The Sweat-Soaked Heat Academy: How Six Mindsets Create the Magic of Sauna Days

By Dan Woods, SaunaTimes Correspondent

After Dan Woods reviewed February’s Culture-of-Bathing Sauna Festival in Brooklyn, I asked him to cover Sauna Days held north of Duluth, Minnesota in early May – Glenn Auerbach, publisher of Sauna Times and organizer of Sauna Days. 

The Lifecycle of Enthusiasm

There is a predictable, almost tragic lifecycle to tech conferences organized to nourish the passion of the truly committed. The pattern begins with an inaugural version that gathers all the disparate pioneers in a particular field. These bright lights naturally attract a core of true-believers who suspect, with a degree of religious certainty, that the topic at hand is going to be career-changing or possibly life-changing. 

Eventually, however, this intellectual atmosphere—the feeling of being enrolled in the best graduate program in the world—gives way to the commercial gravity of the product showroom. Commercial interests crowd the schedule, filling the rooms with sessions that aim to be educational but are ultimately rooted in delivering a corporate sales message. These later-stage conferences still offer a great deal of practical value, but the unspoken question of “what are you going to buy?” rides heavily alongside the older, purer question of “what are you going to learn?” The passion is lost. You are no longer in graduate school; you are simply in the second or third year of a job you happen to like.

Sauna Days is an annual lakeside convocation held at Larsmont Cottages on the rocky edge of Lake Superior 30 minutes north of Duluth. Given that Sauna Days is in its eighth year, I arrived expecting a trade show with steam. Instead, I found something closer to a small, graduate seminar with a devoted following. The commercial clock had been satisfyingly paused.

In a literal sense, everyone who strolled through the cool autumn air in their swim shorts, felted wool sauna hats, and various floor-length waffle-cloth hoodies were initiates in a joyful, sweat-soaked academy. We were all in various ways students, dedicated to researching the pure joy of the hot room and exploring all of the varied reasons and ways human beings seek out that heat.

Organized by Glenn Auerbach, publisher of Sauna Times and the host of the Sauna Talk podcast, Sauna Days serves as a protective sanctuary for a rapidly growing, decentralized grassroots American subculture. 

The crowd of about 300 is small enough that you encounter everyone repeatedly: the same faces mid-sweat at noon, mid-anecdote at dusk, mid-cold-plunge at dawn. A conversation begun in one sauna resumes in the next one over, picks up an hour later by the lake, and concludes — provisionally — by a firepit in the courtyard while listening to the singer/songwriter. By the end of the weekend, I had stopped thinking of the saunas as fourteen identical boxes. The wood and stones may not have changed. But the room you walked into did.

As I looked back over my interview transcripts, I realized that Sauna Days had caused six distinct sauna mindsets – or “dream saunas” – to come vividly to life.

I. The Sauna Mindset of Evangelical Joy

The urge to share the joy of sauna is present in absolutely everyone you meet at Larsmont Cottages. In this first sauna mindset, which we might call the Dream Sauna of Joy and Evangelism, you open the wooden door and find that everyone on the bench is already smiling and happy to see you. Within ninety seconds, people ask you about your personal sauna practice, tell you about theirs, and fold you into stories of introducing their families to the heat, their favorite backyard builds, or past sauna festivals they have traveled to attend. When the time is right, you use the ladle to splash water on the rocks, and you let the heat flow in and around you like your first cup of coffee or your last glass of wine. 

When you ask attendees why they like saunas so much, the answers always return to a surprisingly simple, visceral feeling. “It’s how you feel and how it makes you feel. It’s that simple,” explained Kevin O’Connell, the founder of a popular Sauna Tent Facebook group. “When people start doing it, they feel good.” The urge to share flows directly out of that physical wellness. “It’s so overwhelmingly wonderful. You tend to want to share it if you can,” noted author and photographer Garrett Conover. Amy Pearce-Hayden, veteran yoga teacher and wellness entrepreneur, agreed, highlighting the simple human care behind the impulse: “Because you want people that you care for to feel good… If you experience something that’s good, you want somebody to join you in that.”

This good feeling acts as a radical, leveling solvent for social barriers. “There’s a Finnish saying that translates roughly to everyone is equal, but nowhere more so than in sauna,” observed Ben Hecker, one of the leaders of the 612 Sauna Cooperative in Minneapolis. “It doesn’t matter if I’m the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company or I work at the gas station down the block. We’re all, we all have the same access to the same sauna and here we can be equal.”

