Ryan Duey | Ice Baths: Cold Therapy For Weight Loss, Immunity, Metabolism & Mindset | Wellness Force

[Music] cold plunging for me it's like the energy like i just come in there and i get this two to three minutes in there my morning is accelerated i'm clear i'm concise it's a fast track in meditation so i could go sit for 10 to 20 minutes which you know i encourage everyone do that as well but two to three minutes in there is almost that same feeling in my mind coming out of there it's like like the apps are turned off [Music] ryan welcome to wellness force amazing to be

here three months ago i had my boy nova and we delayed this interview but now it's perfect timing because i'll tell you my level of sleep disturbance and all the things i'm going through as a new parent the cold plunge has really made an impact man so i'm super stoked to talk about this if people don't know you if people don't know anything about you uh where were you born where was your original city where do you hail from yeah so i hail from northern california grew up spent in sacramento

california a little suburb town outside of there spent about 18 years went through same house have an older sister parents lived there and then um went off on a journey for the next 12 years and now and then that brought me back full circle to sacramento now so i have multiple businesses in that area plunges warehouses in sacramento so and you have a deep background in float centers which i found float tanks in like 2014 2015 capital floats is your business but i want to pull the e-brake i want to

go way back because for for those of you like just tuning in if you haven't met ryan he is a wealth of information about all things contrast therapy cold therapy the coldplunge.com is what we're going to talk about today but man in thailand you were on a motorcycle correct and you had a pretty severe accident and this was kind of like your this was god's light gift to you to throw you into the wellness world and spirituality too so like let's start there before we get into cold and the benefits

of the health you have a spiritual path like you're a very spiritual man so how did that impact of that motorcycle literally the impact of the motorcycle accident how did that really forge your entry into the world of wellness and spirituality and i think plant medicine too right absolutely yeah all of it it was a um i was in a different career i loved my job i worked in major league soccer it was um corporate world but i loved it it was i was passionate about it and i was out

on a trip with my brother and um day before new year's eve in 2013 um had a head-on collision don't even quite remember what happened um my buddy found me in the road there had to the whole thing speeded by me to the other island in and out of consciousness emergency surgery two days later on my jaw but in that night it was it was i still call it the greatest gift of my life i remember being going out of consciousness so there was for my friend witnessing this it was

probably a lot for him to see but i'd grab his hand and i just looked at him and i said this is i needed this this was about a few hours after it happened and he just looked at me like and i still don't know why i said it it was just so innate in my body i was so grateful as i'm laying there bleeding out it was just like i'm i'm had gratitude like i knew the journey ahead of me and that's when things just fast forward i had um

like the synchronicity of it i had i hadn't really committed to what i wanted to do in life it was i had passions and coming out of that it was like dude you have you want to go to the jungle you you know this was ayahuasca had become this conversation in the world it very very i didn't know anyone that had ever done it i had just kind of heard it so i always thought that was some foreign some distant thing great adventure i'll do it some foreign later time in

life uh and i decided like no i'm going um didn't know just got it went booked my trick ticket down to the jungle and i remember at that time the place that i was going to temple the way the light there was no way to like send money to them so i had to go to the bank and do this special wire and i had also from the accident was dealing with some insurance that had taken place and i ended up getting paid out for my insurance like from my job

later but my check this is months after i was going to pay for my trip down to the amazon the check came in the night before for my insurance and it was within a hundred dollars of what i owed to go down to the jungle and i literally took that insurance check went to the bank i cashed it and i said can you put it and send it to this temple of the way light in peru and i remember i ended up building a relationship with the bank guy and he

was like where are you going what are you doing and we started talking but it was like moments like that there was so yeah in flow it was like the accident happened then the payment happened it was like i had the money to go do it was just step by step taking and that caused me to want the mission to go open a float center and do that journey and start my entrepreneurial journey did you get that download i kind of hate that word download because all the spiritual peeps they

overuse it but i will say it for you when you went into the amazon and you drank the medicine did is that when you started to receive the insights on floating that's so interesting how did that happen so i'd started fl floating started because i was going to the jungle so i was like i need to start prepping my mind and body to go inward and i meditation was fairly new to me so i started to float i was living in san francisco um and so after a few floats i

had a very clear i call it a whisper call it a download whatever a thought but it was oh my god i want to open a float center and i didn't start floating to go open a float center it was like this became my it was clear i'm so happy here and it was i remember something came in my head it was like then go create it like you can just spend your you can create one of these and just spend your time here so i thought going down to the

jungle i was going to come out and it was going to be quit your job go start a float center and you know i went down my first time in the jungle i think it was seven ceremonies over a window of time that's a lot of ceremonies it was a lot it was a it was a lot it blasted me open there's so much that came from it and i thought it was gonna be about this career thing like you're going to quit your job and you're going to go do

this it was so quick and it was just the gentle message like that's already taken care of we have other things to work on before you can go do that and i remember just being at peace i didn't even think about it again i actually came home after got a promotion in my job which i feel was a huge part of me getting mentored even have the wherewithal in business and to set out and have the confidence to go do it so it was actually the total opposite it was like

that will happen and it was just this faith time will that will present itself and trust the things you need to take care of before you can go step out and do that so you really had to have patience man i don't care if you're an entrepreneur a parent a business owner an entrepreneur just a human being like we must cultivate patience and resilience which later on we're going to talk about how the cold builds that you're not not just through hormesis but also emotional resilience i think about you in

the jungle like maybe i should open a float tank but then you got back and there was this like hand of of god higher intelligence that said be patient so did you want to really do it right away were you feeling like i have to open this i have to do this i have to get it done how did you maintain the patience i still struggle with the term patience and what that means and how that like how that presents itself for me it was i was very clear it was

going to happen which was fun and exciting but it was i was focused on other things in life but i do remember waking up a morning in july and it just hit me like now you begin like and i don't i can't say my life's been this in flow since that window but it was a moment that it was like there was no forcing it and like waiting or patience it was just now you begin and that was the that was the path forward there after opening the float center i

actually went through a really that was one of that was probably one of the most challenging one of the challenge most challenging personal experience of my life to get that open floating was not normal at this time this is back in 2014 2015.

yeah there was no places around i remember writing checks to construction workers and they were like dude this isn't gonna work like i'm writing ripping them fat checks and they're like you're paying him and they're like hey dude this ain't gonna work totally it was like it was that's awesome you know i'm getting inv i had to get investment money to come in to do this and you know it's like i'm selling them on this vision and this like and no there's no place out there you have to go to

the basement in san francisco have some facility at the time to float yeah so why like that floating wasn't normal i went through that window i opened up it was almost like i could breathe like oh my i accomplished this and i so wanted the next thing to come and it took five years until plunge launched and plunged and when plunge presented itself it was like rapid pace like boom we're going but i struggled during that time of what do i i want to be on to then i should be

doing more i i what's the thing i wanted to force it and i patience was really hard for me at that time so you bringing that up it's like a something i work on a lot i want to be on the next thing and sometimes that's yeah stepping back and just accepting what is right now there's a guy i'm gonna interview in the future and he wrote a book called driven and it's about high performers and their emotional tendencies their mental tendencies um his name is doug i'm blanking on his

last name but somebody's gonna like type it in right now so it's it's about being driven in our personalities and one thing that he talks about is there's like a healthy come from when it comes to driving forward and creating things and being entrepreneur and then there's an unhealthy come from where people maybe don't feel enough self-love or they don't feel adequate for life or whatever it is maybe they have capital t trauma lowercase t trauma do you feel like your drive with the cold plunge comes from a healthy come

