Tonight the final episode of ‘Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof’ airs on BBC1. I’ve enjoyed watching the Dutch “Iceman” train a likeable bunch of celebrities to rise to one freezing challenge after another, in a scenic but perishingly cold location somewhere in the Italian Alps. It may seem a far cry from the Alexander Technique, which tends to be taught in a warm, dry teaching room. But both involve the mastery of one’s response to a stimulus (which F M Alexander called “Inhibiting” and “the control of reaction”). In episode 1 of ‘Freeze the Fear’ we see the celebrities tense up as they face the prospect of a jump into a hole in the ice, shrieking and squealing as their bodies hit the icy water. By the end of the series, they have learned to control their breathing and their thinking in order to stay calm and centred. Both the AT and the Wim Hof method help reconnect us to ourselves, to others and to the world around us. The ambient temperature, however, is very different.
| |
RSS Feed
