I have always strived for top marks
Part five 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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In the past I had been deeply reticent about medication. The only other time I was prescribed them I threw the prescription away, anxious after reading about side effects and the possibility of suicidal feelings. I came through that bout thanks to the care of those who love me, as well as a lot of cold water immersion and journaling.
This time, though, those suicidal feelings were too tough to ignore. I felt nothing but a sense of relief when my excellent GP went through my symptoms, on which I scored 21/21 on the GAD-7 test (I have always strived for top marks, it must be said). My depression scores on the Patient Health Questionnaire were high too, and so he prescribed citalopram, booked me in for a series of follow up appointments and took the time to listen to my concerns about how they might make me feel. I felt heard. I felt reassured. Just as I did with Bella.
The medication worked. Initially, the exhaustion was crippling, an endless sense of tiredness that I could not shake. Yet at the same time I had a greater sense of lightness. I began to worry less and approach life in a less obsessive and structured manner. I loosened up and became calmer and soon the weariness lifted, replaced by new energy. My fears about feeling less were unfounded. I felt as if my true self was being revealed. And I knew, too, after speaking with Andre at Lonna, that the power of sauna could help, giving me the pleasure of the cold without the hours of chilliness that followed. I didn’t tell Bella though, because it all felt too recent and too raw. I was content just to be here.
When the whisking was over, I half walked, half staggered out into the daylight. Bella’s friend Dave, who ran the Fire Salt Sea sauna in nearby Worthing, had arrived and we chatted briefly about the health benefits of sauna. The clarity of mind. The improved sleep. The cardiovascular boost. The better immune function. He was an evangelist, but in a lovely, thoughtful way. I was clearly among my people. They had the same giving joy of outdoor swimmers.
I walked across to the cold bath and stepped in, lowering my shoulders beneath the waterline. A solitary robin dashed onto a hanging branch ahead of me and we engaged in a staring contest, its movements almost mechanical. The only sounds were birdsong, the rustle of just green leaves and the splash of water as I shifted my body.
Bella came across carrying a jug.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked, collecting a litre or so from the bath before gently pouring it over my head.
‘I just like looking after people,’ she said. I was on the verge of tears. This was kindness at its most profound. It was also very funny, especially as the icy water trickled down my neck and she let out a delicious cackle. What’s more, though, I knew Bella was one of so many people in this scene who cared deeply, not just about their own businesses, but making community sauna and the sauna community grow and sustain itself.
The day unspooled slowly, alternating between the heat of the sauna and the blissful calm of the plunge. When it was time to leave, Bella hopped into her car wearing a sauna hat and damp bathing costume, a towel beneath her to prevent the driver’s seat from getting wet. We wound our way over the Downs, the English Channel opening out before us, light playing off of the distant turbines of Rampion Wind Farm and back into Brighton. It was discombobulating to be back amongst traffic, people and the day to day.
Bella gave me a hug and made me promise to return. Instead of heading down to the beach for a swim, I made my way home and hunkered down, keen to sit with this special sense of serenity and openness, optimism and hope. It was much as I had felt at Lonna, but with the added nurturing of Bella’s careful hand.
What I discovered as I nursed a cup of tea in the shade of the courtyard at the back of my seafront basement flat was that I was enjoying all of the dialled down, anxiety-free pleasures that came with swimming in the cold, but thanks to the increased mind-body connection of the heat, I was more focused and perhaps less dreamy than I would be after a dip. The heat from sauna is known to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, as well as releasing endorphins and making you less irritable. The latter was a huge bonus for me, this being one of the key symptoms of my depression. But I also loved the human connection it gave too. As a swimmer, I have always preferred solitary forays into nature over swimming in groups, witnessing birdlife and the changing scene for my own sense of place within the world. It is something that has always felt deeply personal.
Yet the proximity of others in the sauna, often thigh to thigh, the sounds of their voices and the stories you hear as they chat, even as you close your eyes and focus on your own breathing, was something that felt very powerful.
Having worked alone for 15 years I often found that I craved company. Not necessarily that of people I knew well, but rather the hubbub of strangers and people I did not know that well. Listening to the talk made me realise the vital lesson that everyone has a rich interior and that everyone has worries, concerns and possibly mental health struggles too. It was not something I had ever really considered before. We live in self centred times and, as I sat alone sipping the last of the tepid tea from my mug, it was something that really resonated. Everyone had a story to tell and at the sauna people often felt safe enough to tell it.
These thoughts filled my mind as the months passed and summer, with all the craziness and joy of the school holidays, shook itself off and autumn slid into view. I met up with friends I’d made from Finland and enjoyed a scorching time at the ‘Diplomatic Sauna Society’ in London’s Finnish embassy. As the days shortened, a fellow dad from the school gates joined me in the seafront sauna close to my home. We would run a slow 5K and then heat up before a chilly plunge in the ice baths spread out on the pebbles.
Throughout this time, I found that my anxiety and depression were easing. I had shed the sense of dread which had followed me around for so long and, thanks to a stricter approach to social media and the news, began to find myself feeling more optimistic, more rooted in the idea of community and people around me as the most important things I could attend to. Macro worries were allayed and my general sense of despair dissipated. I knew that this was in large part because of my medication. But I also felt I had put the building blocks in place to perhaps soon ease off of my prescription. Sauna, I felt, could play a key role. Not only did I like the way it made me feel, I liked the way that the people who worked in the scene were fostering a holistic, gentle and all-welcoming approach. It tallied with my beliefs in community. And, simply, I wanted to spend more time with people like Bella. People who made the world seem like a place of possibility and hope during times that could often feel bleak.
As the year came to a close, I decided that I wanted to search out more saunas and the people that made them special, all around the UK and Ireland. I was aware of the booming numbers close to my Brighton home, but also all over the place, from urban pop ups in industrial estates in south east London to a string of saunas along the coast of Fife, one off stunners on the wild cliffs of Cork and a new dockland oasis in Liverpool.
Simultaneously, I wondered if immersing myself more among these people and within their saunas would satisfy my craving for connection and community, and help me find out what life might be like without my antidepressants.
The new year could not come soon enough.
This is a slow memoir, told week by week, about sauna, cold water, and the messy business of mental health.
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Beautiful 😘