Hecker and his colleagues are actively using mobile saunas to expand public access and overcome past institutional resistance. Because of advocacy by the 612 Sauna Cooperative, Minneapolis is currently considering overturning public sauna bans that were instituted decades ago during the AIDS crisis—bans that now read as historical artifacts of an American panic regarding heat and bodies. Colin Cabalka of Superior Saunas explained that providing high-quality public and private builds is the key to erasing these historical misconceptions. “We’re rewriting the kind of musty, dank history of the gym sauna in America that turned people off,” Cabalka told me. For him, the ultimate joy of the movement is community and a lack of isolation: “It reminds you of how to be human again… It’s just like sitting in rest.”

II. The Sauna Mindset of the Perfect Build

If you walk up to a hot room at Sauna Days, you will almost always spot someone hanging out near the entrance, tending the firebox or simply admiring the rich scent of burning wood. This person is usually the craftsman who built it or the entrepreneur who owns it. Because the owners themselves are meticulously tending the stoves, the heat inside nearly every structure is flawless. In this second mindset—the Dream Sauna of the Perfect Build—the vendors treat conversations less like sales pitches and more like a gentle psychological personality test. They ask: Are you someone who plans to have five friends over three times a week? Do you just need something to heat you up once in a while? Can you legally burn wood where you live, or does your lifestyle require an electric heater? Do you want an electric stove so you can turn your sauna on from your cell phone on the way home?

I found myself marvelling at the spectacular workmanship of these mobile units; I did not spot a single exposed screw head across the entire lot. It was as if every builder knew their peers would be examining the work and collectively decided to dress their creations in their finest clothes. The attendees, many of them seasoned design sophisticates, engaged the builders in long, hyper-detailed conversations regarding functional aesthetics. They discussed the how much rock to use around the stove, the ergonomics of custom ladles, or how the Kuuma ZenWave accessory delivers water deep into the core of the stone pile to create a soft, rolling steam that is completely different from the aggressive, fast attack of splashing water directly onto the top rocks.

The builders here speak of their work with the precision of physicists and the souls of poets. Garret Lamppa, a fourth-generation Finnish sauna builder and the CEO of Lamppa Manufacturing (which produces Kuuma stoves), explained the mechanics as numerous Kuuma stoves pumped out the heat in the surrounding saunas. “It really comes down to physics. If you follow that, good things normally will happen. It’s about burning wood gas. That’s the secret, you have to be at a certain temperature range in there to burn the gases. And that’s how you get a smokeless burn.”

Custom builder Ben Gruetzmacher of Prairiewood Saunas focuses his designs on physical and social comfort. He described how his personal sauna at home was engineered to impart an extended sensory experience: “I designed my sauna so that inside you feel the heat embrace… When you come out you are on a little patio that extends that embrace because it’s protected from the wind.”

This intersection of industrial design and sensory architecture, a form of physical poetry, was also coursing through the mind of Mark Hellweg, the designer of the high-end, design-forward Ratio Coffee Maker. Partnering with Superior Saunas, Hellweg set out to reinvent the American sauna aesthetic, moving away from cheap kits and generic barrel designs toward a flat-pack structure inspired by mid-century coastal cabins. Utilizing thick Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and thermal-treated Western Red Cedar, the structure’s four-inch walls create a massive, intense thermal mass. From the outside, it looks like an Eames lounge chair that unfolded, like a robot in a Transformers movie, into a functioning sauna.

Sauna Days allowed bathers to physically test the subtle differences between these heating profiles—ranging from the two units powered by electric elements, to a rare propane-fueled mobile unit, to the classic wood stoves that heated the rest. The high-tech tent saunas, provided by North Shore Saunas, proved that quilted fabrics could hold temperatures as fierce as any wooden room. Kevin O’Connell, who famously bakes pizzas directly on the stones of his tent sauna, attributed this to the unique breathability of the material. “Those quilted fabrics keep in the heat. But in every stitch of that quilt is a hole… And it’s a constant supply of fresh air,” he noted. The ventilation is so efficient that ten minutes after the pizza is removed, the savory aroma completely vanishes from the space.

III. The Sauna Mindset of Health and Wellness

A third distinct sauna mindset belongs to a contingent of health, wellness, and psychological mindset practitioners who utilize the extreme environment of the hot room to catalyze emotional and physical breakthroughs. In this dream sauna, you find people integrating heat with yoga, deep breathwork, and addiction therapy.

Amy Pearce-Hayden, the veteran yoga teacher, explicitly treats the intense heat stress of the sauna as a somatic tool that mirrors the physical exertion of holding a challenging yoga pose. She uses both disciplines to deliberately bypass the intellectualizing mind, leading attendees through sessions of somatic yoga and communal singing to achieve mindfulness.

