Finding Sisu
BLOWING HOT AND COLD PART 10 - a conversation with Katja Pantzar and Carita Harju
Blowing Hot and Cold is a slow memoir, told through weekly posts, about saunas, cold water, and how these things come together to boost my own mental health. It’s meant to be a year-long journey, but we’ll get up to Christmas and see what happens after that.
From midsummer nights in Finland to horsebox saunas on English beaches, from community gardens to embassy basements, each piece explores what happens when heat and cold strip life back to its essentials.
This is part ten, a conversation with sauna experts Katja Pantzar and Carita Harju, authors of The Power of Hot and Cold, learning about the Finnish approach to sauna and what sisu really means
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It’s what Scottish people call dreich. February often comes with days of spring-like possibility, but by and large there is a dreariness in the air, low grey clouds reflecting the national mood. As I walked along busy streets, everyone seemed deep within themselves, hoods and headphones protecting them from reality. It was a safe place to be and I often ventured there too, but I also realised that as the more I sauna’d, so to speak, the more likely I was to ride my bike in the rain or walk along listening out for birdsong, my ears open to the elements.
This greyness certainly didn’t seem to be an issue in Helsinki. At least, it didn’t appear so when I called up Katja Pantzar at her home in the Finnish capital. Sunbeams streaked their way through the blinds and across a perfectly furnished set of white shelves behind where Katja was sitting, the room the very picture of Scandi minimalism. Katja’s blond hair was cut into a sharp bob, her tortoise shell glasses glinting in the light. She was the picture of health and wellbeing.
Sisu doesn’t have a direct translation into English, although broadly speaking it means a form of grit, strength and forbearance
Katja is a Canadian native but has lived in Finland for 20 years, her Finnish heritage and her love of the lifestyle leading to her becoming an expert on, among other things, sisu.
Sisu doesn’t have a direct translation into English, although broadly speaking it means a form of grit, strength and forbearance, an ability to deal with tough things and tough times. It is something of a Finnish national characteristic and the subject of Katja’s first book, Finding Sisu, a memoir of her first years in the country and how she discovered her own sisu through cycling through winter, exercising outdoors, swimming in the freezing winters of the Baltic and, of course, sauna.
I’d devoured Finding Sisu in the days after my trip to Lonna and found its blend of rawness and honesty about life and mental wellbeing, along with its espousal of the how strength can be derived from regular exposure to acute rather than chronic stress, such as the freezing cold of the sea and the brutal heat of the sauna stove, to be greatly inspiring.
In the past year she had teamed up with her friend Carita Harju to write a book called The Power of Hot and Cold. Carita loves sauna so much that she is officially a ‘sauna experience expert’ and promotes Finnish sauna all over the world, as well as at home.
Carita appeared on the call shortly after Katja, framed by a concrete wall and an artful set of steps which disappeared towards another floor. Carita was 300km north of Katja, she explained.
“I’m at my sauna house in the country,” she said. This displayed a level of commitment to which I could only aspire. You could see Carita had recently emerged from the heat, her skin a healthy red glow, her blond hair glistening at the edges.
I may not have been in Finland, but as they accidentally drank coffee in unison and laughed about how close they had become, I got that instant sense of being in relaxed company. It was the same friendliness that revealed itself as the temperature cranked up and the loyly rose. It reminded me of the time I’d spent speaking with Judith in Worthing. And it was this sense of togetherness which, for Katja, was such a core part of sauna’s appeal.
“I think that one of the really important things is this, the social side of sauna. You know you go somewhere and you have a sauna with people and and not only are you relaxing and doing something for your wellbeing, but you’re in this safe space where you come as you are and are accepted as you are. Everyone is respected and accepted. You don’t need to be a certain body type or have a special membership or a certain outfit. But there’s also that human connection.
“We have a loneliness epidemic around the world. And it’s partly that the ways that we live and work are so often separated from just basic human connection.”
This instantly chimed with me as I sat and listened to what Katja was saying. I am a veteran home worker and had done an almost 11 year stretch when everyone was ordered to bolt the doors in early 2020. The initial excitement I felt when I went freelance had soon given way to feelings of isolation, fear, sadness and desperation to be close to people. Never enough to want a job back in an office, but enough that I would sit in coffee shops and pubs for hours on end, waiting to speak to someone, anyone. It led to a steady level of anxiety that took me years to recognise and deal with, as well as numerous bouts of depression. Being alone, rather than finding solitude, was at the heart of years of my own poor mental health.
“People all over the world are finally finding these things, but we have been doing this for such a long time”
These feelings had been eased through plenty of self examination and doing more in and around my local area, but they were never far away. Yet in the sauna, I never, ever felt like this. If I wanted to be quiet, I could close my eyes and daydream. If I wanted to participate in chat about the weather, or the state of the roads or the quickest way to get a train from Brighton to Bristol, I could do that too. There was no pressure, just an understanding that this was a level playing field.
