When “community” becomes a caption

By Becky Pelkonen, co-founder of Kamu Sauna

This article grew out of a conversation with Glenn and a few longtime sauna folks who had a sense that something felt a little off in the language showing up around sauna marketing lately. Not wrong, exactly. Just… perhaps a little ahead of itself.

And look, I’ll say this upfront: I’m not writing from the moral high ground. I’ve used these words myself – community, ritual, and third space – while still learning what it actually takes to build them in the cultural conditions we’re all navigating. So this isn’t a critique from the sidelines – it’s part reflection, part course-correction.

Lately it feels like our culture has optimized even our vocabulary, to the point that words which once pointed to something real now mostly just point at each other. 

Many people building sauna spaces and bathhouses right now have good intentions. Yes, the usual wellness-industry grift exists at the edges, but my experience is that the sauna ecosystem itself is trying to move forward with care. I saw that spirit clearly at the West Coast Sauna Summit earlier this year, and continue to see it across the growing network of people tending sauna culture.

People genuinely want to create connection and meaningful shared experiences. But sometimes the language appearing in sauna marketing – community, ritual, and third space as some key examples – runs ahead of the container we are still learning to build. My Substack is even aptly named thirdspaceology, so it’s fair to say I’ve been doing a bit of a deep dive into the topic. There are certainly other buzzwords floating around out there, but for the sake of this conversation, let’s stay with these three.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Across North America, bathhouses are opening rapidly and much of the energy feels genuinely exciting. But it’s also unfolding inside systems that reward speed, scale, and performative visibility. When growth moves that quickly, nuance is often the first thing to disappear.

When I described this whole dynamic to a friend outside the sauna world (albeit inside a sauna together), she paused and said: “Hmm… that sounds a bit… gauche.”

Gauche, eh? The word stuck with me, even through the pleasant fog of my post-sauna brain bliss.

Now before I get Chalamet-level cancelled (“Chalamet’ed?”) for using it about the sauna industry, hear me out.

When I looked up the word I found that gauche isn’t quite the burn I thought it would be. It comes from the French for “left,” historically associated with social clumsiness in etiquette — moments when someone sincere steps awkwardly into a cultural situation they don’t fully understand yet. Not malicious and not even necessarily wrong. That awkwardness almost feels more honest than the way I sometimes see the word “community” used. And maybe that awkward stage is exactly where culture begins to form.

When the Words Get Ahead of the Work

Across websites, Kickstarter campaigns, Instagram captions, and pitch decks, the same words appear again and again: community, ritual, third space. These are warm, generous words, and I believe most people using them mean well.

Many small sauna businesses are genuinely trying to rebuild forms of connection that public social infrastructure once held: neighbourhood pools, bathhouses, community centres, and shared commons. In many ways, entrepreneurs are stepping into roles civic life once supported, and that work deserves huge kudos.

But in a transactional culture, marketing has become very good at selling the what and the how while quietly losing sight of the why. And the why is everything.

I have to say, I’m delighted to see facilitator and author Priya Parker having her moment right now. In her book The Art of Gathering, she makes the point beautifully: gatherings usually fail not because of poor execution, but because their purpose was never clearly held. We say things like “our sauna is a third space,” “we are a community,” or “this is a ritual experience,” and assume the meaning will sort itself out.

More and more, I’m seeing that it doesn’t. When the purpose of why we gather through sauna isn’t clearly held, people naturally fall back into familiar patterns: show up, enjoy the moment, maybe take a photo, and move on. The slower work these words ask of us rarely has time to begin.

Words like community, ritual, and third space carry deep cultural weight. They describe things that emerge slowly through practice, shared responsibility, and repeated presence, often through the same people returning again and again. 

So this isn’t a scolding. It’s a gentle nudge from someone who spends time both in sauna culture and in conversations about shared space. How do we actually build community, attract people who genuinely want to be part of it, and hold space in a way that doesn’t overpromise or drift into something a little… gauche?

1. Let’s Talk About “Community”: Are We Earning It, or Just Selling the Idea?

As Peter Block writes in Community: The Structure of Belonging, community doesn’t appear because someone simply announces it. Instead, it grows slowly through participation, relationship, and shared responsibility.

So in practice, that kind of community accumulates through repetition, over time. And sauna, especially in North America, is still very new in its resurgence. Compare that with places like Finland, where sauna culture has been built across generations.

Community forms through small, repeated moments: the same bench chosen each week, the water poured on the stones the same way two Tuesdays in a row, and the kind of banter that only lands if you were there last month.

We can practice this in small, slightly silly ways too. At Kamu Sauna public sauna sessions we’ve developed an analog “ritual” of trying to name every member of the Wu-Tang Clan and their songs. No phones allowed. It builds every week, and it’s very much a “you had to be there” situation.

I think the reason the word “community” sometimes raises eyebrows in sauna spaces is that it often describes the hope of connection rather than the evidence of it. The talk before the walk, so to speak. You probably know the feeling. It’s a bit like when a brand says “family” and something in you knows family isn’t something you can buy.

Seth Godin has pointed out for years that people are remarkably good at sensing when a story doesn’t match the reality behind it. His advice isn’t to perform authenticity even louder, but to show clearly what you are actually building through consistency over claims and evidence, over time.

And in sauna spaces, people feel that difference real darn quick. The setting is deeply embodied and intuitive, and people’s spidey senses tend to pick it up. So before we start pouring things into the gauche bucket even more, it’s worth asking what we’re actually doing to build community before we claim it.

