Erin

Hi everybody. What it

Josh

do baby Boo? How are you babe? Chilling. How you doing?

Erin

You know today's better than

Josh

yesterday. Shit, man. It feel like it's been a week and it's already Wednesday. It's only Wednesday.

Erin

Only Wednesday. Yeah. Hump day. We usually record this on Tuesday, but here we are, our sink C clogged yesterday and it took six hours and$500 to fix. That was an

Josh

experience that was home ownership. Word to the Ys. Don't put oatmeal down the drain although the plumber was like, that for sure wasn't what did it, but it was the thing that sealed it.

Erin

Yeah. Just like with health issues, it was the, the straw that

Josh

broke the camel. Our toxin bucket in our plumbing. Overflow. It sure did.

Erin

That was fun. That was fun. Yeah. So how us, are you doing good? Yeah, I think

Josh

I'm so convinced. Are you picking up on my,

Erin

I don't know. It's hard to explain. I don't feel anxious like I did. That's great. The last couple weeks. A win? When I don't feel like I'm fully in my body yet. Still. I just, I guess it's a coping mechanism thing. I don't know. I just like go somewhere. I go away. Yeah. I don't like to do that. Cuz then I, blink and I realize you go to your alternate universe. I, I do. I haven't been present for whatever, I have been using my tools, which has been helpful. That's good. Which we are talking about today. But yeah, tapping in particular, that's a new thing for me. I've not. Really done tapping before. Mm-hmm. But this week, tap, tap, tap in. I've been tapping all week. People probably see me in my car. I'm doing it in the bathroom.

Josh

I've been doing it a lot.

Erin

I think it's just something super attainable. Like I always have my hands, yeah. With me. Mm-hmm. it takes two minutes. Mm-hmm. It's not fancy or it doesn't require a degree. you just do it. So yeah, it's been helpful. It's one of the few things that can kind of bring me back. It seems like it's helped. Yeah, I do think so. I mean, clearly I'm not a hundred percent, but

Josh

I mean, you better than last week fam. Damn. Sure.

Erin

Yeah. Yeah. How are you?

Josh

I'm good. We're so convincing. No, I, for I for real. Feel good. It's been an interesting week. We got a lot going on. I know. It doesn't feel like we're drowning. Yet, and I think we've kind of nipped that in the ass, but I feel like we've got multiple businesses up and running.

Erin

This is definitely the busiest most we've had going on in a long time. In a minute. Yeah. Ever as a family. And we been busy Yeah. Well usually it's you that is choosing to be busy. Just that's your personality type. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. And now as a family, we're busy and that's just different. I don't

Josh

know if it fits. Yeah. And we're definitely in startup life with Ruti. Yeah. Holistic founders just launched. Shout out hf. New sponsor. Huge sponsor. Yes. And yeah, like we're doing, we're building rapport with that, connecting, building relationships. So it's another business on top of Ruti and Pique flowing. Mm-hmm. We're building websites, designing. I was just on a call before the podcast. Yeah. So, yeah, it just feels like we've got a lot of things going on. I have to have lists.

Erin

Yes. I'm constantly juggling in my head and I know that this is temporary, like this isn't gonna feel quite as Yeah, crazy forever. But right now it definitely feels like I'm always juggling both of us need to find a better balance. I think work-life balance and rest and all of those things. yeah, right now it's like how do you build a business without doing

Josh

that plural businesses, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Honestly, I think we would be completely overwhelmed and drowning if we didn't have all the tools that we were using Yeah. That we're gonna

Erin

talk about today. Well, yeah, that's right. So, yeah. Tell us, wait, before we start into all the tools. Yeah. I do wanna talk about your most recent scan because I think it's important for the people to know.

Josh

Yeah. That's definitely something that my body's working through right now, so. All right, y'all. I. Do scans in the regular I love them.

Erin

He does them out of just like a hobby now. It, it used to be out of desperation. Yeah.

Josh

I own a company I know that does bio energetic testing. I'm just gonna do it. Yeah. It's kind of like silly not to. Yeah. Anyways, I got a scan back and it was, I mean overall it looks really great, but I got two series therapies and my toxin load is pretty intense and a lot of them are toxins that I've already worked through in the past. Yeah. Borrelia, who else is on there? Borrelia Ricketsia Strep.

Erin

Candida. And you did notice and this is kind of why you sent this most recent one in, you were just feeling a little bit more tired when you woke up and I don't know, you felt like your brain hasn't been a hundred percent, I guess. Is that

Josh

fair? Yeah. Most, most Chronies. I feel like after you go through that, or even if you're in it, you're so aware of your body. Yeah. I'll like eat something and be like going, yeah, that wasn't good for me. Yeah. But I started to notice. Yeah. I was like hitting a wall way earlier than normal. Mornings are still vibe for me, but I'd wake up and be like, oh man, that didn't feel like a restful night's sleep. Mm-hmm. My H R V was going down. Yeah. So I was anticipating a couple things popping up on this scan, but I don't necessarily know if I. Planned or anticipated for it to be as intense as it was. Yeah. And I had to do like some processing with that cuz I feel like I'm healed. I feel like I'm on the other side and I'm like, why the fuck am I doing serious therapy again? Yeah. And it's just my body wants to continue to rebalance and so I feel, I mean, gosh, it not even close to what I was feeling before. No. Yeah. So doing these series, these therapies, I'm not like, My body's failing me. I'm not, I don't feel that anymore. But it definitely was something I had to process through because it was shocking. I even like we, we scanned to make sure like we did, we like went above and beyond on my results. Cause I was like, this doesn't feel right. yeah, I'm gonna be doing two series. We'll be documenting the series therapy for you guys so you can get firsthand look into what it's like. Yeah. I don't anticipate these being as tough as the ones that I did before. One of them, I've already done Borrelia

Erin

well, which when we, that was a long time ago now. This was before we really started diving into the nitty gritty and learning more about the products and things like that. And so at the time, we didn't know we were doing this by ourselves, we didn't know about like the one M and the 10 M. These are kind of subsequent series that you're, there's

Josh

really three tiered series therapy. Mm-hmm. The first one is obviously gonna show up in priority, but one m and 10 m. which was something I just learned recently, aren't gonna really pop up unless we ask to look for those because they're never gonna be priority. Yeah.

