Ice Bath Medellin

Cold Plunge and the Wim Hof Method

A cold plunge and an ice bath are the same thing under two names. Which word you use mostly depends on where you first heard about it. For a lot of people the door into both was the Wim Hof Method.

The Wim Hof Method is a system built by the Dutch athlete Wim Hof, and it rests on three parts. There is a breathing cycle, there is cold exposure, and there is the discipline to keep on doing both.

The breathing part is easy to describe. You take around thirty deep breaths without forcing the exhale. Then you let the air out and hold the empty lungs until your body asks for air. Then you take one big breath in and hold that for about fifteen seconds. That is one round, and the method's own instructions tell you to do three or four of them.

A guided cold session borrows that shape. You breathe on land first, then you get in the water, then you keep the breath slow and long while you sit in it. Our monthly ice bath in Medellin runs the same way, with a holotropic breathwork session before it that you can join or skip. Holotropic breathwork is a different practice with a different purpose. We do not teach the Wim Hof Method here, and nobody at Harmonica is certified in it.

Do the breathing on land. Sitting or lying down, never in the water, and never in the minutes right before you get in. Wim Hof's own instructions say the breathing can make a person pass out, and that passing out in or near water is dangerous. Shallow water blackout is the reason. Fast breathing washes carbon dioxide out of your blood, and rising carbon dioxide is your normal signal to breathe. Your oxygen keeps dropping, the signal arrives late or never, and you go unconscious under the surface without ever feeling short of breath. People have drowned this way. So you breathe on the mat, and then you walk to the tub.

The research on cold water is thinner than the internet makes it sound. A 2025 review in PLOS ONE pooled eleven randomised trials covering 3,177 people. It found lower stress twelve hours after a cold immersion, plus small gains in sleep and in quality of life. It found no change in immune markers, and more inflammation in the first hour rather than less. The authors themselves wrote that the trials were few, small, and ran very different protocols.

So it can be that the cold does something for your body over months. It can also be that the cold gives you one thing only, the moment where you decide not to climb out. You can test that one on any third Friday without waiting for a study.

If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or you are pregnant, ask your doctor before any cold immersion. Cold water pushes your heart rate and your blood pressure up fast, and for some people that is a real risk.