Sauna and Cold Plunge

Come to Sauna in a Barrel and cold plunge in a vintage claw foot tub. Temperatures in this sauna can reach up to 170 degrees safely. Most saunas suggest 10-15 minute intervals with cool-down plunges to optimize the hot-cold therapy. Most clients will sauna after a pilates session to burn more calories.  Clothing is required. Swimming suits are best for the cold plunge/Sauna. You must have a doctor's clearance to enter the sauna and cold plunge. Heart conditions are contraindicated.

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**Please Review the Sauna Policies Before Booking

WHAT TO EXPECT

Please come pre-showered for your sauna experience and you are welcome to wear a bathing suit or a spa wrap will be provided to wear in the sauna. You will be provided with a Turkish towel to sit on,  a hair wrap if you have long hair,  extra towels, and slippers.  Please fill out the new client paperwork to verify that you are heart healthy to engage in the hot/cold therapy.
upon arrival, you will sit in the sauna for up to 15 minutes. Here I like to listen to guided meditation and focus on relaxing.  Once you have heated up, exit the sauna for your cold plunge experience. The most important part of the cold plunge is to remain calm and not to hyperventilate breath.  Try to get up to your neck and splash your face.  slow exit and rest or repeat. 

 

This is a place for gathering and healing.  Your sauna experience can be enhanced with body-sculpting wooden tools. 

• Please don’t wear any synthetic perfume or fragrance products. 

• Please sit on a towel and be covered during your sauna experience. 

• Bring your own water bottle and drink plenty of water before and after the sauna.

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Sauna Facts

The sauna's heat can range from 175-190 degrees. When drizzling water on the stones, it can make it seem hotter. Do not sauna if actively sick. It is a great preventive resource. We encourage soft voices inside and outside of the sauna, with no talks of politics or heated discussions.  You must be 16 years old to use the sauna. No alcohol consumption before or during the sauna. We will charge a $15 no-show for saunas. Public displays of affection are not allowed in our facilities. Co-ed sauna use requires you to be covered.

 Cold Plunge Facts 

To Increase Energy and Focus

Deliberate cold exposure causes a significant release of epinephrine (aka adrenaline) and norepinephrine (aka noradrenaline) in the brain and body. These neurochemicals make us feel alert and can make us feel agitated and as if we need to move or vocalize during the cold exposure. Cold causes their levels to stay elevated for some time and their ongoing effect after the exposure is to increase your level of energy and focus, which can be applied to other mental and/or physical activities. 

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By forcing yourself to embrace the stress of cold exposure as a meaningful self-directed challenge (i.e., stressor), you exert what is called ‘top-down control’ over deeper brain centers that regulate reflexive states. This top-down control process involves your prefrontal cortex – an area of your brain involved in planning and suppressing impulsivity. That ‘top-down’ control is the basis of what people refer to when they talk about “resilience and grit.” Importantly, it is a skill that carries over to situations outside of the deliberate cold environment, allowing you to cope better and maintain a calm, clear mind when confronted with real-world stressors. In other words, deliberate cold exposure is great training for the mind.

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Enhancing Your Mood

While not true of every stress, cold exposure causes the prolonged release of dopamine. Dopamine is a powerful molecule capable of elevating mood, enhancing focus, attention, goal-directed behavior, etc. Even short bouts of cold exposure can cause a lasting increase in dopamine and sustained elevation of mood, energy, and focus. Listen to Episode #39 to learn more about dopamine’s role in the body. 

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Metabolism

In the short-term, cold exposure increases metabolism as the body has to burn calories to increase core body temperature. The total calories burned from the cold exposure are not that significant. However, the conversion of white fat (energy storage) to beige or brown fat (which are highly metabolically active) can be beneficial for: 

1. Allowing people to feel more comfortable in the cold (i.e., cold adaptation)

2. Triggering further and more sustained increases in metabolism

Of course, calories in (consumed) versus calories out (metabolized) or “CICO” governs whether you gain, lose, or maintain weight. There is no escaping the laws of thermodynamics. 