Erin

It's, it's essentially like you do all this hard work with the serious therapy. You're eliciting that immune response. You're teaching your body how to keep those things under locking key and with one M and 10 M, it's, you're like reminding your body of all the hard work that you just did. Yeah. And we're not gonna lose that. And so yeah, shout

Josh

out DES bio. That's what we're talking about Des

Erin

Bio series therapy. Yeah. So my hunch is this time around, because we have more knowledge and because we have just way more tools than we've ever had before, we're gonna get you all the way through all of those things. Yeah. And probably it'll never come up again unless there's some big life event. But the other thing that is like, it's just part of life. Like when we are stressed, when we have seasons of. Just having to work more, sleep less. of course we do our best to mitigate those stressors, but it's just part of life. Sometimes, like we're growing a business that we really believe in, it's gonna require a lot of us. And so I'm just not shocked that now is when things are kind of popping up. For sure. But at first we were like, oh no, like we've been talking about how Josh has healed. Mm-hmm. like, how are we gonna, and then it's just silly to me now that we even, were like, how do we tell this to people? Because it's like, this is what we do.

Josh

And I think part of the reason the Borrelia came back up is cuz we didn't go through one M and 10 m I have a Borrelia series therapy and Candida series therapy and I haven't done a candida series therapy. Yeah, that one. That one's new. One's new. So yeah, it's sweet that my body's ready to knock that out. Yeah. But yeah, I don't feel any less healed, that's for sure. Yeah. At, at first I was like, ah, shit. You were discouraged. Yeah. I'm like, I tell everyone I'm not healed anymore. that'ss not true. I, I feel, I feel like I'm there. I feel like I had to get to this point to get to

Erin

these roots. Well, and let's be honest, the healed being in past tense, I do believe that, but also like this is a lifelong journey. Mm-hmm. we're all gonna be always healing for the rest of our lives. So a hundred percent. We're not saying that you heal and then you're done healing.

Josh

no. healed is a word that I choose to use. Comparing myself to what I was. For sure. Yeah. And I'm 100% confident I won't ever get back to that. Yeah. And partially because of this. Yeah. Which just proved, yeah, itself.

Erin

This is the first time though, that you've ever gotten results and you were like, Nope, that's not me. fact,

Josh

I like didn't even wanna accept it. I was like all of my food sensitivities that just came up. I had every single one of them yesterday and I had no problems. Yeah. I mean, part, I don't agree to re-scan those samples.

Erin

Partly it's the, the Lyme and the Candida that probably That's, yeah. Making your body not jive with the dairy and things like that.

Josh

One thing that I've been trying to work on too is I feel like I was hyper-focused on how my body felt all the time. Mm-hmm. it was like almost compulsive. It was. so I've been working really hard to not be that. And then when I got my results, I was annoyed and didn't believe it. And then I took a day to just really process and then I was. I mean, my brain hasn't been firing like it was a month ago. True. My brain does feel tired. I am hitting a wall and I started to recognize these symptoms that existed. So I need to find a balance inside of not being compulsive in my symptoms. Yeah. But being a little bit more aware. Also, I think I wasn't fully aware too, cuz we've been so busy. Yeah. So we've just been nonstop. So yeah. Rocking and rolling. Rocking and rolling. About to do two more series and then I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do three. One M's. Bartonella, one M, mycoplasma, one M and strep. One M.

Erin

So in case y'all were wondering if we walk the walk over here, Oh, we

Josh

walking now Walk. Yeah.

Erin

We're in it. Pretty Boys walk like this. Yes. This. Oh, that's a real That's a real

Josh

Coming to us with my five series therapies. Yes. This,

Erin

this, this for. You're gonna be dropping bottles every day. Yep.

Josh

So yeah, you guys can join on the fun and follow. See me rock and roll these series therapies.

Erin

So yeah guys, truly, all of you. Anyone with any chronic illness inspire? Like, I don't know why, I just like got choked up there for a second, but you guys, your eyes are curing inspire me so much. Just having two weeks of mild anxiety like not even physical symptoms. Mm-hmm. I'm just like, damn, people live years and survive and are so resilient and like I just wanna give you all hugs and help you feel better. Oh that's sweet of you. I mean it though, after just having a couple weeks of feeling off and then having that thought like, wow, people feel this time's 50 50. I don't like a lot worse. Days where I have cold and flu symptoms. Like that's what people feel like all their life for years. Yep. Anyway, you guys are warriors. We built different, you are built different, no doubt. But also you don't have to feel like this forever, so like let's fix it. Fact Anyway. Okay. Now that I got my woohoo. Ooh,

Josh

I bring those emotions into this pa babe.

Erin

Let's talk about cold plunging,

Josh

On that note, let's transition. Yeah. So, okay, we're gonna be talking about really five things, but in four. Clumps. Clumps, terrible All right, we're talking about four sections. Do you wanna start over? Absolutely not. I'm gonna keep that in Clus.

Erin

Okay. We're talking cold plunge. We're talking saunas. So cold and heat. We're talking mindfulness and meditation. And breath work and tapping. Tap, tap, tap in. And Josh is gonna sing that song every time. we say tapping. Uh,

Josh

Fact, if y'all don't, I'm gonna bowl it up just so I That's another

Erin

reel coming to you

Josh

soon. Seriously. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Taping.

Erin

Anyway, let's start with cold plunge. A how did you even get into this and how did you convince me to also

Josh

Oh, man, that's such a great question. I've been looking at this for probably two years. Really? Yeah. And I've just been so scared. I don't like being cold. I hate it.

Erin

Yeah. Nobody does. That's kinda the point.

Josh

And so I feel like two years ago I was like, okay, I'll try 20 seconds of cold water at the end of my shower. And I did it till like two days. I was like, this is stupid. Nope. Same. Can't do it. Terrible. I hate it. Now looking back, now that we've fully submerged our bodies into a hundred gallons of freezing cold water, it's so much better than a freaking shower.

