During the Pandemic, access to public gathering spots was denied and people rearranged their lives around home. Many worked at home and most, no doubt, played at home and socialized at home. When the dust settled, people saw advantages to this reclaimed space in their lives. Home improvement contractors and suppliers, including me, were big winners in this collective adjustment. My phone has not stopped ringing since 2019.
The home gym market has become a strong area of growth for sauna culture. Even now, when most public gyms are back in full swing after a few years of cautious access (including restricted sauna use), people still approach public gyms with trepidation. Tight, airless locker rooms, equipment shared by hundreds of people, and saunas with a little too much patina all went from being tolerable to a complete turn-off. A shoulder injury while riding my road bike has sidelined my stationary pedaling to recliner bikes at my local Y. Sitting in a room full of people breathing heavily, in isolated headphone bubbles, is not what I call exercise bliss. The facility’s sauna can’t begin to approach the rich experience I write about in these posts. I avoid it completely.
So, it is no surprise that those with the means are investing in their homes and building elaborate gyms with saunas and even pools, where exercise and sauna can be a blissful experience. Where one knows they are breathing only their own air in a space that has been cleaned to their standards and where they can sit meditatively in the sauna and not feel the whoosh, whoosh of the treadmill on the floor above. The blue light screens of illicit cell phones are gone, and conversations with random strangers can’t stray into political abrasiveness.
After the pandemic gave people pause and the opportunity to reflect upon what is essential in this life, it is no wonder that I have been so busy helping people realize this vision of a home sauna. Sauna is essential just as is control over your own health and fitness. Creating the personal environment for it all to come together is a luxury beyond financial means; it is a luxury of thought and intention, of knowing what to value first. If you want to have a quality of life where being healthy and fit means taking advantage of the full potential of your body, then make it a priority to have a space at home where you can exercise and practice mindfulness. A yoga mat in a corner and a few weights or resistance bands is all you need to get started; adding a sauna is icing on the cake.
Recent client’s priorities of fitness, health, and family led them to me. I built a roomy sauna in their home gym, which is one to die for. But what mattered most was not the nice setup or expensive equipment, it was that they had made being healthy together a priority—and that is something we can all afford. Even though I would love to have their gym setup when I am cranking it out, sweating buckets on my old bike-on-a-trainer next to the water heater in our basement, I am just as happy and alive as I would be in their gym (and my wood-fired sauna out back rocks!). As we age, there is no going back to reset the clock; we must simply keep moving and use the body we have. Movement and exercise can be done with little or no equipment, and having a Sauna is a nice reward and perfect compliment. Your body will thank you!
