Her personal health journey led her into biohacking, contrast therapy, breathwork, metaphysics, and somatic wellness. A certified breathwork facilitator who has led nervous-system-focused workshops locally, she created Polarity to fill a clear gap within Budapest’s rich thermal and wellness culture.

The concept is resonating deeply with a community increasingly aware of nervous-system exhaustion and the growing need for accessible, intentional recovery solutions.

1. Before settling in Budapest, you spent several years living as a digital nomad. What did that chapter of your life look like, and what were you searching for during that time?

I started my journey as a digital nomad in 2016. Originating in Wisconsin, I felt a deep urge to move abroad to experience other cultures, spread my wings, and discover my purpose. I was working three jobs in Madison, WI when I reached an inner limit – I couldn’t live a ladder-climbing life. I was meant to lead, to create, to inspire, to innovate. And I couldn’t do it from where I was currently at. I started my journey in Colorado, then Hawai’i, and eventually moved to Albania with my cat. I adopted my dog off the streets in Shkodra, Albania, and from there I moved through Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and ended up in Hungary.

I knew that my path – and every experience, challenge, and journey within it – was preparing me with knowledge and skills that I would eventually implement when I finally found my home. 35 cities later, I ended up in Budapest, Hungary. Interestingly, this was meant to be a stepping stone for me before Slovenia. But when I arrived, I had a deep sense that this was my home.

This is where my inner compass was leading me. I found my community, I found a market gap, and my dreams were incredibly vivid in communicating to me that this was my home. From here, anytime I’ve left, I’ve missed the city and the community.

Anytime I’ve arrived back, it brought tears to my eyes to finally have found my home. Budapest is the first place I’ve ever lived where I genuinely couldn’t imagine leaving and not coming back. I always imagined that my home would consist of massive mountains and an off-grid cabin. But when I came to Budapest, I realized that ‘home’ isn’t a location, but where community lives. Home is people. It took finding it on the other side of the world to truly understand what ‘home’ means.

2. When did you first arrive in Hungary, and what initially brought you here?

I arrived in Hungary in January 2025. I was living in Croatia for three years prior, with the plan to move to Slovenia. But due to a delay in the launch of their new Digital Nomad visa, I decided to come to Budapest for a year and then move to Slovenia. But once I settled into the city – and the more I integrated into the community, the language, the culture – the more I couldn’t see myself leaving. I had found my home.

3. After years of constantly moving, what has the transition from digital nomad to putting down roots required of you personally?

I often attribute spirit animals to different phases and aspects of my life. For a majority of my life, I’ve embodied the horse, which consisted of freedom and movement. When I decided to finally build roots somewhere, I worked with releasing this energy for months. It was challenging because this energy was a pillar… a foundation to my identity.

Choosing to remain in one place meant releasing my nomadic lifestyle and restructuring my identity around community. But with collapse comes growth, opportunity, and something else to replace what was removed. That energy was the lion and the bee. I worked for all of 2025 and into 2026 to embody these new characteristics and step into the next chapter of my life.

4. How did you begin building a genuine sense of community and belonging in Budapest?

I was naturally drawn to the music, art, and healing scenes in Budapest. Through my own healing journey, exploration of embodied expression, and mingling with the locals, I discovered many paths to collaborate with entrepreneurs and artists. After I’d completed my breathwork certification and had done a lot of my own healing within group settings, I found my way into facilitating somatic and nervous-system-focused workshops around breathwork, sound healing, and movement experiences.

These workshops naturally paved a way for many collaborations, ideas, and personal experience in the healing space. I’d slowly become recognized through the community and left a positive impression on many. I felt welcomed, seen, and accepted. And most importantly, I felt I truly wanted to offer back to the community.

5. What surprised you most about living in Budapest — both positively and negatively?

I was surprised to see just how deeply rooted the thermal bathing culture was in Budapest. It was amazing to see how many people traveled here just for the thermal baths. But I was also surprised to find that there were no true options for private, precision-controlled, modern contrast therapy (alternating sauna & cold plunge).

6. How has being an outsider shaped the way you see the city, its culture, and its untapped possibilities?

After living in so many cities, I’ve come to realize that in most places, people genuinely have a limited view of what is possible in their city. But as someone who continuously adapts to new environments, finds creative ways to run my own projects, observe what each place I live in is genuinely missing (or seriously excels at), alongside the endless online tools I’ve learned to bring ideas into reality – I’ve learned that there is always an answer to a question, and a solution to a problem or a gap. Resources available and the possible paths may differ from place to place, but there is always a way to make something happen if you put your mind to it. We are our own biggest obstacles.

We create the limiting beliefs that prevent us from making a change or bringing something into the physical reality. Every city, every country, every continent has its own challenges, yet there’s always someone who makes it possible. After experiencing so many areas of excellence across different countries while simultaneously experiencing exactly those same areas in which other countries are missing, I can naturally spot market gaps and untapped opportunities that a community could benefit from.

The ability to spot these opportunities stem from a learned skill across cultures through observation, pattern recognition, and an understanding of community needs. I’ve also learned just how many different routes someone can take to bring an idea into reality. To this day, I still am amazed to learn of the endless ways people solve problems and bring ideas to market.