Erin

Oh yeah. Honestly, if you can do a cold shower,

Josh

you could Cold plunge. Yeah. Oh

Erin

yeah. It's hard because there's, the shower's terrible. There's so much opportunity to get out in the shower. You know? I think it's like

Josh

you can dodge it that, and it's such a focused point of your body that's getting cold. Everything else is warmer. Yeah. So then you're like, anytime you move, you're gonna feel it. You feel it. Yeah. So if you're gonna try this, do a tub. Yeah. the past couple months have just been doing a lot of work on my nervous system. Mm-hmm. and Recentering grounding. Doing a lot of research in how do I deactivate. My response is I've had chronic stress since we started Pique. Yeah. And I, eight years ago. Yeah, I know that, that's for sure. A culprit of some of my symptoms. I've tried everything except cold plunging. Yeah. So I asked for a tub for Christmas from my mom. Shout out Mama Blatch And I was like, if I'm not buying it, I have, I have to do it. Yeah. which we'll put on Ruti Ruti.life/cold plunge. Just decided that. Great. It'll be an outline of what we've done to start cold plunging and the accessories that you're gonna need to start it.

Erin

I mean like a D iy. Yeah. Low budget,

Josh

like mean, I think to start it was well under$300.

Erin

Yeah. What's the one that people buy? It's like five,$10,000. Oh yeah. They can

Josh

be so expensive. Yeah.

Erin

But you can do this on a budget. Yeah. Especially,

Josh

you may not like it. Really. I didn't wanna spend GS on a polar plunge and then be like, yeah, this isn't for me. Yeah. So we started at 55 degrees. I started at two minutes. You started at one. The theory is if you can stand for longer than two minutes, try dropping down a couple degrees. I started like three days before you. Yeah. And holy shit, the dopamine activation afterwards is stupid.

Erin

Yeah. I mean, it's like 500% or something. Increase in dopamine.

Josh

I read the other day. That polar plunging is the new cocaine because scientifically it gives you the same hit.

Erin

Yeah. I mean that Coke does. I believe it. I've never done coke, but same it

Josh

feels like. But I feel like I'm doing coke every single morning.

Erin

You guys should see us after, we'll post a video, but most mornings, unless sometimes the polar plunge is very zen feeling. Yeah. But most mornings we get outta there and we're like animals running around the

Josh

house. blasting music. Aw, it's crazy. It's crazy. Have you've ever had

Erin

a dog that just gets the zoomies and like runs around the Yeah, that's us.

Josh

Erin I was like, I'm not doing this. No. Wanted, nothing to do with it, but immediately recognized that something was shifting

inside

Erin

of me. I mean, Josh's mood is right now is always pretty decent, but I did notice. I mean, you just felt better after. Yeah. So then Erin started, well, what I really needed to do first, this is how I work. I needed to understand from a logical perspective why this was going to benefit me or else I'm not doing it. Like for you, you're just kind of an adrenaline junkie. You loved whatever. Yeah. Extremes. And so for you, hopping in freezing water every morning sounds like a, a good time, but yeah, I'm, I'm like, I'm not doing this unless it's actually going to benefit me from a health perspective. So the Huberman lab, Dr. Huberman has like a two hour long podcast about cold water immersion therapy. And that did it for me. After listening to that and learning scientifically like research backed benefits of this, I was like, all right, I'll give it a try. And so I started it really just for the health benefits, which I'll get into a little bit, And then I noticed the dopamine hit and noticed that so far, all winter long. I mean, we're a good way through February now, and I have not had the winter blues that I usually get none. I usually get very low energy, low mood during winter. And I know I've talked about having some anxiety. do feel like that's just very situational for me right now. It's lifestyle based. so that's not to say cold plunging is a silver bullet. if you're looking for that, it doesn't exist. But it has very much helped to boost my mood this winter. And I've noticed other things too. I feel like my skin is better, my nails are better. I don't, I don't know, I guess it's all just around the fact that it stimulates your vagus nerve, which has all sorts of amazing physiological benefits, but, I'm a believer now. Hell yeah. I mean, if you guys don't know me, like I am a creature of comfort, give me warm cozy food, give me a blanket and slippers. I'm not a person that sets myself up for like, pain or Yeah. So at all, it's, it's worth it in my opinion. Yeah. It is it for everybody. Maybe not, I want

Josh

everyone to try it. I know. That's for sure. Okay, so we started at 55 we dropped pretty quickly. First of all, it has to be a deliberate choice. The hardest part of getting in the cold plunge is getting in the cold punch. A hundred percent. It's terrible. I started to recognize that when I'd get in, my stress would just disappear. My mind is always moving, constantly thinking. The only time it doesn't is in a cold plunge. I've never experienced that ever in my life. Erin would always be like, wait, your brain's always thinking, and I'd be like, yours isn't my brain's screaming at me all day long when I'm in the cold plunge. It's me, the freezing cold water and then the nature around me and that is it. It's crazy. Then we started dropping down further and further and I started to notice it more and more. We got so addicted that there was that huge Freeze that across the country, and it was like negative 30 degrees. You better believe I broke all that ice and there was a six inch sheet of ice around. The lining of the tub and we fucking jumped

Erin

in We had hats on so that our

Josh

ears wouldn't, we took one day off a frost button and we were like, well, I can't take another day off We need to go to the cold plunge. The dopamine lasts up to dinner for me. Yeah. And my mood I'm happy. It's just happy juice. Mm-hmm. This is the first time since a child that I've felt like my nervous system deactivated. Wow. And for the first scan I did after it, which is the most recent scan, my nervous system was in the high

Erin

nineties. Yeah. That's never really been the case. I've never seen that. Yeah.

Josh

It feels like stress happens and my body's like, boop, instead of like, yeah.

