Global Wellness Summit 2017 - Day 3

First up there were, like some time slots on other days, there were multiple streams.

The first session I attended was with Wim Hoff, Author, Athlete and Inspirator, affectionately known as The Ice Man. This is a man who climbed Everest in shorts and who swam under polar ice caps without a wetsuit.

Wim has discovered a method to overcome a method of overcoming and getting in control of his own autonomic nervous system. Doing so, he is able to control his body’s natural survival reflexes and change how his body responds to external stimuli like cold.

At the end of the session he took us through a powerful exercise of high rate, deep breathing and led us into a breath holding activity, first for a minute, then for 90 seconds and then for two minutes. Most people in the room were able to achieve it.

He talked about preventing and curing disease and as I did the exercise, I realised that breathing in such a way flooded the body with oxygen. This is a key to healing a number of conditions that may be related to low systemic oxygen levels including infections and cancer.

His technique has been analysed rigorously by a variety of Physiologists and Medical Scientists and has been proven to be effective. His work has led to new learning and discovery.

I am going to be exploring the technique and using it to see how it impacts on my own capacity to perform. However, in alignment with many of the thoughts I have had during the conference, I feel that I align such a practice with bigger life goals.

I have a personal perspective to share on this.

My reason for being on this planet at this time is to educate and inspire people to become much more highly responsible for their life and for the experiences they create, whether it be disease, unhappiness, conflict, injury or being at the effect of other people, events or situations. In doing so, we can then support each person to become a better role model for those around them and gradually we can create a ripple effect that will change the world.

I am not the only one to think this way. I am sure many of you reading this post have similar ideals. The reason I choose to eat well, exercise regularly and continue to learn and study, is so that I can carry out this work to the best of my ability for as long as I can.

So, I will explore Wim’s breathing techniques in alignment with this to honour the spirit with which it was shared.

I have a sense that sometimes we learn new techniques and methods and immediately become fixated on using them to help ourselves look better, feel younger, lose weight or to be more likely to survive. But this can be a self-centred intention and often the reason for poor results, disappointment and failure. I feel strongly that we all need to use our learnings in any way that we can to advance the lot of humanity.

You can click here to learn more about the Wim Hoff Method.

After the break we heard from Silvia Garcia, Founder of Happiest Places to Work and Former Global Director of the Happiness Institute, Coca-Cola, US.  

Silvia started out by talking about the Minnesota Twins Study which revealed profound similarities between identical twins who grew up separately. These twins had strikingly similar habits, life choices and taste. It was as if they were genuinely pressed out of the same mold. The study was a powerful example of the power of genes.

However, further study revealed something quite fascinating. Whilst looks, taste in clothes, careers choices, and many other factors are profoundly similar, many identical twins studied were experiencing different levels of happiness.

The research revealed that perhaps Happiness has little to do with genetics.

Silvia asked the question. Is the glass half empty or is the glass half full? Her answer to the question was a simple, “The glass can be refilled”.

Of course, this takes us back to Kenneth Pelletier’s words about Epigenetics and about how we experience life plays a significant role on our wellbeing. If we choose to see something as negative, we will have a negative experience. However, if we can shift our perspective and learn to see things in different ways, we can learn to change our experience, often quite profoundly.

We then heard from Jeremy McCarthy, Group Director of Spa and Wellness, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Hong Kong, and he was talking about Wellness in the age of Technology.

He shared that the problem is not that all of our amazing technology is bad, it is too good. He said that we are making so many sacrifices today for technology that did not exist 20 years ago. So how good is it going to get? What will we willingly sacrifice then?

Consider the fact that we are always contactable. We can never get away from the reach of others (unless we turn our phones off, but who would do such a thing). Email, cellular phones, portable computers, the internet, social media and a myriad of other related devices and services have become an integral part of our lives.

Twenty years ago, most people did not have a mobile phone. As technology evolves at the same profound rate it is currently expanding, and perhaps even faster, what sacrifices are we going to be willing to make for technology?

For example, am I going to have to give up the enjoyment of driving my own car?

He shared examples of where it may all go, but who really knows? None of us could have predicted the iPhone, yet in just 10 years it has changed the world.

Then we heard from my dear friend Professor Marc Cohen from RMIT University in Melbourne. He talked with us about Water, Wellness, Wealth and the Inner Well of Being.

Marc quoted Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgim, Chairperson of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. She wrote:

“Water should be everyone’s concern. Without water we die. All life dies. Water is precious. We need to give thanks to water.”

Marc talked about the importance of visiting the edge of our comfort zone. This helps us to build the skill of coming back to our Centre and grounding ourselves. This pays off in life with things upset us, or our equilibrium. With this skill we can return more easily to our centre.

When we willingly explore beyond our comfort zone we become more resilient, stronger and more able. Our health improves. When we choose to seek to stay within our comfort zone, the opposite occurs and our state of wellness declines.

