EP #105- Regulating Your Nervous System Through Cold Exposure, Intentional Breathing, and The Value of Slowing Down in Life with Lauren Schramm, Global Nike Trainer

(gentle music) Having the connection with yourself, whether it's through yoga, whether it's through eyes, whether it's just breathwork itself, it gets you to feel more connected with your own guiding light, your intuition. But I like to believe that the challenges that show up are exactly at or just beyond our comfort zone at the time. And I think that the more you overcome, let's bring it back to eyes, okay? There is a resiliency you build with your experience of struggling and pushing and being uncomfortable. Gets you to a point where you can then take on another challenge. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness and daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafnopoulos, and I have a very special guest this week on the podcast. This episode was meant to go out last week, but I unfortunately had a little food poisoning episode, so we are now back and better than ever, kind of. But it taught me that rest is incredibly important, especially when you are not feeling well. And that is actually something that my guests and I talk a little bit about this week. Lauren Schram is a global Nike trainer and former personal trainer at Equinox. She also started her own community called The Ice Cold Club, where she hosts ice bath and cold plunge events in New York City, which are really amazing. And I wanted to have Lauren on the podcast because she is a friend that I've made over the past few months. I really admire Lauren. There are many reasons as to why I feel this way, which you will hear in this episode. But something that really struck me about Lauren is her approach to training, to fitness, and specifically, how certain practices like breath work, cold exposure, and yoga and meditation can really influence your nervous system and therefore impact the way in which you manage your stress, you tackle challenges in life, and the minds that you adopt and the perspective that you take. And I love how she brings such a research-backed perspective to the ways in which she educates people about cold exposure and these other practices. So that's exactly why I wanted to have her on the podcast. And that's exactly what we talk about this week. Lauren shares how she developed an interest in fitness and in wellness, how she became a trainer, and ultimately what led her to create this community called The Ice Cold Club. She also talks about her own mental health struggles. So I do want to share a disclaimer and a trigger warning. There are conversations in this episode that talk about suicide and suicidal thoughts. So please be mindful of that as you tune in. We also talk more broadly about the benefits of cold exposure, how you can practice this, not necessarily needing to do an ice bath every day or every week, and how the power of these types of practices really lies in the ways in which it affects your nervous system. And how that actually has a ripple effect to all aspects in your health. To tie it back to what I mentioned earlier about learning the value of rest and my food poisoning story, we also talk a lot about this concept of unstructured time and how our society tends to see using free time as something that's not being productive or being lazy, but rather learning to give ourselves a rest and how this plays into the different energies that we all have within us. We're feminine and our masculine energies and how we can tap more into our feminine energy and masculine and vice versa to feel a bit more balanced. I'm so excited for you guys to hear this episode. Before we get into it, reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer and follow along everyday endorphins on Instagram and TikTok to stay up to date with future episodes and podcast events. And speaking of podcast events, I am hosting a yoga and meditation session at Lauren's building this Saturday, April 15th, with a former podcast guest of mine, Cassandra Bianco, who is a meditation coach and instructor. If you're interested in coming, the details are in my bio. So definitely go check it out there on Instagram. It'll be a lovely time. Unfortunately, Lauren will not be able to attend. She will be out of town, but it'll have great energy, not only because of my wonderful former guest, Cassandra, who will be leading the meditation, but also just being in Lauren's space is wonderful and all the events we've done previously have just been amazing. So if you guys are interested, definitely go check out the information on my Instagram page. (upbeat music) Hi, Lauren. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. This is a beautiful setting that we're in right now. I love recording here at your home. It's very comfortable. And I'm getting flashbacks to all the events that we've done together in this beautiful building. Yeah, it's been really nice. I've lived in this building for the longest time I've ever lived in one apartment. And that's saying something 'cause I've moved 10 times in 10 years. So I love it here. That average is like once a year. Oh my goodness. I mean, I'm going through the process right now and it's so incredibly exhausting. So I don't know how you had the stamina to do that. I just don't remember doing it. It's fine. You just block it out. Well, I'm glad that you're settled here because it is so beautiful. And especially in the workout room, near the gym and everything, like it's such an incredible space. And that's actually how we first met, which was so crazy. I think it was not even maybe six months ago, but it feels like I've known you for so much longer. (laughs) And we did an ice bath. Can you tell my listeners a little bit more about that specific event and how we met? Yeah, so my first ice bath coach, Avi Greenberg came into town and we co-hosted an ice bath together. And he was the first person that I learned from at a Wim Hof workshop years ago. It was so nice to get back with him and to teach with him and take everyone through a breathwork series and then take them into a ice bath. He was one of the most calming experiences of my life. And I'm so glad I went because Avi was a guest on my podcast, so he was having this event and he was co-hosting it with you. I'm just so happy I went because I felt like I was exposed to the world of cold therapy and the world of breathwork and ice bath. So that just really made an impact on my wellness. Routine and I know you do a lot in the cold exposure space. