By Jen Rose Smith, CNN
Montreal (CNN) — By the time DJ Brinassa dropped her throbbing house beat, the barely clad Friday crowd at Montreal’s newest going-out spot was already glistening with sweat.
It wasn’t just the subtle glow that comes from a night on the dance floor. At 10 p.m. inside RECESS Thermal Station — a sauna and cold plunge that hosts regular DJ events and other gatherings — attendees were sweating freely in a circular sauna, forming an arc of gym-honed bodies illuminated by its flattering, club-like lighting.
A shirtless employee sporting artful tattoos and multiple necklaces wafted air through the sauna, dancing as he waved a massive folding hand fan. In a lounge outside, couples snuggled into cozy chairs by the DJ booth. Singles mingled over herbal tea, and read icebreaker prompts from branded cue cards.
RECESS, which opened in September, is one of a new wave of businesses debuting across North America that are often called “social bathhouses”: venues reimagining saunas and other bathing rituals as not just a wellness experience, but also as a night out, a first date or a way to build community.
“There’s a possibility of meeting new people. There’s a high energy, or vibe. You can dance,” said RECESS cofounder Adam Simms, of the social evenings. “There’s just some beautiful connections to come out of that.”
They’re cropping up swiftly. Months after the opening of its first social bathing spot, Montreal will get another one when JOY Wellness Club launches this spring. Bathhouse, whose New York City locations are already known for their buzzy scene, is opening a Philadelphia outpost later this year. Swelling the already strong New York City cohort, The Altar is coming to Fifth Avenue in 2026 with a 50-person sauna and the tagline, “Health as a cultural gathering space.”
The wording reflects a growing awareness that loneliness and social isolation are harming our health — leaving many seeking fresh opportunities to connect.
“In the pandemic, we had this monumental shift where we were in front of our screens all the time,” said Simms. “People understand that they need community, they need support, they need to be able to reenergize. I think RECESS and projects like it enable that.”
A hot trend with ancient roots
It’s a big trend in wellness this year. Yet the idea that sweating together builds bonds is hardly new.
“As soon as we were able to create heat, we were creating structures to sweat in together,” said Robert Hammond, president of Therme US, part of the Therme Group that operates spas across Europe, and has major bathhouse projects planned in Dallas, Washington, DC, and Toronto.
That precedent goes from the Ottoman-era hammam to Roman thermae, North American sweat lodges and Finnish saunas. In many places, such practices waned over time; in some, indoor plumbing in private homes helped displace communal bathing.
“It’s what I call a ‘long forgetting,’” said Mikkel Aaland, a Norwegian-American photographer and writer who has spent 50 years documenting sweat bathing traditions around the world, including in the 1978 book “Sweat” and last year’s documentary series “Perfect Sweat.” (Aaland’s forthcoming book, “Naked Sweat,” is slated for later this year.)
The last decade has brought a global revival, including in Norway, where Aaland spends part of each year. The resurgence is what he also calls a “long remembering.” In much of Northern Europe, that means tapping into existing practices, albeit with modern flourishes, like the design-forward floating saunas on the Oslo fjord.
Many bathing spots in North America — often serving an audience with little personal connection to the history of communal bathing — riff on traditions from elsewhere while also freely reinventing them.
“It’s the beginning stages of something very exciting,” Aaland said.
Sound baths, games and more
Saunas and bathhouses of all kinds have been growing in popularity in North America for some time. But observers generally trace this more recent trend — with its explicit focus on mingling, and, sometimes, a party feel — to the 2022 opening of the bathhouse Othership in downtown Toronto.
At the company’s four locations, across both Toronto and New York City, visitors can now combine sauna and cold plunges with events spanning stand-up comedy, sound baths and games.
Othership co-founder Myles Farmer said the vision was “a new form of socializing.” As Simms did, he pointed to a post-pandemic need to regroup offline.
“There are a lot of people in these big cities who are not regularly having authentic connections with each other,” he said. “Finding friends is hard. Finding partners is hard, even though there’s so many people.”
