Dean Hall: Swimming 187 Miles with Cancer — Radical Remission, Purpose, and Nature’s Healing Power

WELCOME TO EPISODE 258

Welcome back to Beautifully Broken, where healing meets high performance. In this episode, I sit down with Dean Hall—an inspiring adventurer whose story blends tragedy, survival, and extraordinary feats. Dean’s life was upended by the sudden loss of his wife and a severe cancer diagnosis. Instead of surrendering, he swam the entire 187‑mile length of Oregon’s Willamette River, while living with active cancer. That grueling, frigid journey led to a radical remission—one medicine declared impossible.

Dean then turned to forest bathing—walking and sleeping under ancient trees—to heal physically and emotionally. Through intentionally connecting with nature, including ice‑bath practice, he not only restored his body but resurrected his spirit. His path reframes traditional psychology around "BioWild," a nature‑rooted approach emphasizing flow, recharge, and giving from abundance. It’s a story of resilience, purpose, and honoring your body’s intelligence. Tune in for lessons on mindset, radical ownership of your health, and how to find healing in wild places.

Episode Highlights

[00:00] - Dean’s life-changing swim and the shocking moment his leukemia seemingly vanished
[02:16] - Holding two world records and the physical toll of cold, open water endurance swims
[05:14] - The technique behind “total immersion” swimming and the deeper mindset required
[10:23] - Losing his wife to a brain tumor and the raw truth about navigating profound grief
[22:08] - Moving back to Oregon, rediscovering purpose, and a sixth-grade journal that sparked the dream
[30:45] - Rebuilding from rock bottom—Dean’s first swim back and the power of momentum
[36:10] - The unexpected hero: Dean’s 79-year-old dad joins him for the 187-mile river journey
[51:26] - Radical remission: the first blood test results that stunned Dean’s oncologist
[58:08] - Healing in the forest: how nature, solitude, and emotion unlocked true recovery
[1:08:13] - Introducing “BioWild Psychology”—Dean’s nature-based model for lasting mental and emotional health
[1:15:10] - A message for anyone facing illness: reclaim your identity and be your own advocate

Links & Resources 

Dean’s Website: 

“The Wild Cure” book: 

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FULL EPISODE INTERVIEW

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel (00:02.066)
Alright team, welcome to the biological blueprint. We're here with our special VIP guest Dean Hall. Dean, welcome to the blueprint.

Dean Hall (00:11.807)
I am thrilled to be here Freddy anytime I get to talk to you. I'm a happy man

Freddie Kimmel (00:17.326)
I, I, I, when we met, when we met in Wisconsin and we were cutting holes in the ice, the whole time I was saying, was like, man, I wish we could, I wish we could package this experience up and not only have people hear your story, but contextually where we could also then go be in nature, go get in the ice together because it just, it made it, you know, one of a lifetime memory that I'll never forget that weekend.

Dean Hall (00:46.227)
Yeah, it was just a wonderful weekend, wasn't it?

Freddie Kimmel (00:49.066)
It was wonderful. And so I'm going to ask you to do the impossible, Dean, because you're cited in this module, which is mind, body, purpose, spirit, magic. So we would talk about ice and cold and temperature is medicine and genetics and detox pathways and drainage pathways, which are all very important. And it's my belief, and I think we have a shared belief that

what fills our sale with purpose is just as important, if not more than any of those other things. And I wonder if you couldn't encapsulate, can you tell us your story in a few sentences?

Dean Hall (01:35.121)
I was sick and grieving and that's probably why I was so sick and I was without hope and I knew that I had to find something that I could be passionate enough about to live so that I would make the decision to live and I did so.

and I followed it even though it seemed crazy. And just by finding the power and the courage to chase my dreams, I would say a million gifts came my way, most of them beyond my wildest expectations.

