“I bloody love how game you are”
Part four of Blowing Hot and Cold, a slow memoir told by week by week
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.
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Bella effused about the need for social prescribing and how her backers had managed to get sauna onto NHS mental health programmes across the London borough of Newham. She herself was working on getting something similar off of the ground with a local GP in Whitehawk, a much derided post war estate on Brighton’s eastern outskirts, a place of strong community, despite its reputation for crime and poverty.
As we dropped into the valley and crossed the roaring A27 and cut through the university campus, Bella’s attention turned towards those from the student population she was trying to reach.
“I’m working with the paramedic school,” she said in a soothing voice as we bumped over potholes past the halls of residence. “Those poor people see the worst kind of trauma and then have no way of processing it. They come to us to be able to heal, to talk and find space to allow their feelings to just be.”
We followed the tired track north into Stanmer Park, a sweeping area of fields and woodland which abuts the South Downs National Park. Stands of tall grass stood wilted in the heat, Bella turning left past the recently gentrified garden centre, driving past a series of redbrick, one-time stables, deeper and deeper into the trees. Kicking up dust, she parked on a dry verge in a part of the park called Stanmer Organics. This co-operative space has been here since 1997 and is home to, among others, the Centre for Ecotherapy, providing vulnerable people in the local community with nature-based and horticulture therapies, as well as outdoor-based mindfulness, and Petal Project, delivering arts and crafts with natural materials for people with additional needs. I could sense the collaborative spirit the moment I stepped out of the car. There was an undeniable energy in the air, a sense of community which fitted right in with Bella’s vision. No wonder she had found a home here.
This was very much not a simple case of me being pampered. That would come later. Bella set me to work, with a broad grin, pulling two tarpaulins off of the chopped firewood, ready to get the stove going in the barrel sauna which sat on the eastern end of her bijou plot. Job done, I helped her drag the hose from the tap next to her tired yet beautiful shed, where she proudly showed off the fact she had running water. Two deep metal baths were pushed into the undergrowth from where we dragged them onto flat ground and filled each with cool water.
“One for rinsing after you get out, the other for sitting in.” Bella had shifted the latter into a dreamy position, from where you could look deep into the woods while bathing.
We winched out the awning Bella had picked up for a song and created some shade, in which Bella unfolded a table and placed our lunch, as well as a previously unseen basket of salad leaves and veg.
“We’ll eat after,” she said.
Soon, others began arriving. Bella’s fellow Stanmer Sauna Garden shareholders Fleur and Mimi, along with Paola, who was training as a sauna master and wanted to practice on me. I heartily agreed, which is how I ended up sitting stark naked in Bella’s sauna with a group of people I’d known for all of an hour.
Bella donned her black swimming suit, a felt hat and sandals for the occasion, bringing in whisks from plants she had foraged from this very plot. Her connection to nature was clearly what made this place so special. I had got out of my clothes and wrapped myself in a towel in a clearing in the woods which she had dubbed the changing area. She picked leaves from the ground from our lunch and joined me in marvelling at the blue tits, blackbirds and goldfinches which were making merry in the branches.
After a brief warm up, the loyly sending the heat rising, it was time for whisking. XX began with an unnecessary apology, explaining how she needed to talk herself through each specific stage of the process. I thought back to my traditional Finnish experience at Savutuvan Apaja. This felt every bit as sacred and meaningful.
Stretched out face down on the bench, my body was soon being given a going over with the whisks, gentle at first and soon becoming a touch more brutal. The conversation was flowing as I told Paola and the others that such flagellation sat comfortably with my Catholic upbringing. My skin felt raw, my brow pricked with sweat, the nowness of it all overwhelming.
Soon I was on my back, a felt hat across my face, a previously unused whisk protecting my modesty.
“I bloody love how game you are,” said Bella. I swelled with pride. I felt as if I had known her for years, a connection that ran deep thanks to the power of the outdoors and her willingness to be so open about her own mental health. In turn, I had shared much of my own experience of lifelong anxiety, undiagnosed until my early 30s. Coming to terms with the trauma of being bullied at school right up until I left at 18 and the nervousness this had instilled in me as a young adult. My occasional struggles with depression. I had felt so comfortable in her presence that not to do so would have felt dishonest.
Despite this, there was one thing I did not tell Bella. Just after I had got back from Finland I had started to take SSRIs for the first time. The early part of the year had been difficult. My work as a freelancer was very up and down and therefore so was money, something I have always worried about. The stresses of parenting two young children left me short tempered, one of the biggest signs, for me, that depression is on its way. I had a sense that the things I loved to do were lacking. This was especially true of my true love, wild swimming, as well as running along the cliff tops east of Brighton. These were my salves, and they were giving me nothing.
This is a slow memoir, told week by week, about sauna, cold water, and the messy business of mental health.
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