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about kind of what got you into all of that. So my origin story with the cold is that first workshop that I just mentioned that Avi taught. I have been a trainer for 10 years here in New York and I was always on the cutting edge of whatever is new and what people are doing. I have all of the certifications. I'm super interested in continuing education. And so when I saw this workshop, I was like, amazing, something new and it also fed into my competitiveness. I'm an extremely competitive person, which is not my favorite characteristic, but I've learned to work with it in a way that's not terrible anymore. So I was like, okay, I don't know anyone that could sit there in a bucket of ice. Like this is going to be badass. Like I'm so excited. So I went to the workshop and it was a super rainy day. And I remember being like, oh, like there's no way we're going to get into the ice today. Like it's raining, it's really crappy out. We're supposed to be outside, whatever. And I remember asking all of you and being like, we're not going to the ice today, right? Like it's too shitty out. And he's like, it's ice. Like you're going to get wet and cold. Like it doesn't matter the weather. And I was like, oh, my goodness. Okay. So we do all of this breath work. And we can go back to breath work. But the breath is really the only thing you have when you're in the ice. And it allows you to regulate yourself. But I didn't know any of this at the time. But we do this breath work. It feels very transformative. And I'm originally trained in yoga. That was the first thing I ever did. And so pranjum, like you have that background, but this was different. This was deeper and it was a little bit more intense. And it could have the potential to be psychedelic. And for me, it was that day. So that in itself was incredible. And then the fear associated with that ice, like I've been in New York for so long. And I grew up on the East Coast. Like I'm used to the winter. But every winter I threatened to move to LA. Like every single winter, I'm like, I'm going. I hate this. Like the cold is not for me. Like I don't like it. And so I had so much fear around going into extreme cold. And I found this really fun partner to go in with Heidi. And we were like instantly best friends. And people were like, how long have you known each other? We were like two hours. Like just not. But she was so sweet. And we did it together. It was intense. And it was fun. And I guess you're adrenaline going and all that stuff. But then I left. And I was a private trainer at the time. So I had a car. I was driving around New York. I would go a session to session. And I go to drive home. And I grew up in New Jersey. I am a beyond aggressive driver, like aggressive. Like you cut me off. I'm trying to go around you. I'm honking. I'm screaming. Like that's it. Not OK. It's not OK. And I don't like. I mean, who wants to act like that? And it's not fun for anyone. It's not fun for people that are around you. It's not fun for yourself. So it's a-- Someone cuts me off as I always do. And I go, "My body, deep in my body, I have this response." And I go, "Huh, they must be in a hurry." And I don't do any of the normal stuff I would typically do. I didn't have that same reaction. And that baffled me. It floored me. I was like, "What is this?" Like, I have spent my entire life having these reactions that I was not proud of and then having to go back and fix all these things I messed up because I wasn't feeling safe, deep down. And I didn't know any of that at the time. I had been in therapy for a long time. So I understood a little bit about the nervous system, but not nearly as much as I know now. But it caused me to dive deep into that because I was so intrigued by this ability that I had to position myself in a way where I didn't have to rely on my willpower. I didn't have to rely on thoughts because the response of our nervous system happens before we're able to consciously think. And so when you find ways to regulate the nervous system essentially making yourself feel safe, even in environments that aren't safe, you are able to control how you respond versus react and then you don't have to go back and try to fix all this stuff you've done. You can authentically show up as yourself. And so once I understood that from a visceral level, personally, physically, I was like, this is something I need to keep doing. And so I've spent the last, I think this is in 2019. So two and a half years ago, three years ago, I've spent since then diving and redirecting my energy in my work to understanding how the nervous system impacts how we live our lives. I love all of that. This idea of being responsive versus reactive is so important because the minute that we're quick to react to something, it usually comes from a place of fear or anger or some emotion that's fleeting and we don't recognize that in the moment. I'm curious if you're training in yoga taught you about that concept and also this idea around like really regulating your nervous system because cold exposure is one way to do that but also through yoga. And then like the common denominator between the two is breath work. So I often say to people, if they come to the ice bath workshops and I go, this is your first time and you don't like that ice, I don't wanna ever see you again. I don't want you to continuously force yourself to do something you don't like