from at how it launched absolutely it was i mean i did it with my brother mike garrett my co-founder and it was it came from a moment in time of just external circumstances of being in california and our business is getting shut down and it's like he had just moved to sacramento and him and i had done a non-profit or a fundraiser for maps back in 2018 in national or national uh fundraiser for through floating to raise money for the phase three trials that they were going through for mdma assisted

psychotherapy so we had worked together and had this we'd always like okay we wanna it was a patient's thing again we envisioned us actually going in on some project that mattered to us but we want and there was times where it's like oh let's do this let's do that but it was this presented itself in the sense of like holy [ __ ] we are into this this isn't a we we have a special product he had engineered something that was different like we were like this is the world it fits right

now the price point we were able to cut the price in half to what was on the market and it was like dude we our values and principles are so aligned let's go let's go have some fun and just figure this out together and so that that got me excited and then from the plunge space it's like the thing that lights me up with it we were talking a little prior is it something anyone that does it it's like it's hard so that is my mission is that there is fruit

at the end of doing a cold plunge yeah and gold plunge isn't the end all to be all it's not the only thing we can do but it's something hard and you get such a return on it so to have that at scale to get that out to the world and have people have this be more accessible whether you get one or it's at your local commercial facility having that like cold has become you know it's it's my teacher it's become i've built this incredible relationship with it and it's like

how do i get this out there to more people and so it's been and our journey and our vision with it i think is we're clear on what we want and it's also i don't know i'm sure you have it in business like learning so much about myself along the way yeah like that the pain teacher comes when you're in business either either when you're an entrepreneur or when you work inside of a company and you're empowered there too i don't think everyone's meant to be an entrepreneur absolutely entrepreneurship has

been glamorized but to really pay the price and and be in harmony with the pain teacher to be an entrepreneur it takes an incredible amount of resilience and patience and faith and trust and discipline i mean fill in the blank man there could be a whole seminar like how you could prepare yourself to be an entrepreneur and i loved when you said it's hard the cold the cold therapy because when in our life has any kind of therapy ever been easy if therapy is easy it's probably not good therapy i'm

sorry like i know people might hate on me for that but it's true i've never whether it's emotional intelligence or physical therapy i've done the mark divine 20x where we do like a 14 hour overnight crucible and we do murf soaking wet we're doing ice baths i mean the amount of um togetherness that that suffering and that discomfort forges it's unsurpassed that's why people that are in wars and i'm not here to glamorize war but people that are in wars like they become so bonded together because when we suffer together

or when we suffer with ourself there's something really beautiful that comes from that you know have you have you seen this to be true for yourself because i think about 2015 2016 you got sick like five times in six months yep so you were suffering and you're like i'm a healthy guy i don't know what's going on here and you found wim hof yup so tell us about that because that was like a big needle mover for you to create the cold plunge it was massive it was so it was

actually i had learned of whim in 2015 was so inspired by the message but didn't quite get the message if that makes sense this man inspired me he pioneered it i was so i remember crying watching the documentary two nights in a row but it wasn't until 2018 that i had to get sick so many times that my health coach was like hey let's start bringing in whims breathing into your morning practice and i was getting into lakes and rivers and doing that but it wasn't on like a daily basis

it was seasonal you know one to two times a week when i can get out there but incorporating whims breathing into my morning within one month i mean i had like you said it was six colds over six months it was it was a lot i was just getting sick getting sick getting sick do you feel like it was because you were also driving and like pushing the business forward like why did you get sick so much i've thought about that a lot and i don't know there was clearly some

imbalance and some disharmony energetic whatever it is like and the beauty of it is like i don't think i'll ever really know why but i just did one thing to change it and i'd not really it's it stopped it and so it's i've kind of just let that be and being like i'll never know why but i know this tool fixed that issue and so that i'm i'm totally at peace with it but i you know i think it was yeah there was stress um major stress in my life i

think i had finally exhaled at that moment i had finally got the business at a spot capital floats it was solid it was secure and i think i could breathe and my body kind of finally was like and then just had its release of the sickness and there was i had to go from there i actually went more onto it was i mean it was it's comical to say but opening a float center i was very un personally unhealthy like i i lost my personal practices yeah and it was back

into like oh we got to get you back in [Music] in shape that's where i'm at right now i'm there right now with my son and moving out from california to austin like we all can relate to this i'm not on the top of the mountain i mean i've been in the game for a long time like you but but the more we push and the more we try to serve the more we have to recalibrate ourselves to be healthy to to be in integrity with our health and our and

ourselves what are some of the things you're doing right now to get back to like where you where you want to be solid sleep as much as you can with a newborn how do you do that because i'm i'm now well he's sleep we co-sleep okay so so he sleeps next to carrie my partner and so i put on eye mask and headphones and binaural beats and so that drops me and plus i use cbd and i have a bunch of supplement you should see our i'll show you our luxury

after the interview i mean it's like floor-to-ceiling bottles of supplements but i love cbd i love magnesium i take trace minerals like lots of things but for me it's breath work like my three core pillars are hot and cold sauna and the cold plunge supplementation to help my entire nervous system calm down my central nervous system calm down and then also doing breath work like the 478 breathing that i learned from dr andrew wheel so so all these tools that are i mean the supplements cost money products cost money but

you can do monthly payments for all these things like people are going out and drinking and doing very unhealthy things that cost 200 300 400 bucks in a weekend it's like hello ring the [ __ ] bell you can do something healthy for yourself and it costs less and you get so much more of a benefit so anyways long roundabout the reason i'm telling you this is because i can see how so many people might be a little uneasy about starting with the cold or starting with the heat or any of these

things how do you get people in the right understanding of the benefits of this like maybe we can just just pour right in to the benefits obviously there's hormesis there's lots of brown fat that comes up that's actually energy burning but if people don't know anything about the cold plunge you know just walk them through the beginning benefits of of what actually happens when you do the cold yeah so i think we're still learning like in the sense of from a let me take a step back what it reminds me

of is when i started floating i had the benefits that i saw for myself and i would have people start to come into the facility and be working the desk and they'd come out and say these benefits or these they're starting to float more consistently i'm noticing this in my life i'm like where i didn't even that didn't even fathom to me like i i hadn't even tasted that so it's to me it's like you're getting your body into a natural state and then from there it's gonna start responding in

very unique ways it reminds me of cbd in a way cbd is this intelligence that goes in and it's going to work very differently on you than it does on me yeah it has its own intelligence to find the places that are imbalanced and cold plunging for me the benefits are just an inflammation standpoint you get in there post workout recovery um that that is absolutely there and then for me it's like the energy like i just come in there and i get this two to three minutes in there my

morning is accelerated i'm clear i'm concise i have a uh it's a fast track in meditation so i could go sit for 10 to 20 minutes which you know i encourage everyone do that as well but two to three minutes in there is almost that same feeling in my mind coming out of there it's like like the apps are turned off like i i'm clear and what i want to go do and it just like you talked about you just feel [ __ ] great you just feel great which like we want

to talk to the people that are science-minded you know the people that need pubmed studies which we'll link here in a few and also we want to talk to the spiritual people like i would say the majority of this movement of our community it's people that they want to feel something before they study or read something and that's most people most people want to get like an immediate gratification like how do i feel good in the next five minutes or so that's why the majority of companies that we partner with