Breathwork was an equally major theme throughout the weekend. Kevin O’Connell, of the Sauna Tent Facebook group, recalled using his tent sauna during a lonely COVID-19 quarantine specifically to practice Wim Hof breathing techniques he had learned from fellow attendee and author Jesse Coomer. In one session, mindset coach Hailie Rust explained how she intentionally utilizes the stark discomfort of hot and cold extremes to teach clients emotional discipline and consistency. “When we learn to handle more discomfort we can grow in strength and apply it to other realms,” said Rust.

For me, the physical peak of this somatic mood occurred on Saturday morning at eight o’clock, when breathwork instructor Nick Fox led more than thirty attendees down to the edge of Lake Superior. After running through three preparatory rounds of Wim Hof breathing, Fox walked us step-by-step into the freezing water. Following his precise instructions to consciously quiet my initial panicked breathing, and to remember that the sharp pain in my feet and joints was merely information rather than actual damage, I managed to stay immersed up to my neck for a full four minutes. I felt the cold profoundly, but I also felt an intense, unexpected sense of safety and fellowship standing arm-in-arm with a group of fellow plungers, helping each other out of the water in our stunned, euphoric states.

This sense of communal safety has been brilliantly adapted by Jen Veralle, who hosts “Sauna and Sobriety” gatherings. Veralle uses contrast therapy to construct a healthy, drug-free “third space” where alcohol is entirely absent from the social equation. Rather than focusing on the “defects of character” traditionally emphasized in recovery models, Veralle uses the natural endorphin high of the sauna to help individuals build a positive, celebrated lifestyle in early sobriety—a model she is now introducing to 30-day treatment centers. “I didn’t love going to bars and being the only person not drinking,” Veralle told me. “In a sauna, I’m drinking water, everyone’s drinking water… The sauna became a third space for me, and I’ve found the fellowship helps others.”

Psychotherapist Sierra Blake, who studies how somatic practices can serve as a complementary treatment for substance use disorder by lowering acute drug cravings, provided the theoretical framework for Veralle’s work. Blake emphasized that the human mind and body operate as a single, unified system. The “shared challenge” of enduring intense heat bonds people by kicking the body into a sympathetic state, which naturally forces a subsequent parasympathetic—or “rest and digest”—response that invites deep openness and sociability. “These factors led to increased feelings of belonging within the group, which then led to improved mental well-being,” Blake summarized.

IV. The Sauna Mindset of Medicine and Science

There is a refreshing lack of friction at Sauna Days between experiential wellness and clinical data. In the Dream Sauna of Medicine and Science, the common-sense wisdom of the culture is run through the strict gauntlet of peer-reviewed data. The doctors and researchers sought to quantify the magic of the bench using precise biomarkers, longitudinal studies, and the mechanics of the nervous system.

Some of the historical science discussed was genuinely surprising: for instance, Garret Conover, in his travelogue, pointed out that the ancient practice of rubbing wood-ash onto the skin has been clinically shown to have anti-bacterial benefits. Furthermore, for hundreds of years, northern European saunas were the preferred location for childbirth because of their reputation as sterile, hygienic spaces—a traditional claim that modern science later validated as true.

Much of our relationship with heat comes down to our evolutionary biology. In his book Hot Wired, author Bill Gifford notes that early humans survived and evolved on the hot African savanna because of a fortunate genetic mutation that covered our bodies in eccrine sweat glands. This unique cooling system allowed early humans to hunt complex prey in the heat of the day, while apex predators were forced to hide in the shade. Today, regular sauna use provides a verified cardiovascular benefit that closely mimics the physiological effects of moderate aerobic exercise. Gifford cited the famous 20-year longitudinal study of 2,300 middle-aged Finnish men conducted by Dr. Jari Laukkanen, which demonstrated that frequent sauna use correlated with a massive decrease in fatal heart attacks, dementia, and all-cause mortality.

However, during a packed session titled “Doctors Who Sauna,” Dr. Brittany Kimball, an adult Hematology-Oncology fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Dr. Ashley Mason, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a professor in the UCSF School of Medicine, where she runs a heat therapy lab, splashed a healthy bucket of cold water on some of the common claims floating around the wellness world. They reminded the audience that the Laukkanen study was an observational cohort study, meaning it proves correlation rather than direct causation. The men in that study who bathed most frequently may have simply possessed the baseline health, disposable income, and leisure time to do so. Gifford himself cautioned against treating the bath purely as a cold medical prescription: “Those aren’t the reasons people are staying… You don’t stay to fix your biomarkers,” he noted, emphasizing that sauna must remain centered on pleasure.