to do for an end. I have a serious belief that our life experience is made up of all of the small things we habitually do every single day and with those things we know you need to consistently show up and do them for you to get a result. So why would you pick things you don't like doing to get yourself to a place? You don't even know where it is, what it looks like, what it feels like. While you're hating your everyday existence, life isn't those big moments. I'm sure we've all gone through an experience where we've achieved something and we're like, this doesn't feel like I thought it was gonna feel. And you can avoid that situation by finding things that you enjoy doing. It's like that journey is the, what is that called? - It's not the like destination. It's the journey that matters, such a, whatever. It's repeated over and over but genuinely like, I believe that that's real because I've had this experience where I've gotten exactly what I wanted and I felt worse because you think that like you're gonna get these flowers at the end of the end of the journey and like everything's gonna feel good and everyone's gonna love you and all of these things and like we can get into how I feel like that's manifestation and whatnot. But I believe that having the connection with yourself, ever that looks, whether it's through yoga, whether it's through ice, whether it's just breathwork itself, that's the practice you can do by yourself, by itself. It gets you to feel more connected with your own guiding light, your intuition, that voice inside your head that tells you, be like this, we don't like this. And that changes. So what's more important is finding the connection, not finding the answers. And when you have that connection and you live from that space, then you're able to pick and choose what you do, where you go, who you spend your time with and your experience of your life is gonna be elevated. Your mood is then gonna be elevated. And if we're doing this in conjunction with making our nervous system more functional through giving ourselves opportunities to feel safe, then we're not going to have those defensive responses because our nervous system is ancient. Like it's here to protect us and our bodies are so intelligent and amazing, but we need to know how they work so that we're able to understand what they're doing and why. Because so much of my life, I've spent in a defensive place. Like the thoughts that always went through my head are like they're all out to get me. Like they want me to fail. They're trying to make fun of me. And it's hard to say whether or not my energy thinking those things caused those things to happen to me, but that was my experience. And we've all been there where it's like, you're with a group of friends and you all have a different experience of the same situation. That's because it's whatever's going on internally is what you're gonna experience externally. And so if you're not loving what's happening in your life, there are things you can change on the outside, but really turning and looking inward. And the beautiful thing that I came out of this nervous system learning with was, it's not all in my head. I'm not broken. I don't need to fix my brain. I'm not messed up. I'm not in a place where I can't help myself. It's really like, oh well, of course you thought this was gonna happen because X, Y, and Z happened to you and that's the lesson you took from it. And that's how your body reacts because your body doesn't want you to ever experience that again. And so when you go back and you're like, wow, like did that person actually mean that? And even if they did, what caused them to mean to do something so cruel or hurtful to me? We're all just trying our best. And when we are able to look at that and not demonize other people for the things they do and they say, we all make mistakes. And I've found that in the time I spent trying to blame other people versus the time I've spent trying to understand that it's all okay. We're all trying. And no one knows what they don't know until they learn it. Giving the benefit of the doubt feels so much better than not. When you give it to other people, then you can get it yourself from other people. And then you no longer have to go through life expecting yourself and others to be perfect or absolutely like cutting people off when they're not absolutely doing everything you want them to do. Like we're all trying our best. There's so much going on. You don't know what's happening in people's lives. Instead of blaming and instead of fighting and instead of doing that, having these boundaries up in your life and then working internally to change your external is really the path that I've found to be the most fulfilling. I think that starts with a regulated nervous system. I love everything that you just said and I think you need to be a motivational speaker. 100% could not agree more. It reminds me of when we did our event earlier this month or by the time this will be released last month, after we did the yoga and the breath work, which you so beautifully guided everyone through. I remember you said like everyone was opening their eyes and you said, congratulations, this is what your parasympathetic nervous system feels like. And a girl that came to the class like started tearing up, she said, through the practice, through the breath work. And just as you were describing everything you were just saying, I started to get chills because it's so true when you come from a place of fear and from defensiveness, you're creating this reality where things are happening to you and it's easy to play into the victim mentality. And none of that is beneficial and none of that is gonna actually help you move through the inevitable challenges that life will present itself to you. So I love how you've had this reframe and also recognize that it's really everything is in your head, like the way that you think about things and how you feel about yourself really extends outside of you and then colors your reality and it is like a filter through how you perceive things. And I love how not once have you said anything about the weight loss benefits of cold exposure and therapy because I think there's so much out there on social media, specifically for women, like go do an ice bath and it'll help speed up your metabolism and lose weight and sure that can be part of your fitness goals. But I love how that's not even one thing that you mentioned about the benefits of cold exposure. - Hmm. - Okay. No, it's certainly not gonna be. And the reason that is is because I've been doing this for a very, very long time and I would love for people to understand. The way in which you go about changing the composition of your body is going to dictate how long it sticks, how it happens and bigger than that is if you lose weight. way in order to get more love. Like think about that for a second. Most people have this goal. They want to look better, they want to feel better. And if you go deeper, why? Why? Why? We can go like five layers deep. What you typically find is someone who's extremely annoyed at you for asking those questions because yeah, that's freaking annoying. I got that. But it's so important to ask yourself why because what you'll likely land on is that you believe if you look more attractive, you will deserve more love. Someone will want to date you. Someone will want to be your friend. And I don't care what it is for you. Is that for everyone? What I can guarantee you is that that will not happen. People don't love you because of how you look. And if they do, you do not want them near you because it's not love. People love you because of how you feel and how you feel is based on how you feel inside. How you act is going to be based on how you approach life and how life feels to you. And if you're happy and you're excited, you're fun to be around. And someone's going to like that. But if you're doing all of these things to make yourself look a certain way and you're restricting your food and you're working out for hours a day and you're measuring how much rice you're eating and you're not allowing yourself to eat the foods you want and you're eventually going to get to a point where you're like, oh, I can't have that. Oh, I don't want to go there because I can't eat anything on the menu. Oh, blah, blah, blah. I'm saying this from personal experience. Okay. Like I've tried all the diets. I have tried all of the exercise routines, all the modalities. I've done it all. I've put on 20 pounds of muscle in the middle of winter and 20 pounds of fat to go with it. Okay. You can do anything you want. You could try it. But what's going to end up happening is if you don't enjoy that journey back to what I was saying before, if you're not excited about the food you eat, if you're restricting yourself in any way, if you're punishing yourself for eating too much, eating too little, for not working out enough, not moving your body, you're shutting off that voice inside of you. That knows all. That knows exactly what nutrients you need. If you sit there with your eyes closed and you're connected to that voice, you can say, what am I in the mood to eat? Am I hungry? And you sit there and you hear that voice? It will tell you the answer. Your body is so intelligent. When we try to override that through all of these methods and modalities and tactics and biohacking and blah, blah, blah, we turn off this innate wisdom we have within ourselves. And this is all new. And I don't think it's necessarily bad, but it's how you choose to use it. And if you do anything in your life as a means to an end, I recommend you reconsider. The end is necessary to get to. You're going to have to get there to learn this lesson. You're going to listen to me and you're going to say, oh, this girl, what does she know? I don't think it's going to happen to me. You know in high school, I used to. I was like carrying Gandhi's autobiography around. I was like, I'm so enlightened. No one gets it. And I was like, Buddhism is the thing. But you know what I said to myself? I literally was like, oh yeah, this whole like suffering inevitable suffering thing. It doesn't apply to me. So you thought you were special. Yeah. I was like, yeah, okay, Buddhism, this makes sense. I see other people. I see their suffering. Attachment causes suffering. Suffering is inevitable inevitable. Mm-hmm. Okay. But like, not for me. I'm going to find a way around it. I'm going to get around it. And the only way I freaking learn my lesson was by suffering, by getting there, by being like, okay, okay, you share about that. Yeah, I mean, you kind of read my mind. I was going to ask you at what point in your life did you start to recognize that this is the better philosophy to lead through with life? Like, this is the philosophy that will actually lead to greater happiness. And this is how I need to take care of myself rather than, you know, sticking with the way that the wellness industry and the media like negatively portrays health. So when I was 18, 19, I didn't want to be here anymore. I was done with life. I didn't see a way out. I had an extreme chemical imbalance. And I wasn't getting any help in talk therapy. I wasn't taking any medications. And I was at a point where my life circumstances felt so terrible to me that I decided that I couldn't do it anymore. And so I had, it wasn't an attempt of suicide, but it was a, it was an attempt of an attempt. But luckily it didn't have to go that far. I was like a threat that didn't actually become anything, but an ambulance was called. And I was brought into a facility. And they gave me the choice because I didn't actually yet try to harm myself. They were like, you can either go or you can commit yourself into a facility. And at the time, I think I had already dropped out of college. I was probably 20 pounds down and I was already a very small person when I was in high school. And so it was like quite alarming. And I had not been getting the help I wanted from the people around me at the time. I was isolating. It wasn't like I had these great friends that were like ignoring me, but I just didn't know what else to do. So I said, yeah, I went and got committed to a facility. And in the facility, they give you like a cocktail of drugs, like a lot of drugs and a lot of different ones because they just want to blink it. You help you just kind of like push through. And it was like very like the movies where it was like a little catch up cup full of shit. And then you swallow it and they look under your tongue and you like sit there all day with other people and you like try to color. And I remember not being able to color. My brain didn't work. I couldn't function. Like my thoughts didn't work because I was so under the influence from all of the things they had given me. And I spent a long five days in there. My parents tried to get me out because it was like, oh my god, maybe this wasn't the move. But I once you say yes, you can't say no, you're like, actually I'm good. They're like, no, you're not. So I got out and I got a therapist and I personally made the decision not to take any more drugs because I I knew they gave me like eight different pills and that my psychiatrist, psychiatrist drugs, psychologist's talk. I'd always heart. My psychiatrist was like, we're not giving you that. And I was like, I understand, but I want to find a way to fix this. And so I worked with this woman. She was so incredible. She was like an art therapist. We didn't do art, but she was just like, that was her vibe. And we started to like unpack things and we started to understand things. To answer your question, like I was always looking for answers because I was like, this isn't it. Like I never felt understood. And so I always was like seeking outside information. I was always interested in different things. And so I was like looking into yoga and Buddhism. I started doing yoga in high school oddly enough. Yeah. I was so competitive about it too. I was like in the class and hot yoga I would do with these like moms in like suburban New Jersey. And like the teacher would come over and like put me in this crazy back band. And I was like, I'm the best at yoga. And like that was my vibe, right? That's so funny. You say that because I started yoga when I was really young too. I was like eight years old. I was like really young. And I did it with my mom in adult classes. But because I was so little, I was flexible. So they could kind of twist and contort me. But it's interesting because now as a, you know, you know, yoga is not about that. It's not about being competitive. It's not about how you look. So it's funny how when you enter the practice, that was your headspace. I did a teacher training as my first thing. So right after that, I became a nanny. And I kind of was like trying to figure my stuff out. I moved to New York. It's not that far. It's like 45 minutes. It was like the default city. So I moved here and I went through a weekend teacher training at Stanton Street, yoga. My two teachers and they were incredible. So it was exactly the perspective I needed. They were like, "Asonah movement is one pillar of yoga." And we have seven others. And I was like, "Ah!" And my body went through an enormous transformation, not physically, but chemically. Because of that. And it was also my first time in New York and I grew up in suburbs and there wasn't much diversity. And there was certainly not homelessness that we saw. Like even like the people in the suburbs that were not doing great, like, had homes. They just weren't like wealthy. And they didn't drive Mercedes, you know? Like if I never saw someone who had nothing, had no one. And I was fucking crying all the time. Like I was riding the subway for the first time, like being around people that didn't look like me for the first time. I had been like extremely sheltered. And I don't think it's anyone's fault necessarily. But when you're not exposed to people that are different than you, look different than you, sound different than you, do different things, you have this idea about those people. That's often, if not always, incorrect. Because you just don't know. And you're like, "Oh, I'm like, I'm like on the subway, like tearing up." I'm like, "The humanity of everyone." And I'm like everyone's the same. And I'm like, "We all have the same lightener." I was like off the deep end. But it was okay. It was necessary to recalibrate myself, but I was always like, how could these people have not a soul in the world that, well, line, it was like this whole thing I had to go through. And then you're also at the same time like in New York and being like pushed and shoved and like you're like crime, but no one gives a shit. Like no one sees you cry, like no one cares. But at the same time, like you trip and fall, everyone helps you. It was this huge reality shift and shock to my system. And I kind of had to decide if I was going to be this soft, yo ye, this feminine, soft person that I first time in my life unlocked, or if I was going to make money and survive. And so I chose the second one. And I became a trainer. And I was like, well, I had no other skills. I had dropped out of school. Like it was not chill to drop out of school. My parents were horrified. I was like, I can be a waitress and annie or like, I was like, maybe I could be a trainer because I always did sports. And so I did that. And I worked really, really hard, like really long hours, seven days a week. And I branded for that stuff. But it did cause me to lose that softness. It's hard to be both. It's hard to be in training from 5, 30 in the morning to 9 p.m. and then also be chill. Yeah. That's such a good point. It's something I've actually been thinking a lot about recently. The balance between being really determined, working really hard, putting your mind towards something that you really want, and just being heads down and going for it, but doing it in a way where it's not sacrificing that