it's like their product has to make people feel good in 15 minutes or less otherwise it can be really challenging for the limbic system to be like what novelty am i getting you know like how am i actually winning by using this and so anyways when i do it when i do the cold i go for three minutes i go at 39 degrees because like that's just how i roll i know you go at 46 for your protocol um when you go in there what's actually happening inside of the body

obviously the blood is shunting to the internal organs so cold therapy a lot of pubmed studies talk about increased um movement of not just your organs but also your vascularity and your blood flow so it's really good for circulation but i actually do it after the sauna so i go from all the blood to my skin and then i go in the cold and it's like all the blood to my organs but from your perspective i mean this is your world you know so share with us what's really going on

there i really think we're actually it's like the best workout for your nervous system and it's you know it's like it's fundamental in working out we work out to tear our muscles down and they build back stronger yeah so by getting in the plunge it's like you're doing everything outside of your nor like what is commonplace like the adrenaline is is increasing your mind is screaming this is not safe like you will have every hypothermia all the stories come up while you're in there and you literally get the opportunity to

override not just the story so no new neural pathways but your body you get to go from a sympathetic state fight or flight get me out of here to no i am in control of this yeah and i control my breasts get it down to five to eight breaths per minute and now you are literally telling your you have changed your whole body system think about what that could mean in everything that we do in life that you are actually in control that to me is the yes there is other

like you talked about the brown fat and the metabolism increase and these things that are happening to me the biggest thing is this that we get to put our we are in control through our breath like you talked about that is the anchor that is the mechanism that we get there yeah but to rewrite our whole body system by doing something hard this is what science calls hormesis or the hormatic effect but we just call it doing hard [ __ ] which either one's cool right spiritual or scientific people i i really

like doing hard things because i just have this awareness and i'm curious how you feel about this in our world we have become really really soft and not just soft physically but soft emotionally we live our lives on tablets and computers and phones and we get food dropped off to our house i mean you can literally live your life never going outside of your door never putting your bare feet on the ground never getting into cold water never even being in the sun and you can quote survive but that's the

[ __ ] thing you're surviving you're not actually living that's not a life our ancestors gifted us this world and we owe them that honor because they did really hard [ __ ] all the time and so by us living this life where we're in super duper comfort all the time i feel like it's a disservice and it's really not honoring where we came from i think it's whether it's good or bad or outside of that paradigm it's like it's the natural gravity of where we're going it's pulling us towards that and i'm i'm

i'm just like anyone else like i love my comforts me too and i it's it's what is and with that to your point yes i the cold plunge is is basically like a bumper that i have to put into place that i have i know there's the polarity of doing uncomfortable stuff if i just if i don't put those things into place i will go to the comfort life and it will naturally pull me there but having you know the cold plunge is right there having the sauna having maybe a

workout partner um you know whatever the things are that make you feel uncomfortable like putting those into place in life that it's just like i i'm never gonna get too far outside of my zone of just getting overly comfortable and the cold plunge to me is the yeah it's my company and i do it but it's like this is this is why i do it it's like it's at my house and it's the first thing i do every morning i get this win out of the gate every morning it's i

have the same story i don't want to get in it's cold it's oh it's getting cold again i'm running out of time i got i don't have time for like whatever the story is yeah and i still follow through and i do it and i do my three three to four minute plunge yes and it's you know i my day's a win now i did the hard thing and so from there it's i'm actually gonna get pulled into the easy stuff the the comfortable stuff right but i have set myself

up and it's a rinse and repeat daily for me i like that you said rinse repeat because that's one thing about the cold plunge is different let's talk a little bit more about the benefits and then we'll go into the specificity because most people know you can like buy a freezer try to seal it you can get horse tanks with ice like we'll go into that but the big thing for me is actually metabolism so weight loss and metabolism and immunity that is like on everyone's mind right now totally how

do we defend ourselves against this invisible enemy blah blah blah which i don't buy into the narrative i think it's our sovereignty of health and our health freedom that allows us to defend ourselves against anything and i don't think anyone should put their finger on my chest and tell me what i should be doing with my body anybody else can do what they want to do and i'm not here to judge if you want to wear a diaper on your face if you want to stick experiments in your body go

for it i don't judge you i really don't but do not for one second tell me that i have to do what you want to do so that you feel safe it's a global codependency i don't [ __ ] buy it but sorry for my riff there but like you know when we look at building immunity um talk about some of the science for immunity metabolism and weight loss because the brown fat aspect is real um just let's start there and then i'll reference a pubmed study that i found really fascinating yeah

so the metabolism one we've worked with dr andrew huberman on this he's put out some information on metabolism and cold therapy for it and there's different mechanisms to it but it's you know the the whole point is getting your core body temperature down once you get your core body temperature down and that's different for everyone that you you know you can there's studies that are show 60 degrees and under can get you there you might need to spend a little more time really only 60.

yeah there are there are studies out there at 60. um it's more and it's a time thing and everyone's different you know everyone has different layers like everyone's body is different so there's a self-discovery process that takes place here but the whole point is getting that core body temperature down huberman talks about it from a shiver standpoint like you almost want to induce a shiver in your body so that we have those protocols on our website too but that is by getting um yeah getting the temperature down it's and for

me it's like 46 degrees at three to four minutes that induces to me it takes me a while to cool back if it's going to take you a little while to cool your body back up you've gotten into a spot your metabolism is now working great so that that's something you want to check in with if if if you get out and you're immediately hot or you're just not quite there you might not be hitting the metabolism side you're getting other benefits as well but if it's it's going to take

a while to get the blood flowing again that's a good sign yeah the swiss go in like ice cold they go in like 32 degree water they're dumping into ice so if what i heard from you and tell me if i'm wrong i heard from you that the shiver is actually the sign of inducing like the metabolism to improve it's a sign i think it's everyone i don't think it's the only thing for the metabolism but it's definitely a a signal that your metabolism's there um and that's a fascinating one

you know huberman has a lot of interesting stuff out there is he is he the same in person that he is off camera i always wonder this he is man that's that's good to hear he's a he is such a friendly um win-win guy you know he's a connect oh let me connect you with this person like just he the thing that's coolest about quick with andrew that i'm so excited with him is he open source is everything okay it's like it's not like my lab did this and i get

to keep this information it's like he literally was like i have these protocols i've been studying this let me give them to you guys and i'll send everyone to your website like just did that like just because he's like cool this looks like uh like it's another way for other people to learn about it and then they can understand plunging and grow this whole ecosystem like that he does things like that he sounds generous very generous yeah yeah it's great to have friends like that yeah yeah there's a mindset there

that i'm feeling and it's he does he do a lot of hot and cold contrast himself yep he has he has his sauna he has this plunge he's he's into it um and that's that's part of it too i think for a metabolism standpoint a protocol that really works is circuits going in for you know getting the temperature down and that varies for each person whether it's 39 45 it could even be 50 for some people does it really matter if it's below 39 does it truly matter anymore i don't

think we've seen anything as long as you're getting the shiver yeah as long as you're get and it's it's a timepiece too like maybe 39 works and you need to start spending two more minutes in there to me it's it's the clearest metaphor that i've seen is like working out it's like your muscles you're not going to do the same workout every day because you're just getting stronger so you got to adjust it and so it might even be you take a few days off like not like i've ta i