Marc shared a simple fact. 99 out of every 100 molecules in the body are water. We are built from a particular type of water; structured water. All our cellular membranes are made from this structured water.

He shared that for every molecule of glucose we break down we create 6 molecules of water. Water is essential to human life, on many levels.

The biome in our body (referred to as The Microbiome) exists also in the air and the water we bathe in. Hot springs are a great and abundant source of biome. Hot springs also determine mineral deposits which then draw human settlement.

Marc shared a stunning graphic. Of the Earth’s water, 96.5% is salt water. The rest is fresh water. 99% of that is frozen or underground. The rest is liquid, fresh water. There are vast reservoirs of water deep below the earth, many of them are the hot mineralised sources used by Hot Springs all around the world.

There are 2 hot springs in Japan that have been operating for 1300 years and are the oldest businesses in the world.

He then went on with some extraordinary graphics that demonstrate how all life on earth is related and fed by hot springs. There are untapped hot springs all over the planet.

Bathing is one of the 4 most common things we do. It is fun, nurturing and healing. It is important to health and is profoundly healing. It plays a vital role in preventing and controlling disease. It also offers an opportunity to explore extremes (way outside our comfort zones) using hot saunas and cold water. He also recommended the regular use of Cold Showers in the mornings, firstly because of their genuine health benefits and second because they absolutely take us way out of our comfort zone.

He described the Physiological changes that take place as a result of Hot and Cold Bathing. These include:

• Mental Resilience and Focus
• Exercises Vascular Smooth Muscle.
• Reduces Pain and Inflammation
• Enhances Detoxification and Elimination
• Increases Metabolism and Burning White Fat

He took us through a great routine for embracing morning cold showers. We had a good laugh as he gave us his Cold Shower rendition of the Hokey Pokey.

You will also remember me reporting that Marc offered in a discussion session on Day 1 that 2.1 billion people on the planet do not get to bathe, simply because they do not have access to either adequate water or clean water. This degrades their health, immunity, dignity and over-all sense of self. Further, nearly 1000 children die each day from waterborne diseases. Every day in the world, women and girls spend 200 million hours gathering water, time that could well be spent in more creative pursuits. I feel that in this modern age, this is a profound injustice that we could address with some of the money we collectively spend on war.

A near final slide noted: “Bathing offers global health benefits beyond and pharmaceutical, vaccine or any other medical technology. Please check out the Bathe The World Foundation at www.bathetheworld.org.

Dr David Bosshart CEO of the Gottlieb and Duttweiler Institute in Switzerland talked with us about Wellness 2030, - Key Trends for a Growing Economy in a Rapidly Changing World.

It is dangerous to become a prisoner of the present when the rules of the game are changing so rapidly. Human beings need to evolve to match the evolution of the technology. We face the genuine possibility of having artificial intelligence meeting natural stupidity. Strong imagination needs strong nerves.

Interesting note: More people died last year taking selfies than from shark attacks.

But there is another Selfie. David welcomed us to recognise the difference between the Visual Selfie versus Data Selfie. Modern online retail activity and social media activity are progressively gathering data about us and creating a digital selfie. The super power of our advancing computer technology will get to know us so well that we will regularly be tempted with things that appeal to us strongly and our buying habits are becoming more and more open to a digital form of sales manipulation.

It is crucial that we continue to evolve to remain a step ahead of the exploding intelligence of the advancing computer technology.

But on reflection, I saw this as amazing. I personally have no doubt that the human race needs to evolve spiritually and work our way toward deeper and more complete levels of personal responsibility. Around us we are creating a digital world that is demanding this growth from us.

David provided a list of conclusions:

• The Wellness Industry will become an extension of the Data Economy.
• The Data Selfie will become more important than your mirror reflection.
• Biohackers will change the rules of the game.
• Happiness will be decoded and recoded.
• Expect entirely new Wellness Categories to emerge.
• There will be a shift from Expert Opinion to Consumer Data Management.
• But: Who will aggregate data? Own it” Control it? Program it?
• Beware: Regulations may slow down innovation speed, but will not stop it.

We then heard from Edie Weiner, President and CEO of The Future Hunters, USA, talking to s about The Crossroads of Science and Spirituality: Redefining the Well Life and Beyond.

She shared that we have reached a point in this world where we find ourselves able to achieve what humanity has not been able to do before:

• Leave this planet
• Destroy this planet
• Hack the future of the human species

Just this point got my attention and I tended to just want to stop and listen. Edie spoke with passion and a very broad viewpoint and I found myself just wanting to listen so I put my pen away. That might leave you hanging. If it does, I do apologize. But there is one sure fire way to fix that. Either contact Edie and find out what resources she has to share, or find out how you can be invited to next year’s 2018 Global Wellness Summit in Italy.

I do hope my write ups have been helpful. Writing them has certainly helped me. If you would like a copy as a PDF, please drop me at note at [email protected].