Inspiring Conversations with Abby Trudell of Polarity

Today we’d like to introduce you to Abby Trudell.

Hi Abby, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My path to founding Polarity has been anything but linear. I grew up in Wisconsin, but I always felt pulled toward a life that extended beyond one place or one conventional path. I have lived in 35 cities (Wisconsin, Colorado, Hawaii, and the rest around Europe) and traveled to far more, with each place exposing me to different cultures, communities, lifestyles, and approaches to health. Constantly entering new environments taught me how deeply our surroundings affect the way we feel… our energy, creativity, nervous system, and capacity to connect with ourselves and others.

Throughout those years, I carried a strong sense that I was being guided toward the place where I was meant to make a meaningful difference, I simply didn’t know yet what that place would be or exactly what I would build there.

When I first entered Budapest, something felt different. I had an immediate knowing that this was the place where I was meant to fulfill that mission and make an impact within the community. After eventually moving here from Croatia, that feeling became incredibly clear. Budapest wasn’t simply another city along the way; it felt like the destination that so many earlier chapters had been quietly leading me toward.

Professionally, I built a career as an independent creative working across branding, web design, photography, video, and content strategy. That work taught me how to translate an abstract idea into something people can see, feel, and understand. Alongside it, I began developing my own wellness practice through breathwork, sound healing, somatic movement, and community experiences.

After settling in Budapest, I began facilitating somatic and nervous system-focused workshops designed to help people reconnect with their bodies, process stored emotion and tension, and move between activation and regulation more intentionally. Working directly with people showed me how widespread nervous system dysregulation has become, and how deeply people need accessible spaces where they can slow down, feel safe in their bodies, and develop practical tools for recovery. The intersection of my creative and wellness paths eventually became the strategic, visual, and experiential foundation for what I am building today.

My interest in wellness also grew out of necessity. I experienced my own health challenges involving autoimmune markers, histamine intolerance, mold exposure, gut dysfunction, chronic stress, and a body that was clearly asking me to pay closer attention. Conventional answers often felt fragmented, so I began researching my biology and experimenting with ways to actively support it. I explored functional health, herbal medicine, nervous system regulation, breathwork, red light therapy, biomarker tracking, recovery technology, supplementation, and other forms of biohacking.

Contrast therapy became one of the most powerful parts of that journey. The intentional movement between heat and cold showed me that recovery is not always about avoiding intensity, but that it can also be about learning how to move through intensity and return to regulation. I became fascinated by the way controlled stress, when approached safely and intentionally, could support physical recovery, mental clarity, resilience, and a deeper sense of trust in the body.

As these different parts of my life converged, I began looking more closely at Budapest’s wellness landscape. The city has a rich thermal culture, an international community, and a growing interest in modern wellness, but I saw a major gap between traditional bathhouses and the more private, structured, highly personalized contrast therapy spaces emerging elsewhere in the world. There was no dedicated space combining private sauna and cold plunge suites with guided protocols, nervous system education, recovery technology, complementary practitioners, and community experiences.

That realization became Polarity.

Polarity is being created as a new kind of recovery and wellness space built around the principle of balance: heat and cold, activation and stillness, science and ritual, privacy and community. The first Budapest pilot will include private contrast therapy suites, practitioner rooms, and a flexible event space for experiences such as breathwork, sound, movement, education, and community gatherings. Over time, the vision is to develop a larger flagship location in Budapest, expand to an second international location, and eventually bring the model to other European cities.

At its core, Polarity is not simply about sauna or cold exposure. It is about helping people understand their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, recover from the overstimulation of modern life, and build resilience they can carry beyond the studio.

Looking back, living in 35 cities, navigating my own health challenges, developing a creative career, facilitating nervous system-focused experiences, and exploring both science and holistic practices were not disconnected chapters. Each one taught me something about people, environments, healing, and what it means to build a space that genuinely changes how someone feels. I always trusted that I was being guided toward the place where I could make my contribution. Budapest gave that inner knowing a location, and Polarity gave it a form.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road, but the difficulty has been part of what clarified the mission.

Living in 35 cities gave me an enormous range of experiences, but it also meant repeatedly rebuilding my life from the ground up. Each move required me to create a new sense of home, community, stability, and belonging. That kind of constant reinvention made me adaptable and resourceful, but it also showed me firsthand how much our nervous systems depend on safety, connection, and environments that allow us to settle.

My health journey was another major challenge. Dealing with symptoms that did not come with one simple answer forced me to become an active participant in my own health. I had to research, experiment, track patterns, and learn how different systems of the body influence one another. It was frustrating at times to receive fragmented information while knowing that my body needed to be understood more holistically. That experience shaped my belief that people deserve greater access to tools, education, and practices that help them understand and support their own biology.

Building Polarity has introduced an entirely different set of obstacles. I am developing a capital-intensive physical wellness concept in a foreign country while navigating another language, immigration requirements, local regulations, business structures, real estate, equipment sourcing, and fundraising. Much of the strategy, branding, research, campaign development, content, partnerships, and early community-building has been carried by me personally because I have not yet had the budget to build the full team the project requires.

That has probably been the hardest part: holding a vision much larger than my current resources while still finding practical ways to move it forward every day. There are moments when the amount of work feels overwhelming, particularly when I am simultaneously responsible for the creative direction, business planning, fundraising, marketing, outreach, and decisions that would normally be distributed across several experienced people.

There is also the challenge of building something the local market does not yet have a clear category for. Budapest understands thermal bathing, saunas, and wellness, but Polarity is introducing a different model: private, structured contrast therapy centered on nervous system regulation, customization, and integrated recovery. Being early means there is an opportunity to lead, but it also means I have to educate people while building the business itself.