Erin

Every single time. The whole point, is to deliberately. Expose yourself to a stressful scenario like being in 30, 40 degrees. Water is stressful. Mm-hmm. on your body and your psyche. so over time, what you're doing as you deliberately choose this and then do your best to control your breath and calm your body, you are building resilience. Yeah. To stress, and so it's kind of, funny to me, the biggest comment that I get from other people in the holistic world in the health world is like, oh my gosh, how stressful on your adrenals this is gonna fuck with your hormones, et cetera. And I get it, probably a person who is in a state of chronic illness and is feeling really shitty, maybe don't go hop in the ice bath. if you're already completely dysregulated, you choose what's right for you. But all of the research that I've done, Is the opposite. you are stimulating your vagus nerve, you're activating the parasympathetic nervous system after you get out. you're stressed when you're in there, right? Sure. The nor Epie is flowing which then eventually gives you that dopamine boost too. so those stress hormones are flowing while you're in there. But then what happens when you get out of the cold plunge, your body starts warming past the point of warm that you were before you got in the tub. I mean, that's where a lot of the metabolic and like thermoregulation benefits come from. to the same point, those stress hormones, like those are all. Coming down. so like the studies that I've read, there's one specifically about cortisol and the h p a access and things like that that people tend to bring up when I talk about cold plunging in relation to women's health, chronic illness, things like that. But there's one study, the title of it is Effects of Long Term Whole Body Cold Exposures on Plasma Concentrations of A C T H Beta Endorphin, cortisol, ketamines, and cytokines and healthy females. And so they took 20 women, 10 of which did winter swimming. The other 10 did whole body cryotherapy three times a week for 12 weeks. And they took blood specimens at different intervals. So they took it at week 1, 2, 4, 8, and 12 on days where they did no cold exposure and days where they did cold exposure. And what the results showed is that there was a significant increase in norepi, which no surprise, like we're dropping our body into freezing cold water. Yeah, of course your body's gonna release lots of norepi. And that actually increased at all the intervals over the 12 weeks after the cold exposures, which they presume is why there is a, pain alleviation benefit. But when they measured the plasma, A C T H, so that's adrenal cortic could tropic hormone, which is what stimulates your adrenal glands to release cortisol. Which is the main stress hormone. So cortisol raises our blood sugar and it kind of Curbs the non-essential functions when we're under a state of stress so that your body can focus on dealing with the stress at hand. And a lot of people have adrenal insufficiency or adrenal dysfunction because we live stressful lifestyles. But what was interesting in this study is that at weeks four through 12, when. Took those levels of a C T H and cortisol at the 35 minute mark after the cold exposure, both of those hormones were significantly lower than they were in week one. So what that tells us is this habituation, this deliberate exposure over and over again is teaching your body how to not require so much of these stress hormones. So really I think if anything, it probably has a beneficial effect. Mm-hmm. But again, like do your research, do what's best for you. I'm not telling anybody to get in a cold plunge. I'm just from our experience, it's been hugely helpful and the game changer. Yeah. And I just think what better to stimulate your vagus nerve than like just going all in. I don't know. It's, a good way to do it.

Josh

Yeah. Okay. So that's why Erin got in Sorry, I am nerdy. No, that's good. I get a ton of questions asking us what we do. Many people out there will be like, how cold do I need to do it? Everyone says it needs to be cold enough that you want to get out. Yes. That's the answer to that. If you can last longer than two minutes, then drop down a couple degrees. We found a really sweet spot at three minutes. So that's kind of what we were doing. Science says anything above 11 minutes per week, you're killing it. We started doing it every single morning for three minutes because of how good we felt after. Mm-hmm. It was tough though because I feel like we limited ourselves and didn't realize what else there was. After three minutes, we would hit three minutes and hop out and feel like we were killing it cuz it was uncomfortable. We wanted to get out. We've been doing this for like four months now, just in the past weeks. We're down into the thirties. A couple days ago. We were at 35 and I decided to start going longer and Erin was making fun of me because it's my mentality to just push, push, push and see how far I can take it. But in my mind, I was like, I can go longer. I got to around four minutes in the thirties and it was euphoric. All of a sudden. I barely was cold anymore. Everything was just peaceful around me, all was good inside of my body. And then I got to like 4 30, 4 45. And I just got this overwhelming sense of joy I would literally like giggle to myself. I'd be so happy for this damn tree branch or like a bird would fly by. It was a different experience when I got up to those times. two days ago it was 35 and I was in for almost six minutes and it was one of the best plunges I've ever had. Mm-hmm. It was crazy. Work up to that, but consider what exists beyond, the

Erin

threshold. Dr. Huberman calls it walls. And so rather than focusing so much on the temperature at the time, trying to focus on I'm gonna try to conquer three walls in this cold plunge. One of which usually is just getting in Mm-hmm. like getting in itself can take a lot of like mental courage, whether it's three minutes or 60 seconds, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you are kind of pushing past that release of the norepi, which is like the get me outta here. Yeah. if you are able to push through maybe three of those walls, maybe that's in 60 seconds, great. Then hop out what you're doing is you're building resilience on a physiological level. This isn't all. Head it is, I mean, for sure it's building mental resilience, but it's also physiological resilience. Right. Teaching your body how to manage stress. Yeah. So don't focus so much on the time or the temperature really. If you're getting in and you wanna get out, it's the right temperature for you. Yes. And if you're able to stay in through a few of those waves of norepi release where, where you're like, I wanna get outta here. Yeah. Then you're in good

Josh

shape. Yeah. I almost look forward to those. Now in a weird way, two things that have come up in a couple dms that I've had. One. Any tips on getting in? Mm-hmm. There's two that I have found impactful. One is the five second rule where you get to the edge of the tub and you count down from five. And at zero you just gotta get. Your brain for some reason knows how to connect

Erin

that. Mine doesn't. I'm like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 5, 4, 3,

Josh

3 0. Yeah. So true. what I have found to help me the most is I start my stopwatch. Mm-hmm. it's cold outside. I'm in my freaking swimsuit when I start that timer, it would be annoying to have to stop it, reset it and then restart it. Mm-hmm. So I get

Erin

in. Yeah. Cuz you're like, I want to count these seconds.

Josh

Yeah. So it's like this urgency. Okay. Shoot. My timer started. I gotta

Erin

get in. The more you think about it, the harder it gets hands down. Yeah. I mean, it's the same for everything,

Josh

but Yeah. The other piece to cold plunging, and it's something that I don't think many people talk about is, so this morning we don't warm our tub up anymore. We just do it at whatever temperature it is outside. Last night it was a little warmer. So the water was like low forties or something. move your body inside the tub. Heman talks about that thermal barrier that your skin creates if you stop moving in the water. Moving was a gigantis wall that was created. Yeah. It is so difficult to move your body. You see a bunch of cold plunges on TikTok and I wanna comment being like, I see that you're surrounded by ice. move your body and see how that feels. it's gonna hurt so bad. So what I do is I'm not like flailing around the entire time I choose to take deep breaths. Mm. And then fully exo. Maybe this isn't for everyone, but when I take a huge deep breath, I begin to float. Mm-hmm. And so my whole body rises up and then I exhale and I fall back down to the bottom of the tub and it breaks the thermal barrier on my entire body. Yeah. it almost resets it where I'm not as comfortable anymore and I have to work through that again. regardless if it's 45 degrees or 35 degrees, you're gonna feel that. just because we're in the thirties doesn't mean that 45 isn't gonna be hard for us too. We were at the low forties today and it was difficult. Mm-hmm. keep that in mind. Do some breathing exercises, get your body moving inside of there and you're gonna feel it.

Erin

Yeah. I won't get quite so nerdy, but I just, for people that are wondering, what are the health benefits? So the big ones are systemic anti-inflammatory results, which is amazing. It can also help localized pain if you have back pain or knee pain or whatever. It just reduces inflammation. Mostly by activating your vagus nerve which can release all sorts of anti-inflammatory hormones, chemicals, things like that. But another one that I had no idea about and is just fascinating to me, deliberate cold exposure can help your white fat cells turn into brown fat cells, which have a higher metabolic state, they're more thermogenic, the brown fat cells are, and generally are, they're just better to have more brown fat than white fat. But in order to get that benefit, that thermogenic benefit, you really have to get your body to the point of shivering. It has something to do with when your body shivers the muscles, release a substance called sate, I think, don't quote me on that, but that is what kind of is required to transform those white fat cells to brown fat cells. So get to shivering point and then allow your body to warm up naturally on its own rather than like hopping right into a hot shower or a sauna. you'll still get the cardiovascular and anti-inflammatory benefits if you're alternating heat and cold. That actually can be more helpful for like the lymphatic system to be alternating. But if you're looking for the more metabolic benefit, then it's best to let your body warm up on its own. Oh, and the other one of course is for mood. I mean it's being used now to help Holy shit. Yeah. To help people with all sorts of mood disorders. It's crazy. Anxiety, depression, it just like strips away. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's gone. It's not a silver bullet. Clearly I've had anxiety the last couple weeks, but I would be so curious to see what I would've felt like without Cold Bath. Okay. Is that all we wanted to talk about with cold

Josh

plunging? That's enough about cold plunge. Let's talk about the sauna. It's getting hot

Erin

in here. So hot. The sauna. Okay, wait really quick. The, the other thing I love about cold plunging, especially comparing to sauna, obviously they're opposites and completely different, but cold plunging takes five minutes total. It's so easy. And then you're done. Yeah. You dry off sauna, put your clothes on. I love the sauna. I know it's amazing for my body, but like, wow. First of all, I have to heat the sauna that takes an hour or two. Then I have to go in there and sweat my ass off and my hair is soaking wet. So of course I have to take a shower after you stink. Like shit. The whole process is like two and a half hours. So we do that a lot less these days especially cuz now you're able to exercise. We can sweat naturally. Yeah. those drainage pathways don't need as much support as they used to. But we still like to sauna cuz we know it's good for us.

Josh

All right. Let's talk about. When I was super sick, we bought a sauna. We have a sunlight and sauna and it's been great. When I was sick, I used it every single day religiously, which is like you were saying, a huge time commitment. Yeah. Now we do it like three, four times max a week. Yeah. But yeah, even that was a progression. When I first started Sauna'ing, I wouldn't sweat. I'd be in there at 140 degrees for 30 minutes and come out completely

Erin

dry. Those drainage pathways were

Josh

blocked. Nothing over time I started and now I can think about Sauna'ing and I'll sweat and you sweat fact, it's a really great place for me to just have some alone time. Mm-hmm. it for sure doesn't shut my brain off, but I can choose what to think about. Whether I'm listening to a podcast, but yeah. Talk to us a little bit about the science. We probably won't spend as much time on the sauna as a cold plunge

Erin

yeah. I mean there is so much research out there on saunas, so just go to PubMed and look it up. But essentially it's good for you So there's, do it, there's one really big study that has. Shown that if you sauna, so people that sauna two to three times per week are 27% less likely to die of cardio cardiovascular event that's only two or three times a week. Four to seven times a week are 50% less likely to die of. That's crazy. A cardiovascular event. it clearly has a cardiovascular you feel it benefit? Yeah. Essentially what it's doing is it's kind of mimicking cardio because it's increasing our heart rate and our stroke volume. Like the amount of blood that's pumping, it's vasodilating everywhere, so it's opening up your blood vessels. so it's kind of like exercising without obviously the mobility part. So it's great for somebody in a state of chronic illness where they can't exercise. Now some people can't even tolerate the sauna. If we've got lots of autonomic neurosystem dysregulation, sometimes just getting in that amount of heat is gonna like, send your heart rate through the roof. So, take it slow, start just like five minutes don't crank it up all the way to the max temperature. But it is, I did have to start slow. Yeah. It's so important though to get your body sweating because it's one of the main, aside from peeing and pooping of course, but sweating is a huge way to eliminate toxins from your body. Yeah. So especially if you are on any sort of a protocol, any herbals, any whatever if you're not sweating those toxins that you're killing, Or just recirculating Yeah. Or whatever you're drawing out, whether it's chemicals, heavy metals, microbes, whatever you're drawing out, it's just gonna recirculate unless you're sweating and peeing and pooping. Yeah.

Josh

Y'all, before I started healing, we would joke, I, I would go weeks forgetting to put deodorant on Yeah. My sweat didn't smell and then I started the sauna. And who he got ripe. drainage pathways opened up in crazy ways. It's interesting. We were at an Airbnb in Florida for sure. Using toxic detergents and stuff like that. When I got back and saed my sweat smelled different than the normal Yeah. Rank smell. Yeah. That it had, it was crazy. It almost smelled like the detergent a little bit. Oh yeah. I

Erin

noticed that too.

Josh

So crazy.