softness in life. Because I've been trying to lean more into the softness and just take a rest. And it's made me feel so much better. And it's hard to balance both. I think it's really uncomfortable. I'll speak as a woman, obviously. That's my experience. But we all have masculine and feminine energy within ourselves. And this is the latest lesson that I've learned that's completely changed my life. On top of the nervous system stuff, I think they're very much so related. But the masculine energy is action. And it's dense. And it fills space. It takes up space. And it's ideas. And it's all of these like exciting-- all we're doing things, we're getting things done. That's masculine energy. And then feminine energy is a container. So the masculine fills the feminine container. And you don't necessarily need to have a man and a woman to do this. You need to have someone who's embodying the action. And then you need to have the container, too. And if we're just talking within ourselves, think about all of this brute force going, going, going. And there's nothing to contain it. There's no boundary. What are you doing? Like you're going in circles. There's so much wasted energy. And I realized once I understood what feminine meant, and also got myself to understand that being soft, showing emotion, being vulnerable, communicating in a way that wasn't aggressive, wasn't weak. Because that was the association I had. Because I worked in a male-dominated industry. Fitness is obviously a place where-- I mean, it's not maybe not obvious to people. But there were typically-- I would say 60% to 70% men. And then what is the math? 35% to 30% women. I mean, when you look at a weight room, if usually all men. Yeah. And then the other thing on top of that, people don't always realize is that that was my office. But gym culture is wildly inappropriate compared to office culture. The things that have been said to me by co-workers, by members of the gym, would never fly in an office. Are you freaking getting me? Commenting on how I look, how I'm dressed, all of these things. You would be fired immediately. Meanwhile, loosen up. Come on, blah, blah. So what did I do? I hardened myself. And I became nasty. Remember the Jersey thing? Like, that was there. I was like, oh, you want to say something? Like, that was my energy. I was like, you don't talk to me like that. Chicken or the egg, who knows what caused it? You know what I mean? Like we said earlier, like, I was in that mindset of like, I'm fighting for my life. I'm defending myself. Whatever it was, that's how it happened for me. And then COVID, right? I'm not in the gym anymore. And I'm understanding maybe how to switch things up, how to be different. And for the first time, I softened into giving myself time off. Stella, when I tell you, I literally thought I was going to die when I took a day off. Like, I thought I was going to be homeless. It was irrational. And oftentimes, our deep-seated subconscious beliefs don't make logical sense. That's why therapy is so important, because you're with a trained professional. That knows that you have these belief systems ingrained in you based on your experiences that you haven't yet processed. And you need to come to an understanding of what they are so you can change them if need be. That's why therapy is so important. Yes, you have friends you can talk to, but they're not trained professionals. And it's a very different thing. And that's what I say to people who are like, oh, I don't necessarily need it. OK, maybe you don't, but this is what happens in it when you work with someone. And don't treat your friends like a therapist, because that's crossing the boundary, too. Yeah. And then you can have a good friendship if you're always complaining about something, exactly. So I took a day off, and I have a spiritual advisory work with which is so nice. And she was like, I kept getting physical pain. I used to get kinks in my neck where I couldn't get out of bed. And I believe back to the weight loss tactics and approach, I believe that our body will manifest what we are feeling inside. And it will cause us to stop where we're at if we're not listening to those feelings and we're not processing those feelings. If you're interested in this topic, one of the best books to start with is The Body Keeps the Score. That's been on my reading list for months. OK, there you go. Yeah, I can't recommend it. It's very good. Thinking about that as being true, what I think was happening is my body was trying to get me to slow down, and I wasn't listening to it. And so she had said to me, take four days off. And this is COVID. Like we're just doing zooms on the internet. We're doing sessions online. Like I was like, everyone's going to fire me. I'm not going to be able to pay my rent. I'm not going to be able to eat. I'm going to have to move in with my mom again. That's what happened in my head. But it wasn't that nice and succinct. It was, I'm going to die. It wasn't like it was so extreme. I hadn't at the time been able to process it. But the fear in Take a Day Off was, I'm going to die. It wasn't Take a Day Off, relax. And that was a personal association. Not everyone's going to feel that for everything. And something that bothers you to that degree, I'm not going to have a problem with. And so a lot of times when we see people and like their fears, we're like, why would you even think that? You don't know what happened to them to cause them to think that. Anyway, I took four days off. I didn't die. Nothing bad happened. None of my clients fired me. I got better. And I recognized for the first time you have to teach yourself. You have to go through the lessons. You have to go through it. You have to kind of reach the end to know that what that experience is like. Because you can't just like read the books and listen to the podcast and say, I know everything. You have to live it. You have to get your hands dirty. So I did that. And then all of a sudden I was like, you know