The quiet room. Cara Loren and Brody Van Brocklin.

Cara Loren never set out to be an influencer.

She had just finished dancing in college. Her first son had just been born. Brody was traveling constantly for work, and she was home, teaching, looking for something that was hers.

“I literally just started blogging,” she told us. “Not so much writing, more in photo form. Documenting our life.”

Outfits of the day. Beauty. Then hair tutorials on YouTube, which is what took off. Then Instagram, back when Instagram was new.

“There was no desire to make money,” she said. “It was a creative outlet. This is just fun. I need something for me.”

We sat down with Cara and Brody at their home in Utah for Tend the Fire, our podcast. This is some of what they shared.

Something for herself.

Brody remembers the moment it stopped being small.

“I got home from a work trip and I’m like, what is this? Who are these people? Why are they following you? Where did this come from?”

Back then, landing on Instagram’s explore page was the equivalent of going viral. Ten thousand followers became fifty thousand, then a hundred thousand, inside about a year. Brands started reaching out. Then management agencies.

They had a choice to make. Hire someone to help capture the content, or do it themselves. Brody had been getting comfortable behind a camera, so they did it together.

“When we first started, we were like, this might last a year,” Brody said. “And now it’s just been wild.”

It hasn’t all been easy, and they don’t pretend it has. But working side by side, being home with their kids as much as they are, and the friendships that came out of it are the parts neither of them would trade.

An extension, not an identity.

For someone with millions of people watching, Cara is surprisingly private.

“I’m way more introvert,” she said. “Getting me to go to an event is a lot. I do get a little bit of social anxiety. I feel like I’ve gotten way better.”

Her priorities haven’t moved since the first post. Being a mom and a wife comes first, and the work has always followed the life, not the other way around. What they share has changed as the kids have grown up. With a son who is nearly fifteen, the rule now is simple: it’s his call.

Brody thinks that’s exactly why it has worked.

“Her social has always just been an extension of who she is, not who she is. If you’re defining yourself by your social, you get in trouble.”Brody

His own feed proves the point. It’s golf, family, Cara and sports, because that’s what he actually cares about. And lately, something he never expected to care about at all.

“This whole wellness journey wasn’t always something I was into,” he said. “Now that I’ve learned about it and experienced it, I freaking miss it when I don’t have it. We always laugh. I go to the gym for the sauna, not the other way around.”

Sold by a picture.

The sauna was Brody’s idea. Cara is clear about that.

“You totally ran with this one,” she told him. “You came to me and you’re like, we need to do this. We need to get this in our house.”

That was six or seven years ago, right around COVID. Brody had been in saunas before, but this was the first time he saw that he could actually have one at home. New Primitive was one of the first accounts he came across.

“I’ve always been one to trust my gut,” he said. “I saw a picture of one that just felt good. Then I saw the visual, and I was like, oh my gosh, that’s beautiful. It felt really homey.”

Here is the funny part. That visual was something Cole had put together himself. The sauna in it didn’t exist yet.

“You sold us on it,” Brody laughed. Cole’s answer: “I will create this.”

And then, somehow, it was in their backyard. Brody still remembers the night it went in, with Cole inching a forklift through a gap for what felt like two hours while Cara watched, sure they were about to lose either the garage or the fence.

“And you just snuck it in there,” Brody said.

You can’t really go back.

When they moved, the sauna was the first thing on the list.

“When we looked at this house, you immediately were like, there has to be a spot for the sauna,” Cara said to Brody. “The first thing is you came to the backyard.”

“Once you experience that, you can’t really go back,” he said.

For Cara, it comes down to proximity. Between kids’ sports, activities and work, no two days look the same.

“As much as I try to create the same habit, that’s not real life. Life gets messy. It’s so nice to be like, okay, I missed this morning, I’ll do it late at night. The proximity for me was huge.”

They went about six months without one between houses.

“I was jonesing,” she said. “We gotta have it.”

The quiet room.

Brody could talk about the physical side. But that isn’t what he missed most.

“It was way more the mental side for me,” he said. “It’s almost like my sanctuary. Where I can just be there.”

Cara leaves her phone outside. Everything stays out there with it.

“It’s that one time that I have to just be with my thoughts. And for me that actually is a good thing, because a lot of the time I won’t do that. I’m so busy with the kids, so busy with work, I don’t even take a second to stop. It kind of forces me to literally stop.”

Brody describes a world that is mostly good noise. Kids are loud, and he wouldn’t change it. But a lot of the rest pulls him away from what he is actually trying to focus on.

“If I can sit with those thoughts for a half hour to an hour every day and really think about what matters, and why it matters, and how I’m doing, that has been the best part of the sauna for me.”Brody

It’s also where the good conversations happen. Sometimes they go in together. Sometimes they each want their own space. Cara goes in with her girlfriends. Brody goes in with his buddies.

And sometimes it’s where things come out.

“I’ve probably cried happy and sad cries in the sauna more than anywhere else,” Brody said. “Whether I’m hurting or it’s something I’m so thankful for. It feels safe to let it out in there.”

One study came up in the conversation that stuck with all of us. In 2014, researchers gave people a choice between sitting alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes or giving themselves a mild electric shock. Two thirds of the men and a quarter of the women chose the shock.

“We would choose pain,” Brody said. “That’s wild.”

Catching the overwhelm.

Cara calls herself an anxious person. Schedule-driven. Task-oriented. Someone who tends not to stop.

When it gets to be too much, she has a few ways back.

The first is moving. A walk, or weights down in the basement. “For some reason when I go do that, it’s like I can breathe again. Okay, we’ve got this.” The second is a book she’s enjoying, something to take her mind off whatever is winding her up. The third is the sauna.

“I know this sounds crazy because you’re stressed out, but being in my thoughts, I realize that everything is literally going to work out. Sometimes I’ll get moving so fast that I get nothing done because I’m trying to do too much at a time. Making myself stop helps a ton.”

The newest part of her routine is red light. She uses the sauna two or three times a week, planned around her hair wash days. The red light she does every day. Same rules as the sauna: everything off, about thirty minutes, usually a few sessions back to back.

“I do not miss a day,” she said. “That’s my new addiction for sure.”

Cole put it this way. Most of us run like an engine with a rev limiter. We work well in the middle of the range, but we drift into the overwhelm zone without noticing, because we live in our heads more than our bodies. Reading, journaling, the heat, the cold: they pull you back inside long enough to notice where the needle is.

For Cara, the other half of that is Brody.

“His positive, chill vibes were exactly what I needed,” she said. “He’s always, it’s all going to work out. And it always does.”

“I think we’re yin and yang,” Brody said. “You keep me locked in to doing what I’ve got to do. I’m more Johnny Tsunami. Let’s ride this thing.”

Watch the conversation.

The full episode covers more than we could fit here.

Thanks to Cara and Brody for having us in their home. See their sauna, or find one for your own backyard.