Into the Warmth: Sauna, Breath, and Caring for Your Body as the Season Turns

WELLNESSSAUNANERVOUS SYSTEMSELF CARE

Jodi Bremner PT, Founder of Hervana Women's Wellness

7 min read

A woman in a robe stands outside a wooden sauna overlooking a misty forest and lake.

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Let your breath follow the transition

Breath is one of the simplest ways to notice how you’re responding. In a comfortable sauna, let your breathing stay easy and unforced. You might feel your ribs expand as you breathe in and soften as you breathe out. The pelvic floor often moves subtly with the breath, but you don’t need to push it down, squeeze it, or make anything happen.

When you move into the cold, your breath may briefly become quicker. Give yourself time to adjust before deciding whether to go colder, or stay longer. You can pause and let your breathing find its own steady pace.

A longer, slower exhale may feel soothing, and it can help the body settle during a cold round. You don’t need to use breath-holding or forceful breathing to manage the contrast; let the breath work gently with you. If your breathing feels hard to control, