I love the digital community that Cadre has created. As a contributor, I’m grateful to share stories and perspective on mental health to help provide a beacon of light for those traveling through darkness. Now, I’ve created a physical space for anyone to join and be well. This is my story of what community means to me and how I see my role developing in the wellness space.
The host opens the stream with a warm greeting, describes the brisk weather, and explains his love of streaming outdoors. This orients viewers to the setting and tone of the video.
He explains his role within the Cadre community and announces the Sessions by LeddWell series, giving dates and times and noting Cadre's presence. This section tells viewers what the events are and when they happen.
The host outlines who will be involved—Arpwave, a local artist, helpers, and music—and summarizes the session flow, including movement work and contrast therapy. He frames the events as a way to explore varied wellness modalities like sauna and cold plunge.
He shares a visit to Thomas Beach, a sunrise ceremony he attended there, and reflects on his long history of hosting gatherings. This builds context for why he’s suited to hold these community wellness events and invites participation.
The host describes the sauna as an intimate 'container within the container,' emphasizing screen-free connection, the wood-fired stove, and how heat exposure builds stress resilience. He connects sweating and contrast therapy to improved physical and mental functioning.
He urges viewers—whether struggling or thriving—to attend the Sessions, shares a personal story about recovering from depression and the value of connection, and finishes with details about event posts and a friendly farewell. This wraps up with motivation and practical next steps.
Good morning cadre. It's a nice brisk 49 degrees, feels like 45. That's not going to stop me from doing my stream outside. If you know me, I love the outdoors and we'll see how long I maintain doing this live stream outside until it gets too cold. So for now, we're embracing this and it's glorious. So speaking of outside, I mentioned in my description of this here today that I love the digital space that Cadre has created. It is incredible and I'm honored to be a part of it. And part of my role is to not only share stories, experiences, and perspectives on mental health related to my journey, I'm also one to create the physical space where we can all get together and connect and be and learn how others be well, share stories, grow through community, all in the glorious setting of the outdoors.
And in less than a week and a half or about a week and a half, I'll have my first set of experiences that everyone can enjoy. They're called Sessions by Leadwell, and I'll be having two sessions for four straight Saturdays beginning October 24th. 30. Cadre will have a presence at these events, so you'll be able to connect with not only myself, but likely a rotating lineup of contributors and other amazing humans involved with Cadre. So how cool is that? I'll have some other special guests there.
Arpwave, who is the company that operates the neuromuscular stim device that has been essential in my wellness journey for building strength and fighting pain. and have a local artist there which is going to be fantastic. Multiple helpers who are just amazing humans in their own right and know how to hold space really well. What else we got going on? And we'll have some music too. The first portion of sessions I'll take people through movement exercises that have been instrumental in maintaining my physiological self which then turns into me being able to perform on the high side of my psychological traits.
So it's a cool way to showcase how I've been able to take care of myself as well as unite other people that utilize modalities that have been extremely beneficial to them. The whole point of this is to, one, build a community through connection and movement and contrast therapy that is sauna and cold plunge. But also just to introduce everyone to the many modalities of wellness that are out there. And I always like to say there's not one modality that is just going to resonate with everyone across the board.
It's a combination that you decide what's best for you based on your own experience. So the best research you can do is to try things and see how they make you feel. So that might be meditation, breath work, sound healing, dancing, proper stretching, conversation, putting the body through good stress in the sauna and then into the freshwater lake. So these events, this first, the first set of four weeks will take place at Thomas Beach at B'day Makaska. And I went and visited this glorious piece of land on Monday for Indigenous Peoples Day, where I got to take part in a sunrise ceremony honoring the people and the land It was very powerful, it was very special, and it got me really excited to utilize this space for displaying my lens of wellness.
So one thing that I've learned over the past few years that I excel at is that I'm a good space holder. And I've been throwing events and parties my whole entire life. Growing up, my parents would entertain a lot and we lived on a small little lake where there's lots of fun to be had and I took what my parents did and kind of made it my own. So I've been hosting gatherings all the way back to, I've been hosting focused gatherings all the way back to high school. So it's truly something that has been with me for a long time and I really take pride in my ability to bring people together, to make people feel good.
And if you're someone that just wants to feel good, maybe try something new, I would highly recommend coming to my series of events. You can come to one, you can come to multiple. It'll be a progression. Each event will be a progression through my lens of wellness. So you won't experience the exact same thing each time, but you will experience the power of connection, the power of community. And when you combine those things with nature and music and movement, and sauna, which is almost like a container within the container, you are getting tools to at least provide knowledge to yourself on what those practices mean to you and to maybe even experience them to the point where you want to integrate them into your life on a regular basis.
So one thing I love about the sauna is that As I mentioned, it's a container within the container. So when we have these events, there might be 20 people there, might be up to 40 people there. And when you're milling around outside in the elements, you can choose who you go up and talk to or engage with or move with. But in the sauna, whoever's in there is in there. And that's who you're gonna have a moment with. And It can be a quiet reflective moment or it can be a social time where you're getting to know somebody on a more intimate basis.
There's no phones in there to distract you. There's no screens in there to pull your attention away. There's just a wonderful raging wood-fired sauna stove that is providing primitive nature of staring at a fire and just being and putting yourself through good stressful situations that will in turn help you deal with stressful situations in life. So at a minimum, that's the huge thing that sauna can do is allow you a greater capacity to deal with stress in your life. And on the mental health side of things, stress and anxiety are big players.
So a great way to combat stress and anxiety in your life is through my own personal experience. And there's clinical research out there that's supporting this, but you're gonna feel better. You're gonna feel better. It's good to get a sweat on. It's good to clean the pipes in our body. and make the engine that is our organs and our mind function properly. So it's something that I'm really excited about. And there's going to be, there will be more gatherings beyond this four-week stretch of events at De Mikoska.
Don't hesitate to get out there and embrace community. So You may not know me, you may not know any of the people involved, but I can assure you that when you do come, we will become friends. We will get a better understanding of each other and you might even get a better understanding of yourselves. Because we grow through connection, we grow through community. When we are able to interact with others and get different perspectives, It helps us understand our own selves when we have the ability to interact.
So I see these gatherings as an elevated sauna and cold plunge experience with the ability to tap into wellness modalities that might stick with you for the rest of your life. Or they might jumpstart your motivation towards feeling your best self and get you to try something new that might not be tied in to the events specifically, but are something that are talked about casually from the participants involved. So it's gonna be a good time. It's gonna be a great time. And if I should leave you with something, I guess I'll just leave you with The fact that, when I struggled with a deep depression in my early 20s, I made it a point to kind of isolate myself for a period of time.
And that initial isolation benefited me, but I knew that it wasn't sustainable. So as I started to feel better and I started to tackle the the negative thoughts that were intruding on my mind, I realized that I felt so much better about myself when I was able to connect with others, able to laugh with others, able to be active with others. So this is my call to action to you. If you are someone That's struggling, which is a lot of us, or even if it's just a little blip on the radar where you're having a tough time, or maybe you're even thriving in life.
Come to Sessions by Leadwell, embrace the power of community, embrace the power of connection, and see what that does to yourself, to your body, to your mind, how you feel. And then let's run it back and do it all over again. I'll leave you with that today. The power of connection is very mighty and the digital community that Cadre is creating is incredible and let's take it a step further and be well in person together. I'll add a post on here at some point in time highlighting the events so you can figure out how to attend them and we're going to go from there.
So I hope you all have a fantastic Wednesday and I will be chatting with you very soon. Cheers Cadre.