Freddie Kimmel (02:23.598)
Beautiful. And I'm going to link Dean's full interview for everybody. This will actually be the one I require for you to listen to. You're going to listen to us for a full hour and it'll give great context to this. Now, Dean, how did discovering a deep purpose for you, this personal purpose that filled your sail, know, such as dedicating the swim to your family and your daughter, how did that shift?

Dean Hall (02:33.471)
You

Freddie Kimmel (02:48.406)
your mindset during cancer and what role did it play in overriding that fear associated with your prognosis.

Dean Hall (02:57.193)
Well, it moved me beyond myself. And we are beings that have to belong to a tribe. We have to be in relationship. And we've been taught by our society that our relationship with ourself is primary and it's many times the only thing that our culture concentrates on. And I think that is like,

planting an apple tree by itself. It's never going to bear fruit. And many times we'll die out of sheer loneliness. so by creating this passionate purpose, it pushed me outside of myself for something bigger than just me that I could really sink my teeth into and get excited about. And then

Because it wasn't just about me. I had other people Depending on me watching me. I Wanted to make sure not to let them down. So it was kind of this beautiful Two-step where first it got me outside of me, but then second it the thing Depended on me To be outside of me

And I think we're all born for something larger than ourselves. I tell everyone, each of us come into this world with a dream. And Freddie's dream is in Dean's dream. And it's implanted in us like a goose to fly south for the winter. And our culture beats it out of us fairly quickly or discounts it to the point

we feel almost embarrassed to follow it. But when we do, that's when the magic happens.

Freddie Kimmel (04:57.976)
Beautiful, beautiful. And how did the practice, a spiritual practice or that sense of connection with something greater influence your journey through cancer, through recovery, specifically in moments of doubt?

Dean Hall (05:15.999)
Yeah, had a lot of those. My faith has always been very important to me. For me, it's maybe it's because I'm not that smart, that I haven't depended on my intellect. I've always depended on my heart. I've always, ever since I was a little kid, I've been a very intuitive, empathic, Piscean who is heart centered. And so

As I grew up, it was all about family. And then as I was married, it was about my relationship and my love life. And then being a teacher and a therapist, it was trying to reach out and help others. And so for me, part of the reason I had become so sick is I had become so isolated and self-centered, focused only on me.

And so it wasn't a natural state for me. so returning to try to do something and accomplish something, follow life and the universe into giving rather than just groaning, so to speak, changed everything for me.

Freddie Kimmel (06:35.854)
Beautiful. And what advice would you give to somebody facing a chronic illness on uncovering their own why? You know, to foster that kind of magical alignment of that mind, body, purpose, spirit, magic that helped you thrive beyond the diagnosis.

Dean Hall (06:53.533)
Yeah, I tell people three things when they're in that real what I call dark night of the soul or desert where it just feels like you can't see where you started from, you can't see the horizon of where you want to end up. And the first is you don't have to do your recovery perfectly.

If you even hit 60 to 70 % of your goals or what your desired implemented plan is, that's enough. The body does not require perfection. And because of our diet mad kind of cultural training where you've got to have this

perfect diet and this perfect exercise program and everything. It's not sustainable. None of us as humans are perfect. And so let go of this idea that you have to recover perfectly. The second is whatever the body creates, the body can heal. I believe wholeheartedly that most of us by the way we've lived, the way we've thought, the way we've interacted or not,

Now, the way we are all struggling in this concrete jungle to even resonate in any way that's essentially human. We all are living such synthetic, digital, obsessed lives that we've forgotten who we are and we've forgotten that we have the power inside of us to heal whatever

by our own ignorance perhaps or poor choices we've created or if we've experienced a lot of tragedy and trauma. And then the last is courage is not the absence of fear. It's being scared shitless but concentrating on just the next step. When I was scared to death,

Dean Hall (09:16.165)
even to get in the pool or to get back into the river or at the start. I think I got 180 miles of this. Are you kidding me? I wouldn't concentrate on that. I just concentrate on the very next step. And the thing that is so beautiful that I've found, Freddie, is even people when they're suicidal, they might not know what the week's gonna bring or how the day's gonna end.

but they know the next step. We always all know what the next step is. I've asked hundreds of people in last 10 years because this is one of the things I use the most to accomplish my dreams. When I was sick, when I was frustrated, when I felt like I was spent and could do no more, I'd ask myself, what's the next step? And I'd always know what the next step is. Usually when it was in the river.

