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Lena Ashfaque, founder of Baseline, built her whole-body health practice after getting sick and having to rebuild a body worn down by years of high-demand living — including raising three young kids largely on her own while her then-husband traveled four months at a time. Today she specializes in the fascia system, combining corrective exercise, performance enhancement, metabolic health, nutrition timing, and behavior therapy, and she’s worked with athletes who treat rest and recovery as part of the job. Lauren brings her on to ask the question most women attorneys avoid: we expect athlete-level performance from ourselves, so why don’t we take care of our bodies like athletes do?
In this episode, Lauren talks with Lena about:
- Three phone-free breaks, scheduled today. Lena’s first assignment: a 15-minute break mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and evening with your phone out of sight and out of earshot — scheduled on your calendar right now, because “our devices lead our lives.” That’s 45 minutes out of 24 hours, just for you.
- Why you’re drinking water and still dehydrated. Lena explains electrolytes as the “sponge” that lets your body actually absorb water instead of just passing it through, and why a brain that’s mostly water can’t think clearly on caffeine alone.
- Body mapping and the Baseline Method. Her proprietary system for reading your body’s signals — is that dry mouth something you ate, dehydration, or an illness? — instead of spiraling down a Google rabbit hole. She shares her own wake-up call: a stiff neck the morning after a “go day” of pizza, soda, and no water, vitamins, or electrolytes.
- “Aging is neglect.” Lena’s hard truth: the joint pain and stiffness we blame on getting older often come from self-neglect, and something falls out at every life transition — college to law school, law school to practice — because nobody is tracking your water, food, and movement anymore.
- Stop overthinking the workout. When Lauren asks about weight training versus Pilates, Lena’s answer is that if you can’t yet make a 15-minute walk outside, you’re having a completely different conversation — build the habit of giving yourself time first.
- The 15-minute coastal reset. In South Florida you’re never more than about 20 minutes from the coast: park, walk up, sit on the seawall in heels and a dress if you have to. The homework isn’t an activity — it’s something that makes your heart happy and pulls your nervous system out of fight-or-flight.
Lena also gets candid about what decades in fight-or-flight can do to the body — from autoimmune issues to sleep and eating problems — and Lauren shares that she only started truly prioritizing herself when she was pregnant, and why no one should wait for a reason outside themselves. They close with Lena’s simplest prescription of all: laugh every day, and be silly.
Guest: Lena, founder of Baseline, a whole-body health practice specializing in the fascia system, corrective exercise, and metabolic health, and creator of Her Baseline, a program and community for women. She’s based in South Florida and offers in-person space and workshops. Find her on Instagram at Baseline Mobility or connect at baseline.janeapp.com.
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