just took a week and a half off and that was for another reason i was traveling and whatnot but coming back it was so much harder like i actually had to get back into my body was like whoa here it's going to adjust our bodies are so resilient so they're going to adjust to the cold so if you're doing 39 every day in the same process it might be helpful to be like okay i'm going to switch the process up or i'm going to go for [Music] get back in after

i go or try it at a different time during the day or maybe add a few minutes onto your circuit where you get to the spot of like no this your mind's gonna say this is our time we get out and it's like nope we're gonna go an extra two minutes here and that's gonna push the body and and have new responses from there the metabolism quotient is clear like just from what you mentioned with huberman's work and the shivering but also and i found this on many studies on pubmed

also it's on wim hof site i'm sure huberman's research this brown fat brown fat is actually grown by cold thermogenesis you can't really get brown fat another way and i've heard dr rhonda patrick talk about this too you have to actually put yourself in the cold that's why people that are living in really cold climates like alaskans or people that live in like siberia there's been studies where people have measured them and they have brown fat brown fat for people that don't know it actually burns energy for you so regular

lipos tissue it stores energy but this brown fat's amazing it burns it burns your fat actually so tell us about this brown fat aspect because you can't get it without cold and i'm not the greatest expert in some of the studies like i'm i read them i put them out there we have them like we link them through our site and everything but to be frank and this is how i've been with floating and everything yeah i direct people to the people that can articulate this so much better than i

can okay um i i know what it does for me i don't i i get excited on the studies it seems something we're looking to do with plunge to actually fund some studies for this so it's important yes and i would say that's not my expertise insane that's honest you could have just pulled something out of your ass and been like well you know there's been studies that say brown fat is great for women but you didn't i love that i would send you for your honesty you're welcome and i

it's this is not i would send go to rhonda patrick on our instagram page she has a 10 minute talk that we interviewed her when she when we were getting her plunge yeah she talks exactly about this and i will use words that i don't quite fully understand and we'll give you guys as many resources as possible so click below this video you can access all the show notes and i want to shift gears because the metabolism the brown fat but i have two studies in prep for our conversation two

studies i found on pubmed and i just did a normal query i think i put in like cold therapy benefits that was it and pubmed is like i think pubmed is a really good third party validation source where you can go on there you can get information and you can most likely trust it because what i do is i also see who stunned it who funded the study and whoever funds the study they also have to be third party too like they can't have a financial interest first one was 2021

hydro thermotherapy and prevention and treatment of mild to moderate cases of covid19 this is what they found the heat followed by cold therapy significantly increased the number of white blood cells granulocytes lymphocytes and monocytes the researchers concluded that the brief cold following the heat treatment was effective in increasing the white blood cell count so this is like immunity for your body that you can get without taking a pill you can get it from nature herself have you have you studied this yourself have you i mean obviously that's what happened with

you when you repaired yourself totally from getting sick five times in in six months but personally anecdotally and then scientifically what are your thoughts on that i think well one of the things i was i mean i was before this interview i had one of our workers send me a text we had a recent customer i'm pulling up my phone to look at it and he was a coveted long hauler he which basically means long-term symptoms postcovid there um tried a lot of different studies on him he received the plunge

he had kind of got turned on maybe cold therapy i don't know if he saw the pubmed art you know he was like maybe cold therapy is an option for me sure you know he was nine out of nine on his whoop scores nine out of nine in severely bad categories within this is within a week of having the plunge he sent us all his data sets and he had basically gone from severely bad to in the green so if you follow whoop that basically means you're in a good to

above average categories and he said this for the first time my autotonic nervous system is under control before nine out of nine in metrics were not okay severely bad he said the symptoms that i had was high blood pressure small fiber neuropathy major anxiety ptsd and shortness of breath he responded to us you cannot change these numbers with any medication on the planets he listed a number of medications he's tried nothing has done anything that i'm receiving right now and that's just within a week of cold plunging wow i mean

let that land for a moment because that's a true story from a true human being and there doesn't need to be any um extra storytelling on that i mean you just read the note he sent you so i i think about for myself when i'm doing cold on a regular basis i'm closing my mouth and i'm doing a strong inhale through my nose and that'll tell me right away if i have a histamine response if i'm plugged up in my sinuses i've had a lot of sinus issues in my life

i'm actually about to to do a um the kaufman protocol which is an anti-fungal diet so i'm excited to see how that goes because i just continue to have sinus issues and for people that don't know like when your sinuses are plugged it can literally make your cortisol elevate it can make your stress response deteriorate it's really really bad for your overall health and also too it's right here you know it's right it's in your face so the barometer for me is when i go into the cold plunge and i

do the three minutes if i notice that i can't do a full inhale belly breath through my nose right now i feel really good but that's an immediate signal for me that i'm either not sleeping enough i need to look at my diet so i feel like the cold and the breath together can be a massive barometer for people for behavior modifications i love that have you have you felt this have you talked about this in your community how is this how it has shown up i haven't and i think

that's a beautiful like what i'm hearing is that you're in a highly stressed position you can get more data response of how your body's responding and the getting yourself in the cold is a highly stressful environment yes in that moment our body's always talking to us but then we ignore it yeah cause we want to create or whatever whatever story we tell but the body's still speaking that no i love that i'm gonna i'm gonna bring that into my practice now and kind of like seeing where shortness of breath in

certain spots or um i one thing i do like to do is a body scan in the body so it's not so much through the breath process but really where i'm naturally gonna sub unconsciously tense certain spots of my body in the cold so then it's like laying in like and it's for me it's a lot in my hips for you know variety of reasons and so it's like okay how do i really soften that spot in the cold plunge so it to me it tells me where my body that

i might not even realize is off physically and so that i kind of do it more from a body scan standpoint that reminds me of vipassana have you ever done a vipassana or like a long so for pasta now you do 10 days of meditation so my co-founder is there right now no way yeah yeah all right let's send this person love mike what's their name mike all right mike just breathe because you get triggered at least i did i mean holy [ __ ] meditating for 10 days whatever you've been ignoring

it's coming up like it's coming up so when i was there i started to get these pains in my body but but goenka who's the founder of this he has this um he has this test that you do and you you have a triangle you visualize around your nose and all you do ryan is you literally just focus on your breathing and you scan your body and you continue to scan your body you keep asking your body like what are you here to teach me what's the pain here to teach

me and i had a ton of pain in my upper back and in my shoulders and it's because i found out the emotional intelligence of this i was allowing the weight of what i wanted to created to actually make me sick so my upper back and my traps and my and my um my thoracic spine were being loaded and so for the rest of the time at vipassana i was like pulling my shoulders back focused on not flaring my ribs just sitting in a comfortable position and like retraining myself to

not be burdened by my dreams because our dreams can burden us if we're not careful and and that's what i feel like goes to that driven part you were talking about it becomes the unhealthy side becomes the unhealthy an expectation or some thing that's outside of purpose yeah so i thought about that when you mentioned the scanning in the tank because if people everybody's got three minutes if you don't have three minutes you need to really inspect your life so if you have three minutes in the morning you go sit

in the tank check your sinus for histamine response check your body for any kind of pain that your body is trying to tell you i mean what it's a spiritual practice so totally how how do you talk about the spirituality component of uh not just float tanks but cold there's a bridge between them yeah i think to me there's like a balance to the whole thing like i said like i love science that's out there but to me it just validates i tend to be someone that's doing something before maybe

there's even a study i'll kind of put myself out there so i love the science that doesn't validate me but it validates maybe to others that they would be interested in trying this so i i do appreciate science i l like i um it is important and there's other things that i follow in that category but the spirituality side i mean i guess the loaded question is what's spirituality like what you know what what is that and to me it's like um you know peace and joy and and acceptance and