7. Before Polarity became a business concept, how were you already creating spaces for healing, connection, and community in Budapest?

Through my own healing journey, both independently and in group settings, alongside the self-study I actively participated in – breathwork, somatic coaching, metaphysics, sacred geometry, biohacking, and herbal healing – I eventually found my way into facilitating nervous-system-aware somatic experiences and workshops. During these workshops, I guided participants through a variety of breath and movement techniques in which they could carry with them through their daily lives. I specialized in custom curating breathwork techniques which followed the natural arc of the nervous system, eventually landing in a deeply restorative, parasympathetic state.

Once guests reached this state, we seamlessly entered into a sound bath using ritualistic instruments, allowing the system to integrate the experience through the entire body.

8. Where did the original idea for Polarity come from?

While living in Croatia, I experienced multiple health complications due to mold exposure and histamine intolerance. Within my body, system after system crashed. I had been to many specialists who couldn’t help me. So I took it upon myself to spend every day, all day and night, for nearly two years researching anatomy, the nervous system, immune system, environmental triggers, and the body’s response to these triggers.

I ordered endless lab tests to analyze my biomarkers, adjust my lifestyle, and test myself again and again. Through these challenges and experimenting with different protocols, I found contrast therapy. Although it did not cure the root of the problem, it helped enormously with many of the issues I had been dealing with, including reducing inflammation, reducing and regulating cortisol patterns, and improving my sleep quality.

I had traveled to the US to visit family and discovered very modern facilities offering private contrast therapy. Upon moving to Budapest after Croatia, I couldn’t find anything remotely similar to this concept. I tried finding solutions with saunas and cold showers, but they just didn’t offer the same benefits I’d previously experienced.

The idea came to me suddenly that I needed to bring this model to Budapest, and eventually through all of Europe. And so the idea of Polarity was born.

9. What gap did you identify in Budapest’s wellness landscape, and why did you feel compelled to address it yourself?

Budapest has an incredible thermal bath and wellness culture already engrained into the city’s history. What it’s missing is a modern extension specifically focused on contrast therapy with private suites, precision-controlled temperatures, filtration, and lighting, and state-of-the-art equipment.

There is a large demand already for this type of wellness facility here, and with my own personal experience with the benefits as part of my own health protocol, I am deeply passionate about being the person that brings this modality to the community.

10. Budapest is already known internationally for its thermal-bath culture. How does Polarity build upon that heritage while offering something distinctly different?

Thermal baths are largely a communal experience. In these types of settings, it is difficult to keep water temperatures and filtration properly regulated, and without your own private suite, it can be challenging to drop into your own embodied experience when sharing saunas and cold pools with others.

Polarity intends to be an extension of recovery and regulation through water, heat, and cold – similarly to what the thermal baths offer, but in a private, guided, and precisely-controlled structure. Polarity will also offer additional modalities in a type of modular service to allow the guest to build their own protocol based on their personal goals.

Additionally, Polarity will offer practitioner rooms with various alternative modalities, as well as an event space for community workshops and gatherings. In the Flagship location, after the initial Pilot launch, Polarity also aims to build a large community sauna for social events and guided sauna rituals. Offering private suites alongside an event space and community sauna, Polarity provides a balance between individual and community, science and ritual, heat and cold.

11. How have your own experiences with health, healing, and nervous-system support shaped the vision for Polarity?

Through my own experiences with health challenges and nervous system healing, and through the workshops I’ve facilitated in guiding others through release and embodiment, I’ve learned what it is that makes the body feel safe enough to release stored tension, trauma, and emotion. I’ve learned what helps our systems feel grounded in a closed space.

I’ve learned the pattern in which our nervous systems move naturally, and how to work with that arc to shift into parasympathetic states. It’s precisely this knowledge through direct experience that I apply in every aspect of the Polarity design – from the materials and lighting used, to the guided protocols, breathwork sessions, practitioner collaborations, and recovery technology.

12. What has it been like building a company from scratch in Hungary as an American founder?

Building a business from scratch is not easy, but doing it as a foreigner from a non-EU country has its own set of hurdles. Working with tight visa timelines, additional documentation, revenue and business requirements, and applications lay another layer of stress and responsibility on top of an already-demanding feat. But being that I have dealt with immigration and bureaucratic applications and procedures in multiple countries over the years, I am quite familiar with the process as a foreigner, which gives me increased confidence in navigating the landscape.

The most important thing I continue to remind myself is to take everything step by step. When we focus too much on the bigger picture and everything that will be required of us to make something happen, it can feel overwhelming and almost impossible. But when we break things down into chunk sized tasks and structured phases, everything feels far more manageable.

13. You are currently developing much of the concept independently. What has been the most challenging and transformative parts of building something this ambitious largely on your own?

As with any startup, everyone involved will wear many hats. But building something largely alone requires a whole different level of autonomy and confidence. I have always been someone who wears many hats, who adapts quickly, and who is constantly learning new skills. Luckily, I have spent a decade working with startups, building my own brands/projects, and learning many aspects of marketing, business, PR, branding, strategy, and everything in between.