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A Solid Basic, Science-Supported Protocol

Consider doing deliberate cold exposure for 11 minutes per week TOTAL. NOT per session, but rather, 2-4 sessions lasting 1-5 mins each distributed across the week. Again, the water temperature should be uncomfortably cold yet safe to stay in for a few minutes. You can do more, but this should be the minimum to achieve the benefits of cold exposure. You can do very cold, very brief exposures for adrenaline release too, but the 11 minutes is based on a recent study that explored a range of effects and is a good solid, basic protocol for ongoing use.

The Huberman Lab “Counting Walls” Approach

Undoubtedly, during (or before) cold exposure, you will find your mind pushing back against the challenge. Your mind will say, “I really don’t want to do this,” even before getting in, or “Get me out of here.” You can imagine those mental barriers as ‘walls.’ Those walls are, in fact, the effects of adrenaline pulses in your brain and body, which in this case is what triggers the eventual adaptive response. After all, if it were easy, then there is no stimulus for your body to change (adapt). By maintaining top-down control of your reflexive urge to exit the cold environment, you will have successfully traversed that wall. Challenge yourself by counting walls and setting a goal of “walls” to traverse (e.g., 3-5 walls) during the round of cold exposure. You can also go for time. Up to you. The advantage of the walls approach is that it carries over to other scenarios more seamlessly, as most of life’s stressors don’t lend themselves so well to merely timing the duration until it passes. It also enhances your sense of mind-body connection to do it this way.

Shivering and The Søeberg Principle

The Søeberg Principle based on deliberate cold researcher Dr. Susanna Søeberg is: To enhance the metabolic effects of cold, force your body to reheat on its own. Or “End With Cold.”

Also, allowing your body to shiver may enhance metabolic increases from cold. Shivering causes the release of succinate from muscles and further activates brown fat thermogenesis. 

Try this protocol to increase shivering, either during or immediately after cold exposure:

Don’t huddle or cross your arms while in the cold or after getting out. Also, don’t towel off. Let your body reheat and dry off naturally. Admittedly, this is tough. Unless doing deliberate cold exposure on a hot sunny day, admittedly, I prefer to take a hot shower and towel dry after cold exposure, but I am no doubt limiting the metabolic effect by doing that. 

Physical Recovery 

A meta-analysis of cold-water immersion effects on recovery found that cold exposure can be a highly effective recovery tool after high-intensity exercise or endurance training. Short interval (< 5 mins), cold water immersion demonstrated positive outcomes for muscle power, perceived recovery, and decreased muscle soreness (in part due to a reduction in circulating creatine kinases). 

The problem is that cold water immersion (but not cold showers) can limit some of the gains in hypertrophy, strength or endurance if done in the 4 hours or so after training. It’s better to wait 6 to 8 or more hours until after training, or do it before training UNLESS your goal is simply to recover without adaptation (for instance, when in a competition mode and not trying to get better, stronger, etc.) 

Day or night?

After cold exposure, your body heats up—yes, HEATS up—for reasons discussed on the Huberman Lab Podcast with Dr. Craig Heller from Stanford. Body temperature increases tend to wake us up, whereas body temperature decreases tend to shift us toward sleepy states. Thus, I suggest using deliberate cold early in the day and not too close to bedtime. Sometimes it’s better to do it late than never, but not if it perturbs your sleep. If deliberate cold affects your sleep, try doing it earlier in the day, or not at all.

Increasing the Resilience-Enhancing Effects of Deliberate Cold Exposure

Staying completely still while in cold water allows a thermal layer to surround your body, ‘insulating’ you from the cold. To be most effective as a resilience training tool, move your limbs while keeping your hands and feet in the water. That will break up the thermal layer and you will experience the water as (much) colder than if you stayed still. This is also a good way to increase the potency of a cold stimulus without having to make the water colder. This is akin to slowing down the movement of a weight lift to remove reduce momentum and provide more tension on the working muscles.

Articles to read

Regular sauna users may have fewer chronic diseases

The Science & Use of Cold Exposure for Health & Performance

10 Sauna Tips for Beginners

Finnish Adults Benefit From Added Sauna Use

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