Video·1 min read·June 2026

From Depression to Business Success: A Cold Plunge Journey

A founder's story of recovering from depression and building a successful business—with cold plunging as the daily anchor practice.

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From Depression to Business Success: A Cold Plunge Journey: Full Transcript

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[Music] boom in the present moment so I actually Googled how to release store trauma and I was like wait that's all we're doing I can actually do it say why is this happening for me all righty So today we're going to do a little podcast with our friend Mike from plun SAA and what a better way to start a podcast if not with a cold Plunge in which Mike is an absolute

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supportive but what's happening is is uh your veins are closing up inside your extremities so that's what's causing the pain so if you have poor circulation or inflammation or a little bit of arthritis maybe even in the hands or in the feet all that blood's being sucked out to go to the center of your body to protect your organs two minutes is up good job well let's go out here we talked

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men that was almost me today so A good rule of thumb with this is we stayed in for about 2 minutes so if you double that time that's about how long you want to naturally re warm for or until you feel that chill kind of just dissipate from the body all right so I'm just going to set my intention with the water really quick stpp in nice and slow go down do you remember your first gold

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can get get to a place where you're taking nothing but a cold shower that' be a great start to you know integrating yourself into cold water therapy look like you weird at uh cozy 3 minutes here casual 3 minutes to start of the day all right Mike so how you feeling I'm feeling pretty refreshed it does actually increase the adrenaline in the body also increases your metabolism so

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class which was like a somatic breath work experience and then I signed up for a Wim Hof fundamentals Workshop specifically for the breath work aspects of it I had no intention of getting in the cold nor did I have any thought that that would be what I needed and I went to the other two breath works first and and both great but I found that I was in my head a lot you know because with Kundalini breath work it's all about

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there was probably you know 12 or 13 other people in the group and everybody's getting prepped up for the ice bass and I'm like I'm out of here you know and uh and you know I was kind of encouraged and and probably looked down upon if I was to have left so I was like you know screw it I'll stay you know for the ice bath and uh and what happened when I got into the ice I kind of touched on it when I was in ice

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so I was like all right there's really something to this so I kind of started to open it up into a bigger group of people outside of my friend group and I had random people coming over my house every Monday Friday to do breath work and ice bath for me and as that process continued to unfold I was like I need to get more educated on this and get certified through the Wim Hoff Academy because this is something I want to do

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was probably the hardest part for me is like losing that family aspect um on top of it you know I worked you know I was in that relationship for 15 years so you know it's like I worked a long time to create this life and then to have it all crumble uh under my feet just felt like really uh devastating you know and I was just like all right I don't know where to go from here but we got to move somewhere we got to go somewhere we got

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allowing me to EXP Express and release these stored uh emotions that I was holding on to and carrying the resentment the shame the pain the anxiety the fear all of it so anybody going through a similar experience I would say I know you're feeling uncomfortable right now but let's make you a little bit more uncomfortable because through these really uncomfortable practices that

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just found a lot of benefit and healing in these practices and I do believe that it was pushing myself in these really uncomfortable situations which allowed me to then bring up some of this other stuff anytime you're numbing you know the situation through uh drugs or alcohol that's not serving anything or anybody you know it's just something to suppress the emotion and emotions are funny because emotions are

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my training up in the parenes mountains in Spain and we did this pyramid it was called they called it the pyramid what we did was we had a partner and you would if you were my partner you would get in the ice for a minute and I would stand outside the ice and then we'd flip-flop so I'd get in the ice and you'd stand out now cold freezing cold in the freezing cold weather and we do this back and forth so we go 1 minute in

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had Winters but uh then the snow would melt and my grandfather lived in a place where snow didn't melt and I remember I was getting I got there and it was - 40 and I was like awesome the snow's not melting I'm ready to go outside I opened the door and that's how it felt and then I closed the door and I did not go play outside at all for like 3 days jeez were you ever in a place where you felt like

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can affect uh the overall chill factor of of the experience but I think having gone through this process and this practice I don't think cold water like surfing bothers me as much now uh just because I have more of a confidence level I think so would you say that you you could have been in places where you could have had a spiritual experience but because it wasn't a control environment and you didn't know how to

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could be meditating maybe that's the thing you know and you're just sit with yourself we've talked about this moment how one transformational moment in your life brought you to then sharing this with the others and now you've turned it into a full-time business which is PL SAA I've been there it's an incredible spot and I didn't even realize that that it was owned by you until I met you there which was an incredible moment

