Courtney Terry
A group of people in their 30s in a spa.
Saunaday aims to create community along with health benefits. The cold plunge is part of the experience.
A centuries-old tradition is coming back as a way to combat stress and support overall health: the sauna.
The Madison area has one new sauna and another about to open: Saunaday launched on South Blount Street in July and Tuli is expected to open Aug. 30 in Paoli. Designed to help bring people closer together, both emphasize the experience as a way to improve health, fight isolation, and remedy the urge to be online all the time.
Two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Roshelle Ritzenthaler and her husband, Jason, wrote up a business plan for a mobile sauna for the Madison area. The pandemic lockdown nourished rather than killed the Ritzenthalers’ dream to make the sauna part of everyday life.
courtesy Tuli
A woman is stacking rocks in a wire basket for a sauna.
Emily Thompson stacks rocks in the sauna stove.
“Over the pandemic, my husband and I started to think about how these types of communal health spaces like we had seen overseas matter, perhaps more than ever,” Ritzenthaler says.
Saunaday offers a sauna-cold plunge ritual steeped in thousands of years of bathing tradition, as well as cypress-and-cedar-scented hinoki wood bathtubs and an infrared sauna with gentle heat and temperature control.
Saunas are becoming part of people’s routines and come with many benefits, says Ritzenthaler.
They are a natural remedy for what public health officials call a “loneliness epidemic,” Ritzenthaler adds. The sauna and cold plunge ritual also helps with a number of other health-related issues, including cardiovascular disease, chronic pain and infection.
"These (rituals) that have been around forever are addressing challenges that we just can't seem to move the needle on and things that are, in a lot of ways, getting worse for us," Ritzenthaler says. "We wanted a business like this and we didn't really see it around here."
Saunaday is designed to be an “accessible luxury,” she says. The core experience — a two-hour bathhouse ritual — costs $55.
Two private suites with a personal sauna that fits six people are available for rental. There’s also a rainfall shower and an ice bath. But the five-step thermal bathhouse ritual is at the center of the sauna experience.
The ritual starts with a red cedar-lined shower stocked with exfoliating Dead Sea salts, where people can “get physically and psychically clean” before heading to a gently-heated steam sauna, Ritzenthaler says. There, one can also lie on a warm belly stone before moving on to the ritual’s main event.
Visitors choose from two contrasting saunas, both well-ventilated to prevent a stuffy feeling. The Cedar Sauna is best for those seeking social connection, while the Aspen Sauna is a designated quiet space built from hypoallergenic Wisconsin aspen.
After visiting either sauna (or both), visitors do a quick rinse to remove the sweat — and the toxins built up on their skin that the sweat flushes out. Then, it’s into the cold plunge, kept around a cool 54 degrees. Ritzenthaler calls it a “beautiful contrast between hot and cold that gives you a natural dopamine hit.”
Researchers from the UW-Madison’s School of Human Ecology co-authored a study finding that cold plunge elicits a natural rush of dopamine, similar to what people experience using social media. While social media is known to have an “addictive” quality, a cold plunge is what Ritzenthaler calls a “low-tech intervention” and also helps reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. The cold plunge is a natural way to boost mood while disconnecting from the virtual world and connecting more with reality, Ritzenthaler says.
“We can distract ourselves with so many different things on our phones, or the TV or listening to podcasts,” she adds. “I think there's a need for us to not be consuming something, and just being."
courtesy Tuli
A rustic woodstove packed with wood on a wooden platform. Behind it is a wall of glass revealing a summery view of the Sugar River.
Tuli sauna with a view of the woodfire stove and windows overlooking the Sugar River.
Tuli Sauna & Plunge is owned by Emily Thompson, who moved to Madison from Racine in 2019. She has a master’s degree in environmental geoscience and works for Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission. As a scientist, she loves data. As an environmentalist, she’s an advocate for the great outdoors.
With Tuli, Thompson is combining her love for data, nature and sauna.
"I know that this isn't just a trend or fad. This actually has data to support the (benefits of sauna), and it has stood the test of time,” she says.
Roughly three weeks before Tuli’s opening, Thompson lit the wood-fire stove in her newly built outdoor sauna for the first time. She describes sitting under the light of the full moon and shining stars at Seven Acre Dairy Co., on whose property the sauna sits — listening to chirping crickets, basking in the steam while looking out over the Sugar River. She calls the experience “magical.”
"When you sauna outside, you're pushed to be mindful and be in the moment, and that's when you'll notice those little things that occur in the natural world, because there's no distraction,” Thompson says.
Tuli includes an outdoor sauna, as well as a cold plunge in the Sugar River, which Thompson says is plenty cool, even in the middle of August. Tuli will also offer social saunas for up to 10 people, private sauna to rent, guided sauna rituals, aromatherapy, and a heated dome structure to relax in and rest between sauna sessions.
At Tuli, people can reserve spots in the sauna, either for a social session or private party. For the grand opening on Aug. 30, there will be giveaways, prizes, free drinks, and mini sauna rituals led by Thompson herself.
Tuli will also have monthly sauna sessions at a lower price, called “Tuli Together,” inspired by Thompson’s research around equitable access to green spaces.
Thompson loves how sauna brings people together — people who may not always have an opportunity to connect.
“You strip yourself of everything when you go into a sauna,” she says. “You have no labels, you have no designer clothes. You could be in a sauna with a waitress and a lawyer or the governor, and you would have no idea who is who. It really unites people and connects people on a deeper level, free of status.”
