Colleen called me this morning to see if I wanted to take a short walk to see some guy in tantric meditation in an ice bath in the middle of 17th Street. You know, just another day in New York City! Ha!It turns out that Dutchman Wim Hof is the only non-Tibetan to have mastered the tantric practice of tumo, the ability to control the temperature of the body through meditation. When we arrived, he was 45 minutes into his attempt to break his own world record for immersion in an ice bath (1 hr, 11 minutes). Despite camera crews, throngs of onlookers and taxi drivers stopping right next to him to take pictures, he was able to stay in his meditative zone. I didn't stay to the end but heard he was successful in his quest for a new record. And I thought jumping in Lake Michigan for a few minutes in February was bold! The footage from today's event will actually be used as the start of a documentary film studying the medical ramifications of tumo practice which was developed by monks in order to survive the extreme conditions at 18,000 feet in the Indian Himalayas. According to the Rubin Museum of Art's website, "An attempt to study the physiological effects of tumo was made by Herbert Benson in the 1980s. Benson studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India and found that these subjects exhibited the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°C." That's crazy!
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