Katja was on a roll now, essentially relaying all of the reasons why I had found sauna such a balm for my soul.
“You can’t take your phone in and you’re just getting all the benefits of being with a group of people where you don’t have to drink alcohol or wear a certain outfit, or have a certain income level.. And I think that there are so few spaces like that where you can go and you’re really…. you’re loved as you are.”
I found this bigger picture stuff to be deeply appealing. But in Finland, explained Carita, it was how it was so embedded into society that made sauna so special.
“People abroad don’t realise this, but saunas are basically everywhere,” she said. “In elderly care places, hospitals, military places. If you have troubles with alcohol, the saunas are like a healing place within the homes where people go [to get clean].” She added that they even have them in prisons (I looked this up later and discovered that Finnish prisons have one sauna for every 25 inmates).
“You see, we Finns don’t think too much. We don’t actively think ‘right, I’m going to heal my head.’ We just go to the sauna where we are feeling a little bit depressed, or we have anxiety. Or we go to the avanto, the cold plunges.
“People all over the world are finally finding these things, but we have been doing this for such a long time.”
The fact it was such a part of the culture in Finland seemed so far beyond even the seemingly booming scene in the UK. This was sauna as an everyday tool, one which, according to Katja, was best indulged when having an icy plunge in between sessions. The cost, too, was far more accessible, with some saunas free to use if there was one available in your apartment block or office.
“If you go to the swimming pool, sauna, it’s like five euros,” said Katja. “Just about every apartment block, workplace, school and community centre has a sauna where there are different shifts that may be free or may cost very little. The idea is that it’s accessible to everybody.”
This chimed with Bella’s approach to her non profit sauna in Stanmer Park, where sessions were £8 for an hour on Tuesdays and some sessions were offered at a discount to unemployed or vulnerable people. It spoke to a more egalitarian and inclusive spirit.
Inevitably, the boom across the globe had seen big names in Helsinki grow in popularity, something which Katja and Carita welcomed, even if it meant having to wait for a spot on the bench.
“Allas Sea Pool has a line to get in on Saturdays,” said Katja. This spot has become something of an icon, its pools, plunges and sauna set right on the harbour with an excellent restaurant inside. I could attest to its brilliance having spent a morning lolling there the previous summer.
“I was there recently and most of the saunas were so full that you had to line up for them,” she added. “A lot of the public saunas I go to, you have to book in advance, there are no walkups any more.”
Both believe this is a result of a growing understanding of the benefits of sauna for physical and mental health, but also because the wider cost of living crisis had shown the value of spending a few euros on a sauna for 90 minutes, rather than doing the same in the pub. With a sauna, you came away feeling better, not worse for wear, and had the same social benefits you got from going out for a drink.
Katja was also a big believer in the strong connections that can be made when everyone is stripped back and raw, more open to the possibility of giving more of themselves.
She spoke about taking a tour group to Loyly, a stunning set of saunas on the Helsinki waterfront where you can plunge into the Baltic in between sessions in the sauna.
“There was one woman who sat with me, and she wanted to tell me everything, you know. And I had this feeling that it was partly because we were in the sauna. It was like a safe space where she could tell me her fears and all of those things. And I thought, usually, if you’ve just met somebody through work and it’s a work situation things like this don’t happen so quickly.
“The things that she opened up about, and that I opened up about, too…saunas are spaces where people can really open up about their anxieties. You might believe ‘I have this thing and other people don’t’ and then you find out ‘no, everybody feels that way, or a lot of people do.’ I think that is something incredibly unique.”
Katja was clearly an expert. She’d been doing this far longer than me. But I knew from reading her work that she had faced demons similar to mine and that sauna had played a large role in her healing process.
Soon our time was up. But before we said goodbye we laid plans to meet later in the year. Carita and Katja suggested that if I came over that we should spend some time together checking out their local favourites.
All of this positive talk left me feeling alive to the possibilities of what I was creating and the connections I was making in the process. Let’s face it, February isn’t the best month in the calendar. For me, it lacks the possibility of January, while retaining the biting chill of winter when spring can seem so tantalisingly close.
On a personal level, I felt exhausted by work and parenting. My anxiety was on the rise owing to the stresses of a planned house move. In short, my SSRIs were doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Yet having spoken with Katja and Carita, I allowed myself to feel positive, to look at the bigger picture. In just the short time since I had started my journey I had made new friends, reconnected with old acquaintances and had a head full of ideas about where to go next.
This is a slow memoir, told week by week, about sauna, cold water, and the messy business of mental health.
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