what? Like, I can take a day off. And then that kept happening. And now I have four days off. My life is very different in the structure. And what I found, it's not that I'm like lazy and I just hang out and watch TV all day when I have a day off. But what the time that's unstructured does for me is it allows me to go into the feminine. It allows me to go into that rested state where there's not a structure, where it's just an openness. And that's where I get the ideas. That's where I get the direction. That's where I course correct myself. So when I'm ready to go back into the action, I know what I'm doing. And I know where to go. And I know what actions to take. And I probably take 30% of the actions I use to take. But those 30% get me 90% of the way. I love what you just said. I'm going to start using this phrase around unstructured time. Not days off. It's just my unstructured time. And it's funny because I know we've been wanting to do this podcast for a few months now. Like when we met back in November. And I'm so happy we're doing it today. Because this exact topic is something that I've been thinking a lot about recently. And I've had the lived experience now where I've learned to incorporate more unstructured time into my routine. And it's been in those periods where I felt rested. And the choices that I'm making are way more intentional. and they're allowing me to do way more than I thought I could have if I had just kind of overworked myself. And that is something I didn't think because I was always go go go go go go go and it was exhausting. Another way of just saying burnout really. So I've just had this personal experience and revelation recently. So as you know, we've been sitting here, I'm just nodding along to everything you're saying because it resonates. And for those who I mean no one's here with us in the room except the two of us, but we're sitting next to your bookcase and like it's for like floor to ceiling all these books that you have. So clearly it's important to be like well read and to soak up this knowledge but it can only go so far. You have to have that lived experience. Yeah. I think timing is everything. And I think that lessons show up for us constantly, but I like to believe that the challenges that show up are exactly at or just beyond our comfort zone at the time. And I think that the more you overcome, let's bring it back to ice. The resiliency you build with your experience of struggling and pushing and being uncomfortable gets you to a point where you can then take on another challenge. That's more difficult. Life doesn't ever seem to let up. I don't know what it is, right? It's always going and it's always something a little bit different and a little bit harder to deal with. But I like to believe that you're only going to get the challenges that you can overcome. And I don't think that it's life or death anymore. I used to believe this. I used to think if you messed up and if you didn't make the right choice, you had to like start over or something. Like no. You just kind of like recalibrate and you get presented with it in a different way or another time. And that's what the ice does. So, I mean, you've listened to me, you understand the way I'm coming from. Yeah, ice is cool. Yeah, I've never been leaner because I do the ice, but I don't do it to be lean. It's a great side effect. I feel good, but I only feel good because of the mental benefits. And the reason that I do the ice and I do it now every day, I do some form of cold exposure every day, because I found that having that routine for me feels good. It pushes me a little bit out of my comfort zone. But it's not something where I'm like, I need to go in the ice bath every day. Because that's a lot. You don't always have time to do that. And you do need to recover from it. And I have an ice bath on my property. It's in my building. I can go downstairs and do it. Even so, sometimes I don't have time for that. And so I'm going to shower every day. I just turn the shower cold at the end. Some days it's 10 seconds counts as cold exposure. Some days it's 30 seconds. Some days it's five minutes. The stress that you present yourself through your cold exposure, which is purposeful controlled stress. And it's purposeful because you're choosing to do it. It's controlled because you can stop at any moment. Needs to be in my opinion based on what your current stress level is that day, which is based on how many freaking factors. Thousands. Did you just have a crazy phone call that is pulling you out of your authenticity? Okay. Then maybe it's time to just stop everything, put it down and head in the shower. You're going to shower later tonight. Just do it now. Do your hot shower. And then when you're done with your shampoo, you're all of your stuff. I don't think that we need to struggle and suffer while we're doing that. I think it's just a separate thing. It takes a couple of minutes. Like just do your hot shower and then do it. I'm going to step out of it for a second. Turn it to cool when you're first starting. You don't need it to be the most intense thing. It is still going to shock your system. And if you're doing it for the mental health benefits, this works. If you're doing it for other reasons, there are optimal ways to do it. Great. It's not that serious. Be easy with yourself. You are the one that's dictating whether you win or you fail. No one else is standing here with a clipboard like she actually ate candy today. So her diet failed. That's something you decide in your head. No one else is keeping score for you. It's only you. So if you decide that you ate a really nourishing lunch and you feel good and that's a win, that's a win. That's a win. If you decide you have one bite of a cupcake and that means you fail for the day, that's based on your decision to put yourself in such a strict way of living that you're going to feel bad about yourself. I don't know why you would do that other than to hurt yourself. And I don't know why you