like that of what is like that that this whole thing is a spiritual experience it's so bizarre that we're even here in a life and i like that there's so many unknowns that like from a yeah you know existential conversation there but cold plunging is it brings out those ways that i can't articulate the magic in life like these sensations and floating very similar where it's it's like i don't nothing's really there's no substance here yes i put my body into a unique space but i'm just get tapped it just

the transition from one moment to the next becomes so heightened and i just think that's so amazing in this life to have like these perspective shifts like that like that is like there's so many hap things happening outside of my awareness and then to be able to switch my awareness in like a moment's time and see something differently like that to me is is magic and and floating and and floating started off like this we were talking a little prior but floating is you know that that world that started from

there was such this magical um you know you had the parries and you had um uh you know lee and glenn perry that started it and it was from this space of violence is spiritual exploration john lily all his work lily was deep into ketamine dil lily and very deep into ketamine that wasn't beginning he was you know that guy's a brilliant individual and he was exploring realms and through many different avenues and float tank was its own realm that he was doing and then he incorporated ketamine towards the end

okay of his his lifetime and um but you know they it was very much the spiritual exploration of like kind of the unquantified un like we can't really state what these things are so floating was when i got into it it was this world that was like we can't really explain what's happening here but it's fascinating and i love that and that's what got me into floating i remember it on a side note i remember going to the maps conference in 2017 and i remember being at this conference it was

in oakland california and it was massive and it was you know every thought leader in psychedelics was there i remember just walking around and be like this is so funny to me that we are here but yet no one can really explain why we're all here because like psychedelics is so beyond our our way to describe it it's it's and that's what's beautiful about it it takes you into the undescribable and then yet we all come back and we're all trying to talk about it and that to me was what

floating was so magical and then floating started to get more as it became more of a thing science wanted to come in and study it which is great and it brings credibility to it and i think there's a level of like no duh like you know we we do this it works it's the same thing with uh psychedelics now every week i get hit by a new company that is wanting to capitalize on what mother nature has given us so you're so right we feel something we start seeing aspects in

our community where people are being healed depression anxiety ptsd and then all of a sudden silicon valley licks its chops and it's like let's make that money and i'm not anti-capitalism i believe in conscious capitalism i'm pro-conscious capitalism but what do you make of this like why do we why do we operate like this as humans where we we try to see what's out there and then make money off of it it's like what the hell is going on there why not just serve people and then let the money come

it's it's a fascinating one i mean whether it's a science front or from a financial standpoint it's like the science one's really unique to me from a western world like this need to need to quantify it for some reason for some whether it's i don't know if it comes from a validation standpoint but there is like this we it's important that we can you can replicate what happened science is important it's a study to you're actually trying to prove yourself wrong like that's the goal of it which i think is

a beautiful thing in the good science yes exactly exactly like when you really break it down but it's fascinating to me of like you know you go down to the amazon or just full-on different cultures that are working literally from a different paradigm like it's you know they're they're much more of like a shamanistic culture where everything is an entity and everything has consciousness and it's just their view it's their way of living and they just it doesn't need to be quantified and so i'm always i'm and i'm not knocking

the western world i'm not saying it's the wrong way or that's the good way i think there's trade-offs to all of it i'm just fascinated that we and me a part of it i'm a part of this like i grew up in a western you know the united states and why do we need to quantify everything i don't have that answer it's just really interesting to me yeah i had to be honest with everyone in 2017 i completely let go of the quantified self movement i was way deep down the

rabbit hole i was listening to tim ferriss i was doing all the n equals ones and then at some point i was just like duh like it was like oh i don't need to like record everything to prove that it's okay i was using the muse headband i was tracking my steps i was like i went so far down the rabbit hole and i i started and i was having conversations with paul czech so thanks to paul for introducing us he's a brother and a mentor and a friend amazing human

and and he was telling me one day that our friend mike salami was wearing the aura ring and when he didn't wear the aura ring he actually slept worse because he was having like almost like tertiary anxiety about not wearing the ring so in a way the external framework of accountability was always needed instead of just the internal locus of control and that was like a wake-up call for me it reminds me of religion it kind of is it's when the we get spirituality you know you look at the teachings

of jesus christ a spiritual human that came on to this planet and then it became dogmatic then it became more about these act like the the the writings of it and am i doing it right as opposed to actually embodying it and that i hear into this you know i see that a lot in the biohacking world it becomes the chart and the papers and as opposed to like what do you feel like are you really checking in with yourself are you really embodied or is it are you chasing something

that's like how to improve so i i see that a lot in i think i think we in science is that way too we make it religious yeah i'm not here to diss anyone i think you know a few weeks ago we had ben stewart who was the director of psychedelica sitting in the chair and he said something so profound he was like you know that in everyone's perspective there's always a gift even if it's people that are trying to stick something in my body there's always a perspective that i

can learn from and so for quantified self i get that they're trying to improve based on data and the external framework but in my opinion and from my own life experience if i don't have an inspiration if i don't have an internal locus of control to really want to do something on a repeated basis then all i am doing is just dangling a carrot for myself and i'm not really getting to the root of the behavior or the root of um the the misalignment right and so the reason i'm saying

this is because when it comes to the cold and when it comes to the desire for people to go back to the tank back to the tank over and over and over again there's got to be a couple anchors maybe it's an anchor of growth to spirituality and god maybe it's an anchor to knowing that you get immune system benefits there's some kind of anchor that we can't always have outside of ourselves it's got to be an internal anchor so like what's what's your internal anchor when it comes to the

cold and what are others internal anchors when it comes to loving the cold loving the cold therapy that's a great point because i think yeah you don't want the thing that we're trying to improve become the whip of like i gotta go punish myself exactly it's like what and so that i totally hear that with i mean for me plunging right now is is a story override like and there's an honesty level at some points like i did take some time off from plunging took a week and a half off

and i'm it was at first difficult and i was like i need to be in there i'm not doing it and it was like no just take your time off like you're you're okay but it was a right now it's a story override so it's i don't have a good enough story of to not go in it's like just [ __ ] telling myself like so that is what my anchor is right now is oh it's all excuses i'm basically trying to override my excuses and that is my biggest one and then

from there it's like the in this modern world of immunity being such on the forefront like that is my immune system right now is you know i haven't had covet i've tested for antibodies like that's not there i'm not vaccinated it's like those are those are the choices that i've made but it's like cool then i have these are the i have to do this on a daily basis to keep myself robust to keep doing to do the hard thing like those are my anchors consistently and it's like it's hard

i don't want to do it all the time but this is a way that allows me to um improve those areas yeah the path of least resistance isn't always the way sometimes it is but when it comes to physical health i just haven't seen it be that way like the path of least resistance is actually what makes us unhealthy in so many different ways yeah but when is the path of like like as that's a fun conversation to rift on like what is when is resistance healthy sure obviously weight training

in the physical form that is resistance is good yeah when is and then there are times that it's not good when have you found to be like least resistance i love this podcast like for me i think when it comes to resistance sometimes it can be a matter of the heart so when it comes to intellectualizing a heart-based issue like maybe a partner that deep down you know you love them and you explore deeply in all aspects of self is it my programs from childhood that is actually blocking love for

