Sweat, steam and serotonin – can sauna rituals rewire mental health?
Studies have focused on sauna’s benefits for the body, but what about the mind? Sierra Blake, Bill Gifford and Gabrielle Reason share their expertise
With new research focusing on sauna’s uplift to mental health, we quizzed three experts: Psychotherapist and Saint Lucie founder Sierra Blake on therapy on the sauna bench. Best-selling science writer Bill Gifford on research for his latest book, Hotwired. And director of the British Sauna Society, Gabrielle Reason, on a new paper investigating sauna’s uplift to mental health.
Sauna trains us to be self-aware, says psychotherapist and Saint Lucie founder Sierra Blake
Sierra Blake grew up in Minnesota’s robust sauna culture in the 2000s, bathing with family and friends and enjoying rolling in the snow afterwards. While studying for her Masters degree in mental health, Sierra Blake returned to her Minnesotan roots as sauna became a reason meet up with fellow bathing friends. She noticed the benefit to herself and became curious about how regular visits can improve self-awareness and feelings of social and emotional wellbeing.
“After the body leaves the stress of the heat, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and you settle into rest-and-digest mode.”
Sierra Blake
As a psychotherapist, she’s often listening to the feelings of others. Time in the sauna lets her tune into her own emotional state. “For me, it’s about practising what’s called interoception,” she says. “It’s an awareness of what’s going on internally. Am I too hot? Am I too cold? Are my muscles sore? Am I clenching my jaw? The sauna is a very rich environment to train yourself to listen to your body.” That beautifully calm feeling you get after bathing? She puts it down to the body’s parasympathetic nervous system, which kicks in after the body leaves the stress of the heat and gets in rest-and-digest mode.
Beyond the individual benefit, she observes how sauna culture builds social capital. “There are connections that can happen in a sauna that might not really happen anywhere else,” she says. One of her references is Bowling Alone, political scientist Robert Putnam’s book from 2000, about the decline in loose community ties that are made within a community, through league bowling, a book club, or the bathhouse. New academic research from the UK (see below) backs up the benefit of shared sauna rituals for our mental health.
With Saint Lucie, her sauna serum brand, Sierra creates therapeutically-informed rituals for people to gather and deepen mind-body connection. The serum is a remedy for the brittle hair and dry skin that comes with time spent in high temperatures. It is made of jojoba oil and rosehip, with rosemary extract, sunflower, clary sage, and grapefruit. “We’ve done the Ritual of Radiance at Culture of Bathe-ing in New York, also at Bathe in Austin,” she says. “The serum is handed out and some do a kind of self-massage with it. It’s really an invitation for people to pay attention to how they’re feeling.”
Sierra is giving a talk on the science of sauna rituals at Sauna Days, May 1-3
Substack: Sierra Blake, MPS, LADC
SIERRA’S HOT TAKES
What’s your favorite place to bathe?
Strawberry Park, Colorado. Magical place with hot springs, indoor outdoor pools. It’s just very beautiful.
Dead or alive – who would you most like to bathe with and why?
I’ve gotta go with Dolly Parton. She is just iconic and it would be such a fun time!
Weirdest place you’ve bathed?
Slide Rock State Park in Arizona. It has a natural water slide, made from the river running over slippery rocks. Good fun.
Hotwired author Bill Gifford learned how heat helps the mind as a test subject in a groundbreaking study of heat treatment for depression
For his new book Hotwired - How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, author Bill Gifford set out to investigate the effect of heat exposure on the body, mitigating his own anxiety about how we’ll adapt to a warming climate. The most surprising finding had to do with the link between frequent sauna use and better mental health. Encouraged by a study (Laukkanen, 2018) that showed Finnish men who frequently used saunas were 78% less likely to have a psychotic disorder, he road-tripped to a behavioral health clinic in Vail, Colorado where heat is being studied as a potential therapy for depression.
“The treatment protocol was to lie alone in an infrared tube warming up while having my temperature monitored. Very unpleasant compared to the real sauna experience.” The program applies whole body hyperthermia to patients suffering severe depression, followed by a dip in a cold plunge. Research shows this can stimulate the serotonin-producing part of the brain in a similar way to anti-depressants. After a session, other studies have found that the effects of elevated wellbeing can last as long as six weeks.
“When I first started writing about living longer, the main lifestyle interventions were exercise and diet. It’s early days but the data on traditional heat bathing is so strong it needs to be part of the conversation too.”
Bill Gifford
His interest was more than purely journalistic: “A standard diagnostic questionnaire showed me I was probably moderately depressed, myself,” says Bill. So did it work? “Immediately afterwards, I felt like crap,” he says. “But about a day later I started to feel euphoric. On the drive back home I had this sense of floating. And the clarity lasted for a couple of weeks after.” Another thing researchers have observed is that after the treatment, subjects become quite talkative. “These are people at the severe end of the depression scale. And it was like the heat unlocked something in them, taking away their inhibitions. It’s similar to what many of us have observed in social sauna situations — the heat somehow makes it easier to talk to people.”
For Bill, who 10 years ago thought sitting in a 80°C room was only for crazy people, the experience is “an example of science catching up to ancient wisdom”. He says: “When I first started writing about living longer, the main lifestyle interventions were exercise and diet. It’s early days but the data on traditional heat bathing is so strong it needs to be part of the conversation too.”
Hotwired is published by Harper Wave, $32, available here|
Substack: Bill Gifford
Can sauna ritual become a form of healthcare ? Gabrielle Reason, Director of the British Sauna Society, on new research into sauna and mental health
For the first time, social bathing’s uplift to our mental health has been studied in an academic paper by the British Sauna Society and Dr Martha Newson (University of Greenwich) and the London Interdisciplinary School. It puts the shared sauna ritual in a wider conversation on mental health and tests its potential use as a form of healthcare.
“Up until now, research on the health benefits of sauna has been about extreme temperatures, with the communal element less studied,” says Gabrielle Reason, British Sauna Society director. “What’s really interesting about the paper is that it suggests shared experience is actually core to the wellbeing impact of sauna.”
The paper finds that sauna boosts feelings of social belonging, with weekly use having more impact than monthly use. Gabrielle says its aim is to “bring sauna culture further into the medical conversation. There’s a limit to what pharmaceuticals can do for mind-body problems. We’re beginning to see wellness practices bring about fundamental physiological change in people as well.”
More info and full paper via British Sauna Society
News, happenings and openings
Herbarium, the world’s largest festival of plants, bathing and wellness rituals is coming up at Therme Bucharest, May 4-17, with a packed programme of 800 aufguss and wellbeing sessions
Kohler debuted a copper bathhouse installation at Milan Design Week for the launch of a re-invention of the 153yr old brand’s classic enamelled tub in collaboration with Flamingo Estate
The Saunaverse team swapped sleep for sauna building as they constructed a sauna in just 24hrs for Sauna Aid. Support here
Read a report from Swimmable Cities who have changed their approach from advocacy to implementation in the run up to the World Urban Forum, Baku, May 17-22
Korea pledges to support public bathhouses which are a vital health resource for aging local communities
June is going to be a bumper month for sauna industry events - from the British Sauna Society Summit June 1, to the Sauna Region Week June 6-14 and the World Sauna Forum June 9-11 in Finland
If you think a long weekend of off-grid bathing in the lush forests of the Pacific North West sounds good, book tickets to Cascade Sauna Camp, June 26-29. @cascade.sauna.camp
One last thing
Best sauna view ever? Take us to Lofoten!
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Can't wait to dive deep into the Bill Gifford book and the research!