Over the last couple of years I’ve written a lot about the new wave of British saunas – mostly for The Guardian’s Saturday Magazine and its travel section.
I’ve sweated it out in Finnish-style former horseboxes both on the coast – from Brighton’s Beach Box to Benone’s Hotbox in Northern Ireland – and inner-city at Hackney Wick’s Community Sauna. All have their own vibe and distinctive energy. Oh, and the practice is, in fact, rather addictive.
So I was curious to check out the launch in Lewis Cubitts Square of Slow Motion Wellness. It’s a three-week pop-up by legendary DJ and wellness guru Rob da Bank and his wife Josie, owners of two smart eight-person saunas.
The pop-up is part of a new well-being campaign being run by King’s Cross called Mind Your Brain, designed to encourage people to prioritize and improve their brain health. As many of us know, heat therapy improves blood flow to the brain and reduces inflammation, while the accompanying cold plunges make your serotonin levels shoot through the roof, as well as fortifying the immune system.
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Slow Motion houses two saunas – one Lithuanian wood-fired number and the other electric donated by The Finnish Institute – along with three cold-plunge baths. On the day we visited the outdoor temperature was an arctic 2 degrees, so we enjoyed boiling our bones before plunging screaming into the iced water. And repeat – for an hour (along with a little leaf whisking in the wood-fired sauna).
Apparently, slots are fast selling out already: at £6 it’s one of the cheapest in the country, so my advice is to go check this out for a much-needed warming touch of Scandinavian culture bang in the middle of N1C.