What this might look like in practice:

The invitation is simple: let’s earn the word before we use it. We can focus on building the conditions that allow community to emerge — understanding who we’re serving and why, learning the craft, and giving back to the knowledge holders who carried this practice long before it became a trend. And, we can get to know the regulars, learn their names, listen to their stories. We can pay attention to the rhythms forming in the room, and when we talk about our saunas, describe what is actually happening there — the small, specific things that keep people coming back.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is pause, listen, and let community reveal itself before we try to name it.

2. “Third Space”: Are We Tending It, or Just Borrowing the Language?

Ray Oldenburg’s third place describes informal gathering spots outside home and work — cafés, pubs, barber shops — truly accessible places woven into everyday life. Homi K. Bhabha’s and bell hooks’ third space, by contrast, describes something more complex: a cultural in-between where identities are negotiated and meaning is created across difference. Holding difference is really hard work. It is the work of cultivating belonging.

One describes a type of place. The other describes a whole process — the slower work of culture-making that can’t simply be announced when a business launches. I’ve quietly begun calling this third-space washing: when the language appears before the work of tending the space has actually begun. You know the one — the Instagram caption that reads “Hello there, we’re a community! #community 🌿✨” posted the same week the doors opened.

It’s rarely bad intent. Most sauna businesses want to create places where people can gather and reconnect, and people are clearly craving spaces for that kind of meaningful gathering. So the real question becomes: how do we call out the bat signal for it without warping the sign?

What this might look like in practice:

I’m going to channel my inner-Seth Godin here and suggest the answer isn’t to declare a third space out the gate. It’s likely to build something small and specific enough that the right people recognize it. Not everyone. Just the people who were already looking for it.

Instead of announcing a concept, signal a practice through the stories we tell and the behaviours we model. If the space truly functions as Oldenburg described, people will recognize it without needing the label. And if something deeper begins to emerge — the negotiation of difference and the cultivation of belonging as Bhabha and hooks described — that part probably shouldn’t be branded. It has to be practiced, and given a little space to breathe.

3. “Ritual”: Are We Letting It Grow, or Trying to Speed Up Slow Work?

The last word I’d like to explore is “ritual.” It’s another term showing up everywhere in sauna marketing lately and, dare I say, it may be becoming a bit too much of a good thing. The challenge isn’t the word itself (confession: I just used it myself the other day) — ritual is everywhere in human life: morning coffee, lighting a candle, a daily sauna practice. 

But like many rich words, it starts to feel weak tea when it moves too quickly into branding. When that happens, we risk losing the depth that made it meaningful in the first place.

Ritual grows from practice and repetition: the pause before the first ladle hits the stones, the shared nod that the room is ready for more löyly, the rhythm of stepping outside together into the cold. On their own these are just gestures. Over time, through practice, they begin to carry meaning.

Parker shows up here again where she makes a similar point in The Art of Gathering: the rituals that actually matter are the ones that reinforce the why people came together in the first place.

What this might look like in practice:

So perhaps the invitation here is simple again: let the tea steep. Instead of announcing ritual on socials, let’s give it time to grow inside the space we’re holding. We can notice the small patterns forming, and give them some scaffolding — the way people pour water on the stones, the quiet support someone offers a newcomer, the rhythm of silence and conversation. If our practice carries lineage, a teacher, or a cultural tradition, let’s name it. Credit the source. Root it in place. And if we’re still learning, that’s part of the story too. “We’re learning” can be an invitation rather than a weakness.

The Work Beneath the Words

Historically, communal bathing spaces were not designed as wellness “experiences.” They were part of everyday life and they worked because people practiced being human together through repetition and the ordinary act of sharing time and space. I carry a deep sense of gratitude for those who came before so we can still feel traces of that today.

That kind of social practice is increasingly rare in modern life, which is why sauna still feels worth holding onto. Inside the sauna, people have the chance to unmask a little and relearn how to be genuine with one another, and perhaps with themselves too. The room asks for less performance and more presence. “Presence is the present,” so I like to say. 

All sauna really asks is that people take responsibility for themselves and share the space. That simple act of sitting together, while ordinary, is harder and more important than we often admit.

My friend Courtney Wittich (see Substack – S.P.A.) recently introduced me to the philosopher Josef Pieper, who wrote that leisure is the basis of culture. Sauna spaces remind us what that might mean today: places where people gather not to produce or perform, but simply to be human together.

Community rarely arrives fully formed. It begins with guests becoming friends and relationships slowly weaving into something larger.

This article is an invitation — and perhaps a permission slip — to let the work lead, and to make mistakes along the way. None of us are getting this exactly right as we rebuild a practice that, perhaps, only our bones remember.

If sauna culture in North America is going to grow, and have a chance to sustain itself, with integrity, the work has to come first and the language can follow. When the words arrive too early, things can start to feel a little gauche. But maybe that’s okay. Building community is awkward work sometimes.

The sauna spaces doing this well are rarely the ones talking about it the loudest. They’re too busy keeping the stones hot. If you are building something real — a place that lowers barriers and gives people somewhere to slow down — the words do not have to work so hard. Trust it, tend it, and let the language catch up.

Over time the practice will say more than the marketing ever could. And in the end the work is surprisingly simple and yes, a little awkward: we are all just learning how to sit with one another.

Becky Pelkonen is co-founder of Kamu Sauna in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of third spaces, sauna culture, and sustainable development. This year she’ll be co-leading a workshop at World Sauna Forum in Finland, gathering input from the global sauna community around sauna as social infrastructure. You can follow her ongoing practice of this work at thirdspaceology.substack.com.