Stand up, get your big butt back in the river and swim until you can't swim anymore. And then take a break. Suicidal folks, I'll ask them, what's the next step? They'll say, well, I need to put the gun down. Okay, do that. They do it. What's the next step? Well, I need to call grandma. She loves me. She'll be here. Okay, do that. I'll wait with it. People always know the next step. We might not know what, two steps or three steps.

Freddie Kimmel (10:20.078)
Hmm.

Dean Hall (10:41.597)
We certainly won't know what 50 steps are, but we always know what the next step is. And it's hard, but once you make life that simple, you put yourself in a great environment to heal.

Freddie Kimmel (11:00.526)
Terrain, terrain, terrain, environment informs biology. I love it. You mentioned within our interview, Viktor Frankl and some of his work and he was a survivor of Auschwitz. And you had said that he had this working theory that it might be the Olympians or...

Dean Hall (11:02.055)
Yeah. Right.

Dean Hall (11:11.443)
Mm-hmm.

Freddie Kimmel (11:24.339)
the, the very physically strong who were able to survive that environment. What, what happened and why was that not true?

Dean Hall (11:31.987)
Yeah, he watched people very carefully while he was in Auschwitz and wrote little notes, rolled them up, stuck them in the cracks in the walls so that his notes wouldn't be taken away from him. What he found is it wasn't the smartest people. So it didn't require brains, thank God. It wasn't the physically strongest people.

It wasn't even the people who he would identify had the most grit, the toughest. It was those who were the most passionately tied to a purpose. And in Auschwitz, there were two purposes. One was to live so they could see their loved ones again, or live so they can kill as many Nazis as they possibly could.

He found and he found the more those were the two main ones in Auschwitz and he found the more passionate a person was about one of those two or You know a unique one of their own the more likely they were to withstand the onslaught of that kind of torture and torment

Freddie Kimmel (12:49.24)
The, I'm going to ask you one that is birthed off that answer. You know, this idea of epigenetics that your epi-gemon, the environment informs genetic expression. know from the scientific literature that people who have survived the Holocaust often carry levels of transgenerational trauma. How have you worked with that knowing in your own

health journey and what have you done to heal if that's your belief system, some things that may not be yours that were passed down from mom and dad.

Dean Hall (13:24.285)
Yeah, I haven't done a lot of it until the last two or three years. And that's odd that I haven't, because my clinical training was, my mentor was a personal student of the guy named Murray Bowen, who started Family Systems Therapy, which

If you know anything about family systems, it's where you map out what's called a genogram and you go through and look at how things have been handed down generations so that the problems make sense and then the person tries to, it gives them a degree of separation so that they aren't just blaming themselves and they try to work out those problems. You think with that kind of clinical background, I would have been doing this for years.

But now we again, even in the family systems concentrate on the individual. And only since the early 2000s have we known that it can get passed down through genetics. And so it's only been in the last two or three years that I have been looking at generational wounds.

I've been doing a lot more talking to my parents about the family tree and what they know about their grandparents and great grandparents, what they suffered. Just had a wonderful conversation a week ago today. Learned a lot about my great grandmother. Had not known that she came over from Sweden by herself on a boat at 14. Yeah, you think that? Had eight children. Was stood fire.

Freddie Kimmel (15:05.228)
Mm.

Dean Hall (15:12.799)
and some drunken indigenous scary times there in the early 1900s in Minnesota. And so, you know, there's all sorts of things like that. And then my dad's side came from Kingsland, England, Northern England, and they were fishermen and brawlers and came over to America because a couple of them were in trouble.

