Unplugged and loving it: analog living in sauna

We’re seeing a real swing back to analog living. Our lives have gotten cluttered. With stuff, yes, but also with noise. Phones, apps, notifications, data, metrics… all of it claiming to make life simpler while somehow making it more complicated, and yes, certainly more anxiety depression inducing.

And today, even the sauna hasn’t escaped the noise. Last month, our friend Mark wrote in about what he calls the “hyper-quantification of sauna.” He’s right. There’s an app for everything: one to start your heater, track your time, even to graph your sauna sessions like a Fitbit.

But as Rick Rubin famously said, “The best art divides the audience.”

For every sauna-goer checking their heart rate variability on their phone, there’s another one right now trudging out to their backyard sauna, striking a match to light the wax candle in the candle window along with their wood stove — happily disconnected from technology, and that much more connected to nature, and themselves.

I’m not sure if it’s a finalist for trendy word of the year, but I keep bumping into “analog living” in everyday life.

Three signs of the return to analog living

1. Film Photography

I attended a wedding recently where every table had a Kodak disposable camera sitting next to the flowers. It wasn’t just a cute throwback — it was something deeper, watching Gen Z become enamored with creating and holding a real photograph in their hands. It awakens something in our DNA, a link to our parents and grandparents, from a time before the endless click, crop, and swipe of digital life.

2. Games

Classics like checkers, dominoes, cards, and cribbage are back in force in living rooms, cafés, and cabins. Maybe it’s because analog games bring us back to something simple: eye contact, laughter, and being together in real time. There’s also the tactile relationship we have with the pieces, cards, and dice. Holding them, moving them, experiencing the game firsthand — these are real happenings, not just digital approximations.

3. Vinyl Records

Back to Gen X and Gen Z behavior, here’s one more: vinyl records aren’t nostalgia anymore — they’re mainstream. In 2024, vinyl sales hit $1.4 billion, outselling CDs for the third year in a row (RIAA 2024). Dropping a needle on a record has become an act of presence. It’s not background music — it’s a ritual. There’s a closer, almost tangible relationship to the artist, and a much more meaningful connection to how the sound is made.

You see where all this is going. Back to trudging out to our wood fired backyard saunas, the quiet magic of connecting to how heat is made, the tactile relationship to fire and heat, and the meaningful connection of how to make löyly are significant reasons why the wood burning sauna will always hold its place at the top.

So maybe the analog revival isn’t about rejecting technology — it’s about reclaiming balance: both a punk rock middle finger to soulless convenience and technology, and a warm handshake welcome to the wonderfulness of analog sauna living.

Who feels it, knows it.