my partner is it my partner's wounds from childhood that's blocking the love to me or have we done the work and do we actually know that we served and healed one another and it's time to move on but i'm scared of moving on that's a matter of the heart where really the resistance of leaving it might be easier in some ways and it might be harder in other ways but we all know everybody reaches a certain tipping point in their life from an emotional intelligence perspective where the weight of not

changing becomes so great that the weight of change is the path of least resistance and so i think it applies to that kind of a moment for sure but i'm curious how you feel i yeah i ask because i it's it seems to be like it depends the context and it depends like what's the moment yeah i think you know i think from like a a business front it's like least resistance is like sometimes it's like what's the talent that we have on the team like how do we best utilize

this for the things that we want to do as opposed to oh we don't have this but we want to try and do it another way so let's just set our sails to what the team's talents are and we can go play out and play the i mean coaches always are asking that question like is it a system that's more important or is it the playing to my team's talent and yeah you know i think that's like a i tend to lean towards talent like lean towards what's there what do

you have right now and play off of that um and then on the resistance front it's to me it's like with the physic yeah it's like you know putting things into place that are difficult like i'm very resistant to sit in ceremony with psychedelics like that is a thing that i'm like i don't want to do and sometimes that's okay because that resistance is yourself not your ego it's your soul trying to protect you totally yeah and that that's just that to me is like a that's kind of the game

of being human discerning like when is this it's a wild game isn't it it's holy [ __ ] it's just a self-awareness game it really is and it's like there's moments that it's like break through and be like wow and i'm in some inquiry right now where there's things that i'm not seeing about myself my blind spots that are probably very present to the world that i'm trying to work through itself but it's like that's the constant game is humanity so it's like i don't know how we got there from resistance that's

perfect i know how we got there because sometimes doing hard [ __ ] is so healthy and sometimes fighting and taking the path of more resistance is actually gonna hurt you yeah and it's it's like we have to that's called being an adult we learn over time you know what truly serves us because it's hard or because it's the path of least resistance and i think we can only learn that through experience we cannot read that i mean i have a bookshelf full of books i'm sure you do too i'm sure everyone

with us has read tons and tons and tons of books but the only way i think you really learn is through experience like like life experience is the teacher it's the one that brings the pain it's the one that brings the lessons and it's almost like you know like for bitcoin it's like you look at the candles and eventually everything goes up much like stock markets too but there's some pretty severe dips along the way and i think i think that's you and i i think that's the human experience like

we're gonna eat [ __ ] sometimes and it's in those bottom of the barrel moments that we make decisions that we won't disrespect ourselves anymore we won't stop loving ourselves like we won't abandon ourselves and and this is the next piece of our conversation and that is anxiety and depression one of the things you mentioned to me right when you came through the door is you're like i'm so excited about mark groves and about this movement of emotional health and letting go of anxiety and depression being like this puppeteer on people's minds

and it prompted me to immediately show you this second pubmed study and it is a 2008 pubmed adapted cold as a potential treatment for depression differences are huge and really what they found was in this cohort group that there was a decrease of 25 percent in people that did cold therapy and they actually had more of the antibodies for feeling good which are like the you know the things that make us feel good like all the good chemicals the dopamine the serotonin and i just i was like another thing i

was like duh because when we're in the cold we're breathing when we're breathing we're in the present moment we're not distracted by the past when you're freezing when you're shivering you're not thinking about 1986 when that guy dumped you you know or whatever it is and you're not stressed out about the future you don't have anxiety that you know your business might fail or your husband your wife might leave you or what's going to happen when you go on stage blah blah blah none of that's there so when i look

at this 2008 pubmed for the cold therapy for specifically depression the opposite of depression is expression so what are we doing in the cold tank we're expressing we're moving spinal fluid we're pumping all four diaphragms in the body so there's so much going on there how excited are you and what do you see that really lights you up about anxiety and depression and cold therapy because this is like this is like the big frontier we know the science on fat and metabolism but emotional health anxiety and depression i think this

is like unlocking a huge a huge space for you to explore i think with i mean depression is one where i i'm grateful i haven't experienced it too much in my my life but i've had a few little windows where it's like oh got it like i get it you know can't get out of bed can't it's just like it the the to move the boulder is so large and heavy yes um the thing with cold blend and i go back for all of it is it's on a time frame

it's such a short commitment you have to give to it and when you're in like a very depressed state it's it's so big things are so they're almost unachievable they're unfathomable and if you had this in your house or you have a river right near you or you have a cold shower there's a moment that it might just give you a window it's only you know get in for two minutes go do 10 breaths like maybe that's the game getting it for but it's like it might just give you that

window to kind of make the make the shift because that's to me what depression is gives you like a window in time you might be able to open up out of it and step and make start making the actionable steps that are obvious to the world but it's it doesn't that's not that's the point of when i'm depressed it's like i get everyone knows what i need to do to make the steps but i can't do it like i'm paralyzed and so i cool plunging is just the the best roi

on time and to it's such a small commitment you don't have to drive somewhere to get to go do a 90-minute workout you don't even have to go getting a float tank which is a thing you don't have to go have the hard conversation with a friend it's just like you yourself two minutes and it's going to give you a shift in perspective a shift in energy and all these you know all the the serotonin and energy increase that takes place and yeah that's what that's it pumps me up big

time i almost feel like depression can be a wall of bricks that's built over time because somebody without the right awareness or without the right tools or you know what forget about even the right what if somebody's just had a lot of trauma in their life totally it's not it's not necessarily their fault but it is their responsibility to heal so i think about like like let's say a thousand bricks of depression are stacked it's not about going and taking out the bricks of depression because whatever you focus on it

just comes right back to you so if you try to fight depression you're just gonna get more depression so you have to go to the other side you have to stack bricks on the wall of self-love of presence of caring for yourself and so that's what i feel like if somebody did this might be an interesting thing for the cold punch to do like an emotional health and emotional intelligence journey for people that are suffering with anxiety and depression for like a 30-day protocol that they all get involved in in

a group and they all do the cold plunges together and they all check in and they all are with one another because man i guarantee you the minute that people stop focusing on how many bricks can i remove from depression and instead they focus on how much can i love myself how much can i cold plunge how much can i breathe like naturally those bricks will fall on their own what are your thoughts on that well it's like once you get a win it's tough to get put wins in place

when you're depressed but it's like if if you can get just a small win build the next day build the next day it's like you're i think you're on to something and then doing it in community like where it's like okay just for this moment in time today we're focused on like a positive thing yeah and it's just one thing but that is depression to me is a momentum game and it's so hard to get switch the momentum like it is and i've been there it's like it feels impossible like

to even get out of bed but if it's like and that's that's one thing getting out of bed but if you can have the one thing set the win up one it and then the anxiety front that you talk about like that is you know that is such a magical place of it pulls you so into the present moment like i wake up and i could have it's like my mind naturally jumps to oh my god i gotta get this email done i have this i have that like we're having

this issue with a staff member or like whatever a unit's not working and like all the things it's like get into the plunge and i'm just back to it's meditation i'm back to what's important what can i do now like life seems so much more manageable coming out like coming out of the cold plunge that it's like i'm clear on my next step floating is that for me too it's like i never big life decisions i go get in the float tank and clarity just arises it's like oh that's the

next thing not questioning what 20 options are and which one i need to move towards and to me anxiety is the absence of that it's just clarity into the next step and what's one of the biggest moments that you've had in a float tank or in a cold tank that really allowed you to make a hard decision i remember for floating it was it was a moment where so this is back when i had my old job and we were building a little context worked majorly soccer our team our organization