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when I got home I almost had to go through love withdrawals because it was so intense like the connection I built with these people in just a short period of time going through these really hard things uh was unlike anything I've ever experienced and I I have to kind of probably relate it to someone that's been in the Army and has been deployed or been in some sort of military service and has been deployed together and they

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actually funny I think probably five or six relationships have started out of plans we've only been open for about a year and a half yeah and I think like there's been like five or six like you know relationships that have started out of there how many relationships ended there I don't know I don't have that metric I haven't heard of any any ending yet but um but yeah some have started so it's been pretty cool to witness this

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signs and don't really see the health concerns or the safety concerns and uh you know so I think there needs to be some sort of Regulation around this so I I am working towards building and developing educational content for other contrast therapy owners so they can either be certified or hold some sort of um accreditation that that shows that they have this training because ultimately this is a great practice but

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would you tell him so my number one advice for anybody watching this uh podcast would be we actually have a shirt that says it at Plana and the shirt says find comfort in the discomfort and so whatever uncomfortable situations that you're moving through in life right now uh just noticing if you can find comfort in that situation and really switching the perspective of instead of like like

Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.

Key Insights

cold plunge as non-negotiable morning ritual

Momentum from physical challenge carries into work

Building stress capacity through controlled exposure

Community around cold exposure becomes business network

"The body adapts to what you consistently demand of it—controlled stress builds resilience when applied deliberately."

Wim's Wise Words

A second take, from someone who's lived it.

🧊 Wim's Wise Words

From Depression to Business Success, a Cold Plunge Journey

The Accidental Protocol

Mike didn't go to the Wim Hof workshop for the cold. He went for the breathwork. That detail matters, because it's the honest entry point for most people who end up making cold exposure a cornerstone of their life. Nobody's drawn to discomfort on purpose. They're drawn to something else—relief, community, curiosity—and the cold surprises them.

What happened in that ice bath at the workshop changed his relationship with his own mind. After two breathwork sessions where he kept getting lost in his thoughts, the cold did something different: it forced him into the present moment completely. You can't ruminate in ice water. Your body demands your full attention. That's not metaphor. That's neuroscience.

What the Research Actually Shows

The mental health case for cold exposure has grown substantially. We know from the Finnish longitudinal studies and Dr. Ashley Mason's clinical work that thermal stress produces measurable antidepressant effects—a single sauna session producing relief lasting up to six weeks. Cold operates through a different but complementary mechanism: a norepinephrine spike of 200 to 300 percent above baseline, reshaping your neurochemical landscape within minutes of immersion.

I see this same trajectory in the Cam on cold plunges and mental health episode in the knowledge base—another person who entered cold exposure looking for something else and found that the somatic experience cut through the overthinking that depression feeds on. Where breathwork and meditation can feel slippery when the mind is already struggling, cold water is blunt. It works even when you're not in the mood to let it work.

But what Mike's story adds that the research often underweights is the behavioral anchor effect. Depression thrives in ambiguity. It finds its footing in mornings without structure, in days without a first clear win. A cold plunge is non-negotiable in a way that meditation often isn't. You either got in or you didn't. That binary clarity is therapeutic in itself.

"Depression thrives in ambiguity. The cold gives you a clear answer every morning—did you show up for yourself, or didn't you?"

The Community You Didn't Expect

What strikes me most in this story—and I see it echoed in the Plunge garage-to-hundred-million-dollar-empire story and the Kiin Sauna episode in the knowledge base—is how cold exposure creates community almost by accident. Mike stayed in that ice bath because he felt social pressure not to leave. From that reluctant first plunge, a business network formed around him.

This pattern repeats consistently. People who cold plunge together develop unusual bonds. The shared vulnerability, the shared accomplishment, the fact that you can't fake your reaction to cold water—it produces the same tribal chemistry that team sports do. For someone recovering from depression, which is fundamentally isolating, that community dimension may be as therapeutic as the norepinephrine.

Where to Start

If low motivation or depression is the starting point, begin simpler than you think. The transcript is clear on protocol: two minutes in cold water, then double that time warming naturally. Don't try to be heroic in week one. The goal isn't temperature tolerance. The goal is creating a daily proof point—something difficult that you did this morning anyway.

Cold showers count. You don't need a dedicated tub. You need the first step, and the social structure to sustain it. Find a breathwork class, a plunge meetup, one accountability partner. The cold is the ritual. The community, as Mike discovered, is often the real medicine.