Now I am in a place where I am actively applying all of these skills into making Polarity a reality. But even with all of the knowledge I’ve acquired, there’s still an enormous amount for me to learn, especially as I’m essentially solo-operating as an entire team of people. As with anything I’ve done in my life, I continue learning as I go. I pick up new skills as I reach each phase, and I actively tap into previous knowledge and experience I had no idea I’d be using today. Nonetheless, I continuously come back to the same thing… Just because I CAN do most things on my own doesn’t mean that I SHOULD.

Our resources are best spent in the areas which are most valuable. What is ‘value’ in these terms? To me, it’s our strongest skillset, it’s doing what we genuinely enjoy, and it’s what drives the most authentic progression of our goals.

What once was time well-spent on content creation is now better spent building Polarity’s memberships, coordinating with media outlets, and collaborating with potential partners. The biggest challenge at this time is finding the time, energy, and funds to do everything that needs to be done until I raise enough funds to hire personnel. There is a delicate balance of prioritizing tasks, finding creative ways to reach an audience organically, and coming up with strategies to optimize my own workflow which will allow me to reach further down my long list of priorities.

14. Has Hungary presented any unexpected advantages for entrepreneurship, creativity, or community-building?

The naturally vibrant communities here in the music, art, wellness, healing, and startup scenes are already flowing with such energy that it’s easy to find your space within the city’s creativity. The people here are very supportive and excited to see new businesses launch, and the collaborative energy most people here lead with makes for endless opportunities with partnerships, with helping each other grow, and even with exchanging services to fill gaps of one anothers’ businesses.

15. What kind of people do you hope will walk through Polarity’s doors, and how do you want them to feel when they leave?

Polarity is being built for locals and wellness tourists alike. For athletes looking for physical recovery, for those who feel overstimulated or stressed looking for nervous system regulation, for people who have physical symptoms looking for some relief, for wellness tourists who would like a unique experience or interested in recovering from jet lag, and for locals who want an active, integrated recovery experience with affordable memberships.

People entering Polarity will tend to come in feeling stressed, overstimulated, operating in the sympathetic nervous system state, tight/sore muscles, wired and tired from long travel, looking for a space for grounding and decompression. When guests leave Polarity, I hope they will feel grounded, regulated, recovered, and operating from a parasympathetic nervous system state.

I aim for them to feel more connected to their own body, with internal space created to hear their own signals more clearly, for their physical body to feel more relaxed and their muscles recovered from strain, and ready for a night of deep rest.

16. Why do you believe Budapest is the right city for the first Polarity location?

Budapest is known widely for its thermal bathing culture and wellness scene. People travel from all over the world to experience the wellness that Budapest has to offer. But these experiences are largely communal environments while there’s many locals and tourists alike looking for private, precision-controlled, modern contrast therapy facilities for deeper and more embodied recovery.

Polarity intends to expand on the thermal culture here by offering a more personalized, more modern, and more precise recovery experience. State-of-the-art equipment, optimal water temperatures for personal goals, modular recovery technology for custom protocols, additional practitioner rooms for additional alternative health options, and a community space for events and workshops will provide a complete balance of heat and cold, activation and stillness, individual and community, science and ritual.

17. What could Polarity contribute not only to Budapest residents, but also to the city’s international, expat, and wellness-tourism communities?

Polarity intends to be an international hub for people from all over the world, operating as English-first. Aside from the local memberships, there will be many options for drop-in sessions, travel-based contrast protocols, couples sessions, and a community space to get to know other wellness-minded individuals.

18. What is your long-term vision for Polarity beyond its first Budapest studio?

Polarity starts with the Pilot location, which will be a condensed offering with 2-3 private studios, 2-3 practitioner rooms, and an event space. After the initial model has been implemented, we intend to expand into a Flagship location, offering 8-10 private contrast suites, additional practitioner rooms, a larger event space, and a community sauna for social sauna days and guided rituals.

After the Flagship is up and running, Polarity aims to open a second Flagship in another European country, with Vienna high on the list of consideration. This location will allow us to build our franchising model, and eventually expand all across Europe. The long-term goal of Polarity is to be the leading contrast therapy name across Europe, serving as an educational center through its modern technology and consistency across all locations.

19. Outside of your work, what places or experiences in Budapest make you feel most at home?

Shortly after moving to Budapest, I found my place in the music and art scene around Budapest and Danube Bend. Aside from the wellness spaces, I feel most at home in places like Manyi Cultural Center and Nomad Bar, and with communities like EthnoTech and Tribal Market.

20. Looking back at the path that brought you from digital nomad to founder in Hungary, what personal motto best captures this chapter of your life?

This is a great question as it naturally came into the conversation above… Just because you can do most things alone doesn’t mean you should. I’ve spent most of my life learning and building projects alone. But when I came to Budapest, I had the intention to expand my world into collaboration and community. The energy I felt immediately upon moving here allowed me to embody this characteristic strongly.

The more Polarity becomes real, the more opportunity I have to connect with the local community and discover ways to help each other grow. I’ve learned through years of doing everything alone that we get further when we work together, and we feel more fulfilled when there are other people by our sides.