Entering a screen-free space can facilitate the face-to-face encounters that many of us crave, Farmer added. “Your phone is away, and you’re going through a shared experience with strangers,” he said. “It just kind of bonds you and connects you with people in the space with you.”
On a recent Friday at Othership Flatiron in Manhattan, a crowd of phoneless twenty- and thirty-somethings gathered for an evening at the bathhouse facilitated by “guides,” who pumped a soundtrack of electronic beats and piled essential oil–infused snowballs onto the sauna’s searing rocks.
The wood-lined space filled with aromatic steam. Some visitors were wearing woolen, dome-shaped hats designed to keep their heads relatively cool, so they could stay even longer in the sauna. Conversations swelled as the heat spiked. Bathers mopped their faces with white towels.
A guide led rounds of trivia, playing audio clips of film soundtracks as sweating attendees called out the names of the movies they appeared in: “Jaws,” “Avatar,” “Harry Potter.”
The winners received chilled cans of coconut water, and the red-faced throng poured out of the sauna and toward the cold plunges. Other bathers lingered beside a self-serve station with water and herbal tea.
‘It’s like a natural drug’
Just over a mile away from Othership Flatiron, at the old-school schvitz joint Russian and Turkish Baths, which was founded in 1892, visitors are more likely to follow their trivia- and DJ-less sauna sessions with draft lagers in the onsite restaurant.
Alcohol and other intoxicants feature in many sweat bathing traditions worldwide. In the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Scythians from the Eurasian steppes spiked their steam baths by throwing cannabis seeds on hot rocks.
Russian banyas have long served beer, vodka and alcoholic kvass made from fermenting brown bread, wrote Ethan Pollock in his 2019 book, “Without the Banya We Would Perish.” Some Finns sip beer or gin cocktails in the sauna, called a saunajuoma: a sauna drink.
The largely alcohol-free scene at Othership, RECESS, and other new-wave social bathhouses reflects a broader turn toward sober nightlife as some younger people are cutting back on drinking.
“You don’t need a drink to go have a date. You don’t need a drink to meet up with friends,” Farmer said. “People are realizing you just don’t need substances.”
Besides, he said, the endorphin-boosting effect of the cold plunge is thrilling enough.
“Going into the ice baths gives you this feeling of energy and excitement,” Farmer said. “It’s like a natural drug.”
‘It’s interesting to make it uniquely our own’
As North American bathhouses have innovated, they’ve found fans — and plenty of critics. Some see the nightclub atmosphere as an unwelcome departure from more traditional experiences.
“The Europeans Have Some Notes About American Sauna Culture,” ran one recent New York Times headline, above a story calling out US sauna users for perceived infractions including, but not limited to: doing yoga, wearing bathing suits, participating in group activities and dancing. DJs at a sauna? Quelle horreur.
“Sometimes we get criticized for not following sauna etiquette, but to me, that’s fine,” said Robert Hammond of Therme US. “I think it’s interesting to make it uniquely our own.”
Along with the social bathhouses, he pointed to recent examples of innovators in North America experimenting with new forms of bathing-related art. In September, the artist Rashid Johnson held a sold-out production of the 1964 Amiri Baraka play “Dutchman” in the sweltering heat of New York’s Russian and Turkish Baths.
At the recent Culture of Bathe-ing sauna festival hosted by the Therme Group along the waterfront in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, cultural center Pioneer Works staged performances and art installations.
“I hope we can help encourage this experimentation,” Hammond said. “That’s what keeps it a little bit different, a little bit unexpected.”
In half a century of studying global bathing traditions, Mikkel Aaland has met plenty of purists, too. “Not everyone’s going to be a fan of the disco sauna,” he acknowledged.
But Aaland likes much of the innovation he sees. He recalled a 2021 book by American artist Travis Skinner that recounts his construction of a whimsical mobile sauna resembling an anglerfish.
“It gets me excited when I see an artist throwing something like that in the mix,” he said. And he emphasized that blending human contact and bathing is far more than a passing fad.
“The social part has been an element of any bathing culture that’s lasted,” he said, whether it’s through quiet, shared contemplation or something decidedly more raucous. “It adds an important element to something that’s already really powerful.”
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