was building a new stadium the stadium ended up getting delayed by a year which caused a lot of it was like in sports world a new stadium coming is like a big career movement and this is before i had wanted to go start my like i wasn't starting my own float center or anything it was like i was into this career and i remember the stadium getting delayed i was really contemplating like i'm going to quit this job because it ended up impacting a lot of things in my career and

i remember thinking no let's try i was living in san jose let's go drive the hour let's go get in the float tank i remember like coming out and it was just so clear like you're not quit like it went back into my boss and because it was this option basically a severance option on the table like we could leave and because they were very it was a difficult thing for a lot of people to make but that decision it wasn't a huge one in my life but i remember just

that clarity of just like boom oh i know what to do and i was so at peace with it i never thought about it again i charged forward and it's been a to stay at that job was a key component of this whole journey for me and so that's when i always remember i think of you know i've had so many like relationship moments in um mostly in the float tank is more reflective for me in the cold plunge it's more of removing the over and like over reflections that takes

place yeah it's like the absence of it we're floating i can go deeper into it and kind of like focus in on the concept and the clarity of the moment comes where the other one's just removing the clutter that's what that's what cold plunging feels like wow two things two huge things number one cold therapy and breath work and even the what happens in the sauna these things are really safe unless you have pre-existing conditions obviously i have to say this consult your medical provider and it sucks that i have

to say that but i have to say that you also could just use your intuition right you could do that too um when people are dealing with stress anxiety fill in the blank what's happening and i did a lot of research for the breathe breath and wellness program where i actually had a pediatrician write in and she was like josh for the first time in my life and this is somebody that works in the medical field working with children all the time she was like for the first time in my

life i actually know what it's like to have a periodized schedule where i can know how to calm myself down and she's like i've never had that before and i dug into it even more in regards to the default mode network default mode network as you know it's the the frontal cortex the posterior cingulate and the amygdala there's a few more parts of the brain but those are the core three and then the whole function of the default mode network is it is the thing that searches for danger when you're

doing one task so if anybody's ever like tried to focus tried to meditate the default mode network is like is there a tiger is somebody trying to kill me is it gonna like the default mode network is the monkey mind and i was cued to this by michael pollan actually in some of the work that he's done in his books for psychedelics and he and he talked about a study for breath work and i looked more into pubmed and dude there was multiple studies about how breath specifically because of the

vagal toning aspect and how it's tied into the central nervous system and and the vagus nerve it actually physically turns down the the circuitry the load inside of the brain for the default mode network and so what we're talking about has this beautiful anecdotal experience where you're like yeah it gives me clarity it removes the thoughts but on a scientific level you are actually they do pet scans for this where they can see where the brain lights up you're taking a volume knob on the part of your brain that searches

for danger all the time and you're turning it down which is amazing fascinating we're in the tank and we're turning down the volume of our scanning mechanism for danger and then of course from that place great ideas come creativity comes more peace comes and i find that in the plunge when i'm when i struggling in the when i'm struggling in there and it's like it's finding something that's off like when i'm clear in there it's like i can go for so long it's like the more resistance that i have or

i'm scanning the brain for like like i just uncomfortable or starting to suffer more in there and it's like i'm not even bringing awareness to the suffering the plunge is very difficult but as i like oh cool like you that's what it reminds me of tattoos i remember when i'd get tattoos and it's like the needle coming into the body it was like why am i so quick to say this hurts like it's just a sensation i've my brain is labeling the pain the plunge is very simple similar to that

it's like why am i so quick to say this is like bad or so uncomfortable and the moment i can build that relationship it calms that whole system down and i get to just lay into it let's talk about the difference in tanks because when i got the tank i think i had it set up in like less than 30 minutes it's pretty freaking easy to say you basically fill up the tank plug it in and then it turns on it's awesome the my freezer and we'll show this um in

the episode right now or later on there's the one tank where i had to seal it with marine sealant i had to disinfect it i had to fill it up with filtered water i had to close it i had to wait for a day and then it works but when i have guys over and when we're doing like hot cold i have to change the water every time and that takes time then i gotta wait another day for the freezer to kick on again and then there's your modality and your

modality is really cool because it cleans the water itself you don't have to change the water and there's actually ozone that gets shot in the water too and then there's the other side the third component which is like the horse trough you know the steel container you go to am pm you buy the ice you like throw the ice in there can you explore for us for people that don't know like the mediums of of cold therapy because this is a big decision-making totally true yeah i mean there's you have

the diy side of like the chest freezer and it's a thing and it works it's possible but you're gonna run into stagnant water you're gonna run into having to switch that out they're not built for that either like that i know mine's actually leaking there's i have to get rid of it at some point there's you'll run into it and you know and i'm not here to like they're all gr what's getting you in the cold is great like there are so many ways to do it and i think so

there's that there's the horse trough side where you have to buy the ice every single time yeah and drain it and it's like yeah i think that's good if you have some buddies over and you're doing a one-time thing and we're all getting together but it's just it's not first it's not really sustainable like to be buying that wasting that water doing that consistently that's that's not the move it's kind of a one-off situation and it's fun if you want to do it like if you're just trying to do it

one time do the horse trough before you come by a cold plunge like get into cold a couple times you don't have to but you know it's it's i would recommend it try it out a couple times as long as people don't use that as a reason for why they can't do it because that's that's a tricky little ego and oh i tried it it didn't work it's like well you mean it was inconvenient yeah and that's the point is like it's it's gonna take a little bit it's gonna take

a few times i love the people like i'm just so amazed with people that like buy our cold plunge and then we talk to them it's like i've never done it i'm just all in and i'm like you're you're like not how i would roll but like man like you're the conviction here is but that investment makes them do it and that's cool that's the kind of person you are and it's understanding yourself like it takes like if i know i have this cold sitting there right there i'm gonna get

in if i don't have it i'm not like for me it was only going to a river and it was seasonal yeah and i would go if on a great week twice a week and you know there's not the consistency that i wanted there so the different models it's like i think ours just makes it convenient it's it's a it's it's in the comforts world you know because you have it you have it there but it's it's making it that you have it all the time it's on demand you don't

have to keep wasting your water the other cool thing too is it looks good like i it wasn't something that we create we wanted something that looked like if someone's gonna invest in this they can be proud that this looks good it doesn't have to be you know hidden off in the corner like it looks like a bathtub at the bellagio yeah exactly it's it's dope it's got a it's got a sleek look to it yeah and so that was important too so that that's like a feature it's become this

like cool showpiece that we've seen that people are bringing kind of this ceremonial vibe and it looks good in a backyard or um the wife loves it too you know it's like male masculine feminine like it all kind of is combined there um so there you know there's different features to it i think the thing i would say is like on the diy side if you're setting out to do it make sure you love to do diy and you're actually into the process of building it because it's going to give

you more headaches and i you're not saving that much if you're doing the diy right in compared to getting the plunge and that's i'm a guy that's like we have a joke in the company that i'm so unhandy that it's like if ryan can do it then we know it can go to market like and so like the setup all of it like that's a that's a thing within that that's i'm not the engineering side to it yeah and so it's like i prefer to have something that's readily like i

can order it and it shows up and i can set it up and it's good to go the the other ones are it's just gonna be a it's a different commitment level so it's hacking yourself like what's gonna actually get me into a cold plunge sure and i'm not here to say what people should and should not do i just think that when i heard you say that all the different ways you're just honest about i don't get from you that you're like you have to buy my [ __ ] at all