Erin

Yeah. So, yeah. Another thing that may be helpful to note is that ideally, and this isn't, you know, written in stone ideally if you can sauna towards the later half of the day and do ice or cold therapy in the beginning of the day, it mimics our natural kind of circadian rhythms Yeah. And hormones and things like that better. I mean, if, the only time that you have to do this, Anna is in the morning, that's fine. But generally it is similar to how when you get out of the Cold Bath and you warm up further than. How warm you were to start. The opposite is true of the sauna. So when you go in there, you heat up and when you come out, you start to cool off to a point where it goes even cooler than when you got in there. And that is when our bodies are most primed and ready for rest and sleep So yeah, ideally do it in the evening or late afternoon. But

Josh

I'm definitely drowsier when I get outta the sun. Yeah,

Erin

it's super calming. It lowers cortisol levels. It does all the opposite good things as the cold water

Josh

does. So we love it. we use sunlight. That's just what we have. It's great. Do you know of any other brands

Erin

Yeah, the massage is a good brand and they have lots of affordable portable saunas, which can be really helpful for people. I think they also have a sauna blanket, but I'm thinking more so like the tents that you sit in mm-hmm. So if you're not ready to go buy a big cedar sauna, like what we have in our basement. Yeah. It's a good option. And then there's also a higher dose that is a, a well regarded company. They sell lots of different products. They also have like a PEMF mat, which we can talk about another time. But they've got an infrared sauna, a blanket that's really popular

Josh

and all are going to kind of serve the same purpose. It's just different environments that you're choosing to be in. Yeah. Yeah. So cool.

Erin

Okay. Can we talk about breath work? Let's do it. Breath

Josh

work's my jam. Oh, man. You love it. I'm, I do too, but yeah.

Erin

You love it. So we found breath work probably two years ago now, it honestly completely changed the trajectory of my whole life. I don't, I feel like it unlocked so many things for me, and I won't go into too much depth this time because we're gonna have Kimberly on the podcast and will dive real deep then. But

Josh

I think we've given Kimberly a shoutout. I know every single episode. Love you, Kimberly. If you have not listened to our episodes, what are you doing? You've gotten a shout out every single

Erin

time. I love you Kimmy. The biggest thing about breath and breath work is. I don't think people understand the power. when you think of your autonomic nervous system, and that is branch of our nervous system Kimmy. Um, the biggest thing about breath and breath work is. I don't think people understand the power. when you think of your autonomic nervous system, and that is branch of our nervous system that controls all of the involuntary things, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, so these are things that are just happening in our body. I can't control my heart rate necessarily, but the one function that is both voluntary and involuntary is the breath. there are hours of the day where I'm not paying attention to my breath, but my body is still breathing. Thankfully yes. But that is a function of the autonomic nervous system that I have control over if I choose it. And. It's just so freaking good. It's so good. It's so good. We have

Josh

two different experiences in breath work. Yeah.

Erin

Josh gets real trippy and psychedelic with his breath work. I've

Josh

had so many hallucinations. My third eyes open. I've had downloads, holistic founders. the reason we have 300 members was because it was told to me in a hallucination and a download through my third eye

Erin

casual

Josh

I'm

Erin

just saying, for me it's more like really sinking into my body. It feels like somatic work where it's like I'm reminding my body that I am safe here now. so you can do breath work by yourself. I mean, there's a million free resources out there. Go on YouTube or TikTok even, whatever.

Josh

Kimberly has so many free Yeah. YouTube

Erin

videos. She does. Yes. I will say the difference between like doing it myself versus doing a private session with Kimberly, it's, it hits different, completely different, It feels similar to training by yourself versus training with a coach or a training partner. of course you're gonna get more robust results when you have somebody Yeah. Guiding you, holding your hand, pushing you to go a little further than maybe you would by yourself. But all that to say it's just your breath. you have access to that anytime of the day, anywhere. It's free. So it's just an amazing tool. we'll talk more about it later, but I did wanna mention that cuz it's for sure a tool that I use. Yeah. my jam is breathwork, Josh's jam is meditation, so I'll let you talk about that. I love meditation.

Josh

it was for sure one of the first tools of mindfulness that I used when I got really sick. I started with Headspace, I think, and would do it every single day. And then I transitioned into the Calm app. And then I transitioned into unguided meditation.

Erin

Wow. That's like Jedi stuff. Here I am. I couldn't do it. I would just get lost in thought. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Josh

yeah, it just helped calm down my brain. Mm-hmm. I raging anxiety. I was constantly just fighting. now I have just daily stresses and a bunch of businesses that I've decided to start with Laura, yeah, Laura's doing all these too, but the meditation just taught me to connect with my body more and my thoughts and my brain. The mindfulness has been a game changer for me. Once I did the unguided meditation, it was difficult for me to come out of that and move into something else. But I can't do unguided all the time, so I'll use. Why

Erin

not? I'm curious.

Josh

Inside of the unguided, it's a different experience and I want it to be that sacred experience. Okay. But sometimes I wanna work on the idea of abundance or it be more of a topic. And it's really helpful to have somebody guide you so you don't have to be thinking about how you need to navigate through the meditation on the topic. Mm-hmm. Superhuman app design, top quality, top notch, shout out Superhuman and then Open Meditations. Open does I think they actually do even yoga now too. Yoga, meditation and breath work on their app. Their app is beautiful. We're huge advocates of Open. And those are ones that I'll go to when I want something more guided. Completely different experiences, that's for sure. Open is a little more strict to the idea of meditation or breath work, Superhuman is a little more bright and upbeat. Very, very motivational. Very. What I like about Superhuman is, There is meditations based on the certain activities that you're doing. There's walking meditations. We've even done a running meditation. We were training for the half marathon. There's getting ready meditations. So it's nice to have something on where you're can be mindful without having to be sitting in your upright position with your eyes closed. but unguided has been what really shifted my being on a cellular level. I'll post something on Ruti about this meditation. I created a Spotify playlist of a sequence of songs that I curated based on the level of hertz that it sits in, and then the chronological order of. Unguided meditation. I start the first song with just breathing, getting centered and grounded and into the present moment. That's something I struggle with at baseline, so breathing helps me get there. I'm doing huge breaths and then I started to transition into a huge breath and then one short quick one in, and then releasing that all the way

Erin

out with me. I think Huberman calls that the cyclic sigh, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's

Josh

what I would do, but I wouldn't have any moments of rest in between, so I'm constantly either breathing in or