And then they were also going broke as fishermen at the time. And so I've been looking at all four sides and then trying to ascertain even intuitively what has been handed down. How can I feel and release that? That's where my force bathing has come in handy. There's nothing, no better way, I believe, to let go the ancestral wounds.

than out in nature. Mama nature, those trees will just pull it out of you. They'll gladly absorb it, recycle it. And then I end up usually on those days doing a dip in a glacial stream, almost like a baptism where I'm letting go of the old and coming back to life. One of the things that I've found is a very pleasant experience with AI.

is putting in your four family names and saying, look at these family names and if you can put in any specific information, what would you ascertain as talking to AI, as the ancestor wounds that have been handed down from these family systems? And as I've had clients do that, it just opens up a...

great window of learning and it gives them something to discuss if they can with parents and grandparents. And so I think it's a wonderful way to use AI to kind of fast track some concrete examples of what some of those wounds may be.

Freddie Kimmel (17:29.312)
Yeah. You mentioned for your last question here, you mentioned within our conversation, our long form interview, how can we ask the body prayerfully for the next step? Can you walk us through what an exercise or what that might feel or look like?

Dean Hall (17:50.397)
Right, yeah, this is one of the most powerful, simple tools we are hardwired to be able to use effectively. Doesn't matter age, gender, culture, training, biases. The brain by its very nature, if you're human, the brain by its very nature has to answer every question you ask.

You do the math on that and you realize our lives are really only as successful and happy and healthy as our questions are. And so first, you've got to start tuning into the questions you're asking yourself all day, every day. But using it as a tool, what I do when I'm perplexed or really looking for my purpose, what I did when I was so sick and so confused is

Prayerfully, I would do what I call center down. It's where you just take a few breaths, you get calm. And then with my whole heart and mind, just focus on just with everything in my being, asking, almost like I'm before some kind of dignitary and somebody or something that has the ability to

grant a gift or a request. With that kind of personality and purpose, I would just ask with everything I had, how at that time I would say, what could I give my life to and pursue with all my being that would do the world some

Just that simple. And I'd concentrate on that for only a minute or two. And then I would let it go. And I would do that five or six times a day. It would be one of the first things I'd do during the day. And then if I ever had a moment, at first I was in such terrible grief, my head wasn't working right. So I would set an alarm randomly on my phone throughout the day. And then it was the last thing I would do.

Dean Hall (20:09.361)
and I would do it in rhythm with my breath. What could I, as I breathe in, how could I spend my life? And then as I breathe out in a way that would impact others, you know. And just, it was very calming and extremely frustrating because I didn't hear any kind of answer for 10 weeks. And usually I'll hear some kind of an answer intuitively.

But that time, as you know, it was a concrete, I opened up a journal and it was like, boom, why can't I think of this? But things happen when you start to ask questions in a very deep, soulful way. Yeah, it's just like, you're using the same mechanism as you can't remember who George Washington's wife's name was, or some trivial.

Freddie Kimmel (20:56.974)
Beautiful.

Dean Hall (21:07.079)
thing or what was that guy's name I should remember this buddy's name or and then you're brushing your teeth an hour later and it pops into your head it's using that same mechanism only in a deeper more important way and I've used this for 20 years with thousands and thousands of clients and if a person will do it

Freddie Kimmel (21:22.53)
Yeah. Yeah, shit.

Dean Hall (21:33.073)
and proceed through the frustration because it gets frustrating because you don't hear anything right off the bat. It's been 100%.

Freddie Kimmel (21:41.998)
Yeah, yeah, change your questions, change your life. I love it, Dean. I'm so excited for people not only to hear this, but the full context of your story and really great guidance on how to just take one step forward. I think clearing that slate with the breath, asking the question is profound. It's simple and fits right in the blueprint. Thank you so much.

Dean Hall (22:10.43)
Good, good, Freddie. I'm glad it was helpful.

Freddie Kimmel (22:13.1)
Yes, big love. Thank you.

Dean Hall (22:15.197)
All right, thank you.