Inside the Sauna

A long running Finnish study found that people who used a sauna four to seven times a week had less than a third of the cardiovascular death rate of people who used one only once a week. Researchers think part of it is the mild, repeated cardiovascular workout, heart rate rising the way it does in light exercise, done sitting completely still.

The sauna is a small wooden room that smells of cedar and effort. I've been using it for two years now and I still notice the same thing every time, the moment somewhere around the eight minute mark where my thoughts stop arriving in full sentences.

It's one of the only rooms in my week where nothing else is asking for my attention. No screen fits in a sauna.

No notification survives the heat. It isn't relaxation exactly, the body is working, quietly, the whole time.

I think that's part of what actually restores something. Not the absence of effort.

The absence of division, one room, one body, nothing else competing for it. It's a small, deliberate trade, thirty minutes of heat for a head that stops racing somewhere around minute eight.

I've stopped needing to justify it beyond how reliably it actually works. Nothing about the heat asks me to justify the time spent in it beyond what my own head feels like on the other side of the door.

I come out lighter than I went in. Apparently my heart agrees with the decision more than I realised.