Erin

breathing out. So there's no pause between inhale and exhale is what you're saying,

Josh

and I go that entire first song, doing that, your lips are gonna get tingly, your body's gonna feel a little bit more alive. You start to get the zinging feeling when you. And then the next song I work on limiting beliefs. Those limiting beliefs could be huge ones something like I'm not worthy to even smaller ones that I had doubts in all day of, like not being a good dad. And I will say the opposite. I am worthy. I am a great dad, I am a great husband, I'm a great business partner, I'm a great entrepreneur. And I will just go through the laundry list of limited beliefs that I have for that song, and then the next song I do manifestations. I have abundance or I will become successful or whatever they are. Mm-hmm. the fourth song gets interesting. Back when Clubhouse was a thing inside of Covid. Oh my gosh, I forgot it. Shout out to that. Is it still I I have no idea. Sorry. Clubhouse haven't been there in a while. Yeah, I was in a room though. And Reiki master was talking through connecting yourself with the earth and giving the earth all of your negativity. Cuz it can handle it, it will absorb it and give you back positive energy.

Erin

which is, sorry, that's not just like a hippie-dippy, reiki thing to say. Like there are researched Oh yeah. Like the negative ions that exist that's grounding surface of the earth. Yeah. So it's a real

Josh

thing. We're all energy anyways, that song, I imagine myself having like a scanner going through my entire body from the top of my head all the way down to my feet. And I choose things that I'm scanning, so say it's anxiety, and I will scan my entire body, essentially just pulling out any anxiety in my entire body. Maybe it's a pain where I feel like shoulder pain, maybe it's some stress from some random call that I had with a client the day before, whatever. each time like putting that and securing it at the floor. When I am done, I release that and it's like a laser beam that goes into the core of the earth. So

Erin

all the negative sensations, all of

Josh

it. And I've visualized the laser, going through the earth, going through the layers, and then hitting the core. Inside the core. I've created a scene of me sitting underneath a big oak tree in some random field. Blue sky with fluffy clouds. It's just like the most perfect scene that I can think of in my head. It's, and that's what's at

Erin

the core of the earth. Yep.

Josh

Okay. When the laser gets to the core, all of those turn into clusters of butterflies that are released inside of my perfect scene, and then in return, the core shoots up for me. I visually it a blue form of electricity that comes back up through the earth and through my body, and I'm filled up with this blue electricity. When I listen to the song, and you'll hear it too, if you go to the Spotify playlist, you'll start to recognize different points in the song where, you know, you need to like get to certain parts of your vision.

Erin

Like time to start accepting the good vibes. Yes, exactly.

Josh

Yeah. And then the last song is the mantras, and I think we've talked about the mantras before. Mm-hmm. it used to be I'm strong, I'm powerful, I'm confident, I'm content. I am full of genuine joy. I'm healing, my body's healing. I will get back to full health. And then I switched the last three, two, I'm healed, my body's healed. I'm back to full health, and now it's switched into other things. And now I rotate out of them based on how I'm feeling. Really, the song that I chose for those mantras has the, what is it called? Binoral beats. Binoral Beats. the song is playing, but there's certain instruments in the song that are moving from your right to left ear, back and forth, back and forth. Almost felt like mini emdr. I don't know it. Cemented into my brain these mantras that I was thinking.

Erin

Yeah, well you're activating left and right hemisphere, so it's, yeah. That is essentially what EMDR is doing. So, and it

Josh

was so powerful for me, it still is. Mm-hmm. my unguided meditations feel like no matter how frazzled I am, no matter how stressed I am, which the cold plunges eliminate a lot of that, but I can get there so fast and my unguided because it feels like while I am unguided and things are shifting, like my limiting beliefs could be different every single day. Mm-hmm. my manifestations based on how I'm feeling could be different. What I'm struggling with on a daily basis that I'm releasing into the Earth are different every single day, but I know that there's a bit of predictability with the songs that I know what I need to do with each mm-hmm. and that helped me stay more consistent. someone would argue that that's not fully unguided where I'm not just sitting there, but I was a dj. I just love audio. Yeah. Audio helps center me and ground me and get me into the present moment Hal write something up for your, you guys what I do for each song and then drop the playlist in. So you guys are welcome to use it if you want. yeah, that shifted my perspective on mindfulness and made me realize that I could tap in way deeper into myself when I'm releasing the negative energy with the scans going into the core. I could feel it in my body. Mm-hmm. like all of my chakras activate. Mm-hmm. is the best way to describe it. And I'll get tingly feelings. and when I come out, it's almost a mini boosto of dopamine. It's a mini version of coming outta the cold plunge where I feel like I have just communicated with the earth. The earth has sent me back exactly what I needed and I'm ready to fucking take on the rest of the day.

Erin

Yeah. It's wild how powerful visualization can be. I've, I mean, I have looked into a lot of this stuff now, listened to so many podcasts and so many stories. Especially like the miraculous, stage four cancer is healed. All of them have visualization. Yeah. At the core of them. people are spending three, four hours a day sometimes just visualizing their cancer cells being eradicated. Mm-hmm. And so it's just powerful. Yeah. again, I really don't believe that there is any silver bullet. I just, I don't, I think that it's always gonna require agreed. A holistic kind of from every angle approach. But don't overlook this one cuz it's, it can really be powerful, I think.

Josh

Yeah.

