Dagna Lester, Certified Advanced Wim Hof Method Instructor

For two days a month, I couldn’t stand up straight.

Period pain that no painkiller touched. I’d cancel things. Lie on the bathroom floor. Then get up, go to work, and act normal.

The tests found nothing. I was told it was just how some women are.

Then came a cancer scare – a lump, removed, benign, but with a family history that means I don’t get to be casual about it. And ovarian cysts I was told weren’t going anywhere.

I started breathwork and cold showers in 2020. Not for any of that. I just wanted to feel less exhausted.

Within months, the period pain stopped. A year later, a scan showed the cysts were gone. The doctor asked what I’d done. I said breathwork and cold exposure. She looked at me like I was winding her up, so I said I don’t know.

But I knew.

I’m not selling a miracle. Bodies are complicated and I’m one person, not a study. But I spent years being told nothing was wrong while something was clearly wrong, and then found tools nobody had ever mentioned to me.

Before this, I worked in corporate.

Years of it. Boards, executives, long hours, and the particular kind of pressure that doesn’t look like pressure from the outside because you’re handling it.

Until I wasn’t. I burned out badly enough that it took me two years to come back.

I understand what sustained pressure does to a body, because it happened to mine while I was busy telling everyone I was fine.

That’s why I do this work the way I do. Not as wellness. As physiology – practical, teachable, and useful on an ordinary Tuesday.

How I trained

My turning point came in January 2023, on my first Winter Expedition in Poland. In the icy wilderness. Breath, cold, and raw human connection – something clicked, and I knew I couldn’t keep it to myself.

Over the following year I trained relentlessly, travelling across Europe to attend every Wim Hof Method event I could, and learning from elite instructors. In May 2024 I qualified as a Certified Instructor, and in December 2025 I completed Advanced Instructor Training in Przesieka, Poland.

Since then I’ve held workshops across the UK and Europe, co-led expeditions at the Wim Hof Method Center in the French Alps, and had the honour of assisting Wim himself at his official weekend in Stroe, Netherlands, at the French Center, and on his week-long winter expedition in Sweden and straight after that at his first ever event in Greece.

I also took part in the DMT Quest brain wave study on the effects of the method — as one of the few women involved, in research that is usually almost entirely male.