Still, every obstacle has made the concept stronger. My health challenges taught me to question fragmented solutions. Living across so many cities taught me to observe what makes people and communities feel connected. Facilitating somatic and nervous system-focused workshops taught me what people are struggling with in real time. Building in Budapest has taught me patience, persistence, and how to translate an inner knowing into practical structure.

The road has required me to keep choosing the vision before there was external proof that it would work. I have had to trust that clarity is built through movement… that the next connection, resource, or solution often appears only after I take the step available to me. Polarity is still in that process now, but it is no longer only an idea. It has become a growing community, a defined business model, and a mission that more people are beginning to recognize themselves within.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Polarity is a Budapest-based contrast therapy and nervous system wellness concept designed to change the way people experience recovery. We are building a space where modern science, sensory design, holistic practice, and community come together to help people recover from stress, reconnect with their bodies, and develop greater physical and emotional resilience.

At the center of Polarity will be private contrast therapy suites combining sauna and cold plunge access. Guests will be able to move through intentional cycles of heat and cold with the level of support that feels right for them: independently, through structured protocols, or with personal guidance. The experience is designed for a wide range of people, from athletes and biohackers focused on performance to overstimulated professionals, travelers, and people simply looking for a more effective way to recover and regulate.

What sets Polarity apart is that we are not treating heat and cold as isolated amenities. In many traditional spas or bathhouses, the sauna and cold water are only small parts of a larger facility, with limited privacy, personalization, filtration, temperature regulation, or guidance. Polarity is being built specifically around contrast therapy, with carefully designed environments, accessible education, intentional recovery periods, and complementary tools that support the entire experience.

Our philosophy is balance over extremes. Heat and cold. Activation and stillness. Science and ritual. Privacy and community. Contrast therapy is sometimes presented as an endurance challenge or something people must force themselves through. Polarity takes a more responsive approach, helping guests work with their bodies rather than against them. The goal is not to tolerate the most extreme temperature, it is to build the capacity to move through controlled intensity and return to a regulated state.

The first pilot location will include two to three private contrast therapy suites, rooms where complementary wellness practitioners can operate, and a flexible community space for breathwork, sound, somatic movement, education, workshops, and other nervous system-focused experiences. Optional enhancements may include red light therapy, compression therapy, breathwork, herbal support, hydration protocols, and additional recovery technology.

As Polarity grows, the vision is to develop a larger flagship destination in Budapest with an expanded number of private suites and a community sauna capable of hosting guided rituals, social sauna experiences, and group programming. From there, the long-term goal is to expand to a second European location and eventually bring the concept to other European cities.

I am especially proud that the brand has been built as an ecosystem rather than a single service. Polarity is intended to support local practitioners, create corporate wellness partnerships, collaborate with hospitality and tourism businesses, host meaningful community experiences, and give people multiple entry points into caring for their nervous systems. Someone may first discover us through a private contrast session, a breathwork workshop, an educational event, a practitioner, or a community gathering, but each experience leads back to the same purpose: helping people return to balance.

Polarity’s first location is currently in its crowdfunding and community-building phase, with the campaign officially opening for pledges on October 1. The funding will support the Budapest pilot’s location, construction, equipment, team, marketing, and launch. Most campaign rewards are experience-based, allowing future guests to support the project while securing sessions, packages, memberships, and founding-level benefits before the doors open. There will also be ways for people outside Budapest to support the mission and become part of its development.

What I want readers to understand is that Polarity is more than a sauna and cold plunge studio. It is a response to the way people are living now: constantly stimulated, disconnected from their bodies, and rarely given enough space to truly recover. We are building a place where regulation becomes a practice, recovery becomes intentional, and people leave with something they can carry back into their lives.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Something people may not realize is that building Polarity is as much a personal healing journey for me as it is a professional mission.

I left Wisconsin when I was 19 because I knew I needed to spread my wings in a way I couldn’t do there. I never fully resonated with the environment or the life I could see unfolding for me, even though I didn’t yet know where leaving would eventually lead. What followed was a life of living in 35 cities, traveling through many more, navigating health and personal challenges, and continually searching for the places, knowledge, and experiences that felt aligned with who I was becoming.

Much of my education has been driven by genuine personal curiosity rather than one predetermined career path. I discovered the breathwork training through a facilitator I encountered at the Biohacker Summit and went on to become certified. I have independently studied health optimization, nervous system regulation, herbal medicine, recovery practices, and biohacking, while also enrolling in multiple courses simply because I wanted to understand these subjects more deeply. I am currently studying somatic coaching and metaphysics, which continue to shape the way I understand the relationship between the body, mind, emotions, environment, and sense of purpose.

Looking back, I can see how experiences that once felt disconnected—or simply difficult—were preparing me for this work. My health journey led me toward biohacking and contrast therapy. My creative career gave me the ability to build and communicate a brand. Moving so often taught me how profoundly environments affect us. My somatic work showed me how many people are living with chronic overstimulation and disconnection from their bodies. Even the periods of uncertainty taught me to keep following what felt true before I had external proof.

Polarity is the place where those threads meet. I am creating something intended to support other people’s recovery, regulation, and transformation, but the process of bringing it to life is also requiring those things from me. It is asking me to trust myself, become more visible, receive support, build stability, and turn years of experience into something tangible. In that sense, I am not standing outside the mission and delivering it to others—I am living it alongside them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://enterpolarity.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enterpolarity/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enterpolarity
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/135285837
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EnterPolarity
• Other: https://indiegogo.com/en/projects/abby-blue/polarity-contrast-therapy-studio

Image Credits
Fanni Fugedi (Budapest)