Erin

Yeah. I, on our social recently, I posted a little reel about the placebo effect and how, I mean, I think people like poo poo it, but that's a real form of healing, whether or not it was a sugar pill or Yeah. A pharmaceutical that did the trick, they both did the trick. So why are we not talking more about this? Yeah. And yeah, I think it's, it's powerful to believe that you're healing and to visualize yourself healing. Mm-hmm. is a yeah. Great place to start. Agreed. Okay. The last thing I think that I wanted to talk about, because it's been saving my life recently, is tapping tap

Josh

taping. I was so ready for this. Let's go. Hey. Hey. I wondered what you were doing over there. Tap, tap

Erin

taping. Yeah, this is something that I just recently found. I mean, I've heard of it. I just, you know, didn't think I needed it. I was, I was more evolved than all those tappers. But when anxiety started to creep back in over the last few weeks, I've just started tapping into tapping and it's, I see what you did there. Thank you. Similar to how breath work is accessible free, I always have my breath. Tapping is the same. It's, I can do it anytime, any place, anywhere. I always have my hands available to tap on my face, and I'm it all the time now in the car, just everywhere. it's called E f t, emotional Freedom Technique, I think. I'm not well versed in this. I've just started kind of getting into it. But essentially all you're doing is tapping on these acupuncture points or like meridian points on your body. they're all over. But there's like one in the inner corner of your eyebrow, the outer corner of your eye, your cheekbone right below your eye on your upper lip, your chin, your clavicle or your collarbone. The side of your hand. Yeah, the side, well, the side of your body. And then also like the karate chop point on your hand. And there's some others too. But the point is to go through those, you'll tap on each one like five or 10 times You are expressing a feeling that you're feeling that is uncomfortable. you kind of wanna start with, even though I am, whatever, so even though I have this anxiety, or even though I have this panic in my chest, whatever it is that you're feeling, I love and accept myself. It's kind of like the one. that sounds kind of crazy. Like, no, I don't love an accept anxiety. That's terrible. But it's a form of teaching your body that emotions are healthy and normal and good. And the whole point of an emotion is to move out. it's to get it out of your body. And anytime that we don't emote and let that shit out and actually feel it, it gets lodged somewhere in our body. Yeah. If you've ever read, found that out the hard way. Yeah. If you've ever read The Body Keeps Score or any of those sort of books, it is a real thing. they have studied that adverse childhood events. Are super linked with autoimmune disorders and things like that. So trauma, emotions, all these things. If we are not processing them in real time, they're lodging somewhere, they're being stored and they're gonna wreak havoc in some way or another. So it is a way of kind of somatically like with your body, you're doing a thing that brings you into the present you are expressing an emotion and then you're saying, I'm cool with it. this is an emotion and I'm allowed to feel it what happens then? Is it kind of I don't know if I would say desensitizes you, but it, really just draws you back into the present moment because, If you think about it, anxiety is always when you're looking at the future or into the past. Depression. Yeah. Depression more so is like looking into the past. So when you are in, present state, when you're here now and you're able to feel safe in the present, all that stuff isn't gonna exist. So it's been so helpful for me and it's just quick. It takes me two minutes to tap and then I'm like immediately noticeably more grounded. yeah, check it out. There's a million YouTube videos out there's no excuse to not try this. My entire

Josh

TikTok is now people tapping. Yeah,

Erin

yeah. There's different styles of it, like different people will tap with different sort of mantras and things like that. But uh, for me it's really simple and helpful to just be like, even though I feel x I love and accept myself, it's yeah. An easy place to start.

Josh

I really like things that can play into your personality. Yeah. Like what you need. So your taps are that way. Mm-hmm. I've done a few taps where it's just like amping me up. Mm-hmm. Or I've done a couple before bed that just releases everything in the day. Mm-hmm. and I, clunk. Yeah. I just, I'm

Erin

knocked out. I think from the little reading that I've done it ha it has something to do with opening up energy meridians and like those acupuncture points that you're pressing on are each kind of tied to a meridian. Mm-hmm. or, and so it helps to open those channels to help those emotions flow out more freely. But I mean, they've done studies on EF T now that it, it's really helpful for chronic pain. Mm-hmm. So not just mood stuff or anxiety, but it can be really helpful for chronic pain. Yeah. There was one study essentially they taught 24 adults for six weeks how to do E F T. And they did a series of MRIs that studied their brain and symptomatically. They also did a questionnaire to see if certain symptoms improved and there was vast improvement in a lot of different areas, but particularly chronic pain people that experienced chronic pain had a huge improvement in pain severity and pain interference with quality of life. Also like we mentioned, depression and anxiety and increase in happiness and satisfaction. So it's kind of across the board really helpful. But the MRI like pre and post this six week E F T course showed that there was a decrease in connectivity between these two areas of the brain that are really responsible for modulating pain. And so they're, Hypothesizing that, that's why it's so helpful with pain. So awesome. Anyway, if people are experiencing chronic pain, give this a try. I mean, it's free. Go online and look up a tapping for pain. It can't hurt, I

Josh

love when you talk nerdy to me. Mm.

Erin

You did a lot today. I know. I have all my studies pulled up.

Josh

So good. I'm over here just being like, this fucking rocks to awesome. Do it. Erin's like, based on my calculations,

Erin

according to my calculations, you should be cold plunging every morning, Suning every evening, tapping all day long, and breathing in between. Don't forget to breathe. Don't forget to breathe. Oh, this

Josh

was a good one. I don't I, if anybody got this long Yeah. Shout out to tap, tap, tap ins. I had fun doing this one. Yeah. these are all things that have drastically changed my

Erin

life. Yeah. also just. I don't know. Taking a second to think about all the things that we do to love ourselves, like I'm fucking proud of us. Same.

Josh

We do a lot of stuff. Yeah, we do. It feels like in the past couple months we have stepped our game

Erin

up on that. Yeah. Do I think everybody needs all of these tools? No, but we are generally speaking to an audience that is dealing with significant, I'm addicted, stress No, I'm saying that people that are dealing with chronic illness, chronic stress, like you are gonna need more tools than the average bear. Yeah. That's just the reality. So find the ones that work for you. Don't accept just feeling how you're feeling. There are tools that you can use to really help.

Josh

Definitely. Since the seasons that we've experienced with my chronic illness, health is a priority. Yeah. So I will fucking prioritize that over. Pretty much everything. I mean, we

Erin

get one body to get through this, at least this lifetime. Who knows what happens after Whoop whoop I know what that's fun to think about, so take care of it.

Josh

I love it.

Erin

I love you. Oh, I love you too. We always

Josh

end it like that. Oh my gosh. It's so true. Moms, you know what to do. I don't even need to tell you anymore. This was so fun. This was fun, guys. Thanks for listening. Let me go hop in the sauna. Just kidding. We love you so much.

Erin

We do. Clearly I cried over you this morning. Mm. All of you.

Josh

There will be a podcast where I break down. I'm just waiting for it. Mm.

Erin

I'll bring the tissues.

Josh

I, I'm not gonna say anything else. Bye. Bye.