i mean i there's other even like there's other companies that it's like that we've had conversations like maybe that's a better fit for sure and for whatever reason that is and and so i am very much like on a mission of cold water there right now it's cold water therapy i want a mission of health and wellness and happiness and people feeling fulfilled and comfortable with themselves like that's the big picture here started with floating it turned into plunging so i'm very focused on cold therapy right now but it's not

the end all plunge is not the only brand or unit that you should be using there there's so much out there but you're on shark tank come on i mean that's pretty cool how did that happen they actually reached out to us really yeah is that rare that shark take reaches out to a company i don't know i i think it i don't i think it is i think it is i i don't know because i haven't really been through that process before but they reached out and got our attention

really quick yeah and that'll change that's gonna change your whole business it yeah i mean it's gonna explode you we don't know when it'll air there's all they don't tell you when it's gonna air they tell us three weeks before and so we don't know when or if it was cool they did a their pre-marketing material launching the season was a shot from our set of and they were kind of like teasing our pitch so that was a good sign yeah so it was it was an awesome experience it was

um yeah man we're excited that it's just gonna like it's gonna mainstream this conversation for a bit yeah and that's the bigger picture it's like how do we get you know i'm not again it's not to your point it's not i'm not trying to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be doing it's more of i want to present good opportunities for people good options and they can choose and so that's what's exciting about shark tank is it's going to just get this message out to so many more people of

like in this current narrative right now of you know like oh you we're unhealthy and you we're not in control of being able of our we need to it's almost like it's externalized of how to get healthy and like it's outside of ourselves like we're not in control of it there's this fear it's very fearful right now and yeah there's a lot happening and i get that and i'm just here to state you know you are so much more in control than you think and this isn't from a place of

you're bad for thinking that way it's just like no no deep down that you are in more you are in control of your health to the degree that we can be right because sometimes we have to honor the mystery too like bad things happen to good people all the time but at least we have the power of choice i mean wow thank you for free will free will is amazing because we can choose to look at our life and i would say for anyone that's feeling this like go to wellnessforce.com

forward slash plunge you gave us an awesome discount thank you for that by the way because i know it's like it's challenging to make margins on these products you got to get [ __ ] shipped over from overseas and you got to have build it and ship it like the guy that came here he delivered it on a fedex and i knew that wasn't cheap so there's a lot of costs that you incur and so i think you've done a really good job of pricing this tank that everybody can afford you know

there's plans for like 50 bucks a month yeah you can do a firm you can pay it off through there amazing um yeah i mean that was what got us into it to be honest like we there were other things out there but we were like we'll only get into this if we can really enter in at a price point that that changes the game yeah um and we were able to do that and so we've been it's a big part of our mission so we really it's kind of everything

with the pricing is always with that in mind and i'll tell you straight up like i spent about 12 1500 bucks on my freezer it lasted nine months and it's leaking so and i can't take it back sears is bankrupt during during the pandemic there was only like one company in the entire united states that had a handful and i'm talking like three freezers left now there's more freezers but these things aren't designed like i even had to use marine sealant i sealed the entire freezer it still leaked and i

did a good job of sealing it it's not like i didn't seal it these things they're just not designed for that and of course if i called sears and i was like hey dudes i've been cold plunging can you come fix it they're gonna say no there's no warranty when you cold plunge in your freezer no they're like you did this you're out of the game now so i really appreciate that and i think about what you guys have created like there really is no resistance for people to dive into

this um no pun intended like literally like don't dive into the plunge like sit into the plunge my um my partner's father is here visiting carrie's father and she was like go on dad he's never done the plunge before you met him when you came here and he was like i did it for two minutes i felt great and he's nev he's never done that before so if somebody in their 50s has never done it and they get a positive result from it it's kind of a barometer for the direction

i think we can all go in i just love that i mean you got to have this experience with your your father-in-law or you know your partners your partner's father like going you guys did something hard together yeah and i have no clue what your guys's you know experience is like in the past but it's like it's just a new thing that we can do in community together it could be a personal thing and we get to do hard stuff together which is why you founded capital floats i think it

was on your about section i'm remembering it was about community and it was when you you came and you founded it with um who is your co-founder for capital floats i founded that by myself you did and then i we launched a second facility and i had a co-owner with that and so i think about how people always want to come together whether there's a drum circle or a medicine circle or even i i've been thinking about like us doing this on a stage where we can involve a community that'd

be awesome in like a live podcast how cool would that be let us know if you guys would love to see that i would love to do that get audience questions and and make people part of this conversation clarify certain things that are coming up like that because they already are everyone that's with us is with us it's not like we're above anyone or we've got it all figured out you know you've just really put your your heart your money your balls your soul on the line to create this so

we covered a lot of ground man is there anything that that somebody hasn't asked you on a podcast that you'd love to answer or what do you think we missed i mean we went over the immunity in depth we're going to link our pubmed studies we went over uh weight loss actually weight loss obviously if you have more brown fat you're going to lose weight because you're burning more energy at rest so your resting metabolic rate is going to be higher but from maybe an emotional intelligence standpoint or spirituality how

does this truly impact people like what can you leave people with if they're on the fence about exploring the the cold plunge i always come back to like i could only speak from my experience and i know i know it i know it works and so it's like i and i people don't even probably know who i am and you know you don't not ask i feel like we know you now i just it it it changes your life yeah it changes your life you bring this practice into your life

it is you are going i you will be a better version of yourself and i can guarantee you that and that is it's just a better thing you're going to love who you are like that's it's going to get you closer to the things that you want to do and that i just come back to that because that's that's what it's done for me amazing and i know this because we're about to do it together i can't get it so we can't film that omar is going to film us we're

going to hang out in the garage you're going to see my garage set up but you know the way that i'd love to to end conversations on this show and just in life in general i'm always interested in how people feel about this how does ryan see wellness you know everything you've been through from the motorcycle accident in thailand to founding capital floats to going through your own dark nights of the soul to being the entrepreneur and getting sick i mean it's been a wild ride you've been through quite a

bit how do you define wellness you know if you were on a stage and you were speak while you are on a stage and you're speaking to people about wellness you know how does ryan dewey describe wellness what's your definition of living life well i'm very simple in my wording sometimes and to me it's just like a common barometer am i happy and when i say that it's not like every moment to moment am i happy it's am i genuinely happy am i happy with where my life's at and it's

it's a and it's everyone to discover what that means to them but i think wellness are just tools to allow and nurture you to go through heart like actually go through the dark night of the soul and actually go towards the things they're just things in place to keep you moving forward to where you want to go it's not the end-all to be-all it's never you've never arrival of these are the things that work and this is how it is it's a constant new discovery of it but in my gen

am i happy that reminded me of what dr ben lynch said that's awesome he talked about us always pivoting and moving to adjust more towards being well which is it's always a moving target man i appreciate you i appreciate you partnering with wellness forest it's very rare that i put people in the store like we only have about 20 products in there and because i don't i don't like to stand behind things unless i've done them and so i've done this with you we're about to do it i've done it

it's amazing so wellnessforce.com forward slash plunge or you can just go to thecoldplunge.com right enter the code wellnessforce you get a really nice price break which is awesome because i know your margins aren't always easy so thank you for that thank you for your generosity love your community man thank you for coming on the show ryan it's real honor and until we see you guys again ryan and i are both wishing you love and wellness we'll talk to you then [Music] music you