The panel also directly debunked the widespread myth that saunas “sweat out toxins.” Dr. Mason clarified that while trace elements can occasionally be detected on the skin surface, sweating is an evolutionary cooling mechanism, not an excretory one. To truly detoxify, one must hydrate so that internal organs can perform their functions. “You don’t need sauna to detox your body. You need your kidneys and you need your functioning liver and you need to drink water,” Dr. Kimball bluntly stated.

The modern obsession with the cold plunge also faced a scientific trial. Noting a rising skepticism in professional sports medicine, Gifford warned that habitual cold immersion constricts blood flow so severely that it can entirely shut down strength and athletic muscle adaptations, rendering professional athletes more susceptible to injury. Some conditioning coaches for professional athletes have publicly soured on the practice. Eric Lee, a postdoctoral fellow and exercise physiologist at the Montreal Heart Institute who serves on the board of the Sauna Research Institute, went a step further, arguing that the only firmly evidence-backed benefit of an ice bath is that it cools your core temperature just enough to allow you to go back inside and endure more heat.

In contrast, science validated the emotional magic. Dr. Mason’s clinical research revealed that a single, intense session of heat stress could trigger a robust, six-week drop in symptoms for patients suffering from severe, treatment-resistant depression. A large subset of depressed patients suffer from thermoregulatory dysregulation—meaning they physically run hotter than healthy individuals. Forcing them into a massive heat stress compels the body to sweat and reset its baseline temperature, directly improving mental health.

Psychotherapist Sierra Blake cited an extensive recent study from the University of Greenwich, which found that the mental and physical health benefits of regular group sauna use were heavily driven by a sense of belonging and “emotional synchrony”—the feeling that you are sharing the exact same emotions and physical challenges as the person sitting next to you. “They found that regular sauna use … improved both mental well-being and physical health,” said Blake. “Not because of the heat, but because of a sense of belonging that was experienced by the people who were doing this.”

V. The Sauna Mindset of Shamanism, Culture, and History

What keeps Sauna Days distinct from the more productized luxury spa culture cropping up in metropolitan centers is its profound respect for history. Garrett Conover served as the event’s cultural anchor, presenting a devotional travelogue detailing a trip he took to Estonia, Latvia, and Finland to experience the oldest traditions of the old world. Conover described the sauna as a mental portal for time travel and shape-shifting, explaining how splashing water onto stones in a modern city sauna instantly transports our minds back to the pond weeds, wildlife, and trees of our favorite summer lake cabins.

Conover’s recounting transported the audience to Estonia’s Võrumaa region, home to over seventy active smoke saunas recognized by UNESCO. He bathed in multiple smoke structures that were over a century old. In a traditional smoke sauna, wood is burned to heat rocks directly inside the room, allowing thick smoke to circulate and coat the walls. Once the rocks are fully heated, the fire is extinguished and the smoke is ventilated out through doors and small flaps, leaving behind an incredibly deep, trapped radiant heat imbued with the aroma of a century of careful tending.

In these regions, ancient shamanic traditions are actively celebrated. Conover participated in a Latvian fall sun-calendar ritual that utilized shamanistic drumming  thousands of years old. Participants offered dark rye bread, barley, and spices to a ceremonial fire while singing traditional songs to welcome ancestral spirits. The history was experienced in an intensely sensual manner: practitioners splashed water infused with dried meadowsweet onto massive rock piles, creating a rich steam that Conover described as feeling “like being bathed in honey.”

Conover described traditional platza-like treatments led by bathmasters who process over 1,200 leaf whisks a year, carefully choreographing the hot air by first wafting it over the skin with herbal bundles before moving into a soft-tissue massage. Between heat rounds, the bathmasters submerge participants in cooling ponds, holding them suspended at the water’s surface to induce a magical, floating “waking dream state.”

Long before modern clinical studies, diverse global cultures independently recognized these heat rituals for purification. Psychotherapist Sierra Blake noted that this sanctuary takes many historical forms: indigenous sweat lodges for processing deep grief, the Turkish hamam for religious transitions, the Russian banya for storytelling, the Lithuanian pyrtis for body scrubs. Conover heard stories about underground saunas built into front-line trenches by soldiers during the bitter cold of World War II.

In Finland, Conover explained the relationship with heat remains an inseparable element of daily infrastructure. In a country of 5.5 million people, there are an estimated 3 million saunas—earning Finland a Guinness World Record. There are more saunas in Finland than registered passenger cars, providing enough capacity to house the entire population simultaneously. These are not out-of-the-way luxury spaces; they are built directly into private homes, residential apartment buildings, offices, and government facilities. Approximately 90 percent of Finns visit a sauna at least once a week, a cultural tradition officially inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

VI. The Sauna Mindset of Spa, Style, and Lifestyle

The final sauna mindset present at Larsmont Cottages represents the intersection of traditional heat with modern lifestyle and style. Outside of Sauna Days, an organized commercial movement is rapidly expanding the reach of saunas as a luxury lifestyle product. While the core ethos of Sauna Days remains closer to a traditional Finnish smoke sauna than high-end metropolitan bathhouses, artifacts of modern lifestyle culture are present and warmly welcomed on the bench.

In this lifestyle mood, the sauna operates primarily as a vibrant, healthy party space focused on lively conversation rather than eating, drinking, or smoking. My favorite representatives of this group were three couples from Minneapolis who arrived equipped with felted sauna hats with colored pom-poms and matching seating mats. They were among the funniest people at the conference, full of engaging stories regarding past travel adventures. But they were also sauna nerds, eager to grill the builders on the details of ladle and stove design.

The visual style of the weekend was highly diverse, ranging from functional Saunamekko sauna clothing worn by several women to massive, floor-length hoodies made of absorbent waffle cloth draped over large, bearded men. In the resort courtyards, vendors offered inventive ladles, felted hats, and custom sauna buckets that looked like museum pieces.

The venue itself, operated by Odyssey Resorts, provided a comfortable backdrop of pools, hot tubs, and a restaurant and bar. For attendees looking to venture off-site, the surrounding region offers local culinary legends: Russ Kendall’s Smoked Fish store, Betty’s Pies, and Madeira Bistro in Two Harbors. On the drive out of town, I made a pilgrimage to the Anchor Bar in Superior, Wisconsin, for a burger that has become a local legend.

Cooling Down

As the grassroots sauna movement continues its decentralized propagation across America – resembling the rise of yoga studios decades ago – the experience is also at the center of a wide variety of entrepreneurial ventures. Global corporations like the Therme Group are building massive wellness centers around the world, while brands like Bathhouse, Othership, and Sauna House are productizing the experience in beautifully designed facilities. Superior Saunas and others like it are innovating new productized builds and DIY saunas. North Shore Sauna, Morzh, Kyfe, and many other young firms have created an explosion of different types of sauna tents.

I admit I held a personal bias against places like Bathhouse in New York City because of their well-appointed, heavy “spa and club” vibe. “This is sauna for West Village gals and tech bros,” I used to complain when in a bitchy mood, preferring my home turf at the Russian Turkish Baths on 10th Street—a space that is unvarnished, dingy, clean, and entirely about the heat. But after attending several sessions and witnessing the recent Aufguss USA competition, it became clear that even in these modern commercial environments, devotion to heat remains primary. The same can be said for elaborate, international venues like Germany’s Therme Erding, which, alongside a full-sized replica of Stonehenge, features a sauna decked out like a down-home Bavarian kitchen where that staff bake cookies on the ovens during the heat session. It is a decorative step away from pure heat, but an amazing experience nonetheless.

That was, in the end, the surprise of Sauna Days: the absence of contradiction. The doctors did not eye-roll the yoga teachers. The yoga teachers did not patronize the doctors. The builders, who could have been bores about their own builds, were mostly cheerleaders about each other’s builds. The pom-pom couples and the smoke-sauna pilgrims shared a bench without difficulty. The Finnish proverb about equality had teeth.

In this changing landscape, Glenn Auerbach has preserved a rare, uncompromised space for the pure joy of the fire. Smelling the burning wood on the shores of Lake Superior, watching the otters drift casually off the shoreline, and stepping from a fierce wood-stove heat directly into a four-minute lake plunge alongside arm-in-arm companions, I was repeatedly transported to that blissful state of consciousness that the Ukrainians, Russians, and Arabic cultures call kaif. It is a state where the material world slips away, time slows down, and you are left with a clear, refreshing sense of who you really are. Glenn may not be the Pope of this movement. I hope there never is one and also that the term “Big Sauna” never becomes meaningful. But Glenn is a ringmaster, a wonderfully dedicated bishop with a growing flock, guarding an ancient, warming flame.

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Dan Woods is a writer and tech expert who has worked as a beat reporter at newspapers and as a CTO for tech startups. Evolved Media, the content agency he founded in 2002, has published many books about technology and other creative content. Since moving to NYC in 1988, he has been a devotee of the Russian Turkish Baths on 10th Street and has sought out heat all over the world. He’s always looking to expand his enjoyment of saunas and to explore sauna culture and practice. Send him ideas at dan@danwoods.nyc.