So you’re not Finnish and the idea of broiling yourself in a small room and then throwing yourself into a cold plunge pool or under an icy shower fills you with horror. The sauna is certainly not for everyone.
The usual complaints are that the heat is too oppressive and that it’s a battle to breathe. Let’s not even get started on the cold shower afterwards. But if you steel yourself, go for it and push your body and endure, you may discover you can actually bear it. And regularly done, the reward won’t just be better physical health, but a sharper mind that in turn helps you cope better at work
Anyone who has persevered and sat in a sauna for 15 minutes or longer will know how relaxed they feel afterwards. It helps you sleep better and tempers anxiety. One of the world’s top CEOs believes regular sauna bathing and the cold water immersion that follows helps him function better. An April 2019 article in the Irish Examiner references an interview that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast where he spoke of his almost daily saunas in conjunction with cold water immersion.
“The other thing on physical health that has had probably the largest impact in terms of how I feel, but also mental clarity, is sauna and cold,” said Dorsey on the podcast. Another fan is American life coach Tony Robbins. An October 2017 Business Insider in article reported Robbins begins each day with a five minute hot sauna followed by a plunge into ice cold water.
And now there is increasing evidence to back up what avid Finnish sauna users have known for thousands of years. According to a review by medical doctors published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2018, “emerging evidence suggests that beyond its use for pleasure, sauna bathing may be linked to several health benefits, which include reduction in the risk of vascular diseases such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and neurocognitive diseases; nonvascular conditions such as pulmonary diseases, mortality, as well as amelioration of conditions such as arthritis, headache and flu”.
The word sauna is Finnish in origin and is inextricably intertwined with the culture of that Nordic country. The use of saunas and another bone-chilling national pastime, ice swimming, are also strongly associated with the mysterious Finnish cultural concept of Sisu. In January 2019, CNN Travel quoted Finnish journalist and author Katja Pantzar saying that “Sisu is Finland’s 500-year old national concept that roughly translates to grit, fortitude, or perseverance, or if you prefer, being a bad ass.” CNN Travel goes on to say that “pleasure derived from doing seemingly uncomfortable things like jumping into frozen lakes and seas could be linked to this idea of Sisu.”
The word sauna is Finnish in origin and is inextricably intertwined with the culture of that Nordic country.
We can all benefit from applying the concept of Sisu to challenges faced in a business environment. In a March 2019 article in Forbes, Heikki Väänänen, CEO and founder of HappyOrNot, a company which helps businesses improve their customer experience and employee engagement, writes that the concept of Sisu has “guided me throughout my career countless times.” He tells of how in the early stages of his company it would “take 40 prospective customer visits before securing our first client” and that he was told by a prominent Finnish business figure to give up. “Rather than give up, Sisu was the devil and the angel that provided the determination and willingness to succeed.”