would do that because you don't deserve it. So the cold shower, doing it every day for me, even when I don't want to do it, builds this level of resilience. And I've started to understand what this means more and more because I've done this and showed up for myself every day. I've started to say this thing at the end of my breathwork sessions. I have everyone put a hand around their heart or wherever they feel like the energy center in their body and take a moment to have gratitude for showing up for themselves that day. And I think shifting ourselves into that energy and to that vibration for the things that we do for ourselves is so important. And it translates into all of these small positive choices you make for yourself. And then you're showing up and you're doing something that's not necessarily comfortable and you overcome it and you feel better about yourself. You feel more able to do that and I find it to translate to everything. It's like that self-efficacy. The minute that you do something good for yourself, you were then excited and you realize that you can succeed with that. You're then excited to continue to do more of those good things and other types of good things. And then it's like, well, you're you're leading an intentional life and you're making choices that align with what you believe in and you know how you want to show up for yourself. I also say the same thing at the end of my yoga practice like having people come back to this place of gratitude and thinking themselves for showing up on the mat because that's the hardest part is just getting out of the door and going. But once you're there, it's 10 times easier. Similar to ice, the hardest part is just having that impetus to go and do it. But the minute you do it, the minute you turn the shower head to be more cold, whatever it is, you feel better. And when I did your ice bath in November of last year, it was not my first time doing ice because I did it when I was doing my teacher training in Bali. And that was a really luxurious experience because it was really warm and I could go back and forth between the sauna, the ice bath. Meanwhile, we're doing it on like a cloudy, overcast, freezing day in November. And I remember stepping in, I think Avi was guiding me and you just, it's very vulnerable, like you're stressed because you're like, oh my god, like am I going to die doing this? But you do the breath work, you come back to your inhalations, your exhalations and then your body starts to relax. At least this was my experience. And as I was relaxing, I could feel like my extremities really cold because I was in a literal ice bath. But then I started to feel the warmth was going to sound cheesy. But in my heart, like I genuinely felt the warmth inside of my body. And that was a really powerful experience. And then all of a sudden three minutes were up and I was like, wait, that's it. So I have witnessed firsthand the experience, the benefits that it provides and how you can take like micromomans of that into your day to day. It doesn't have to be a fall on three to five minute ice bath where you're like submerged in ice. You can bring the sense of cold exposure or whatever practice works for you into your routine. And what works for one person might not work for the other and that's okay. But I just really, I really love everything. I love you to share Lauren. I feel like I learned so much over this past 40 minutes hour. I don't even know how long we've been talking. But I wanted to ask you the question that I ask every guest that comes onto the podcast. It is obviously very central to everyday endorphins because it's about finding things in life that bring you joy and happiness. So what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Great question. I feel like I just answered this. I will say I don't choose to move every day. I don't choose to work out every day. I do choose to intentionally breathe every day. And I choose lately to intentionally stress my system with cold. And it's not even the cold feeling afterwards. We can talk about the chemicals that happen and the reactions that happen in the bodies and the cold shock proteins. We could get into the science. But what brings me that feeling of joy is overcoming something difficult that I did not necessarily want to do for the betterment of my future self. Beautifully said. And I think that applies to so many things in life. And I think that's something to try to come back to every day as well. Because it's easy to forget about that. When we get comfortable, when we get complacent, that's not when change is happening. And that's not when growth is happening. So it's a great reminder, Lauren. And finding comfort in discomfort, discomfort, but also in the nothingness. Yes, don't always feel like you need to be constantly putting yourself in stress. It's a balance. It's a balance. Well, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Having you as a guest, where can my listeners follow along with you and stay connected? Thank you for having me. I have Instagram. It's Lauren's Ramfit. I can't change it because there's another girl with Lauren's. And TikTok is the same. I talk a lot about ice on TikTok and I'm starting to talk more about ice on Instagram and for now, those are the best places. And follow along every day in Dorfins for the next event that we'll do together. Yeah. Day is unconfirmed, but we've been doing a few together and it's probably one of my favorite types of events that I've talked about. Yeah, it's really great. And if you want to come to an ice bath in your in Brooklyn, I have the schedule on my website. So you can find all the information there. Thank you Lauren. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday in Dorfins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday in Dorfins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being, and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading in Dorfins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.