. He came from a Zen background and used breathwork to bring up the fear of death and the pain of trauma. Throwing us into the fear and chaos of our inner world was his thing and while I only work with loving support, I know it’s important to breathe into your fears, whatever they are.
