The Bestival co-founder Rob da Bank has moved a step closer to achieving his dream of making the Isle of Wight the UK’s “sauna isle” after being given an architect-designed sauna by the Finnish people.
The DJ, who is evangelical about the benefits of sweating profusely in a wooden cabin, wants to put a sauna on every corner of the island to help boost mental health and wellbeing among the population.
“It just makes you feel bloody great,” he says. “It makes you feel absolutely reborn, like you’ve just been unwrapped from a package and you’re brand new.”
Da Bank recently opened Slow Motion Sauna in Freshwater Bay in Yarmouth with his wife, Josie da Bank, which offers contrast therapy – plunging into freezing water after raising body temperature in the sauna, a practice common in Nordic cultures for millennia. But when he was put in touch with the Finnish Institute, a London-based art and culture not-for-profit organisation funded by the Finnish ministry of education and culture, and jokingly asked if they had a spare sauna, he got an unexpected reply: “Funnily enough we do, and you can have it for free.”
The sauna, created by the architect Sami Rintala and the University of Westminster, had been built for the London festival of architecture, and was inspired by the tube network. After the festival, the sauna toured around the country, from Lake Windermere to Dover, says Jaakko Nousiainen, the director of the Finnish Institute.
“After a year of managing it, we wanted to find a suitable permanent home for it, and luckily we made contact with Rob, whose sauna enthusiasm was a perfect match,” he says. “We’re so happy he has been able to give our sauna its forever home.”
The wandering electric sauna, which has functioned alongside its Lithuanian wood-fired equivalent for the last several months, is set to go on tour again, this time featuring in a three-month wellbeing programme in King’s Cross from mid-January onwards.
Research about the health benefits of saunas in the UK is scant, but a 2017 study in Finland found that men who took saunas four to seven times a week had a 65% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s or dementia over the next 20 years than men who did it once a week – even when other factors such as drinking and exercise were taken into account. A 2020 study that tracked almost 14,000 Finnish people appeared to back up the results.
Little wonder that the UK, where rainy winters and gloomy summers are an accepted part of life, is finally twigging on. According to the British Sauna Society, there has been a marked increase over the past year in the number of UK “authentic saunas” it features on its directory page. “We counted 49 saunas at the start of the year, and we’re now at 73,” says Gabrielle Reason, the society’s secretary. “It’s almost a bit overwhelming, the number of people who are getting in touch.”
The society will host its second UK Aufguss Championships next April – where an “aufgussmeister” creates a sauna ritual, which among other things includes the surprisingly life-affirming experience of having stingingly hot air whipped in your face. “People who have opened saunas all describe ‘the look’ that users get for the first time,” says Reason. “It’s like they come out of it completely transformed.”
Da Bank, who also teaches meditation, is one of the sauna evangelists who hopes to spread the love, as well as the community he says it fosters. “Having a proper sauna is a bit like meditating,” he says. “You just escape your mind for a little bit.
“And, this is very 21st century, but you can’t really take the phone in a sauna because there’s a risk of it melting. So you can actually sit there for half an hour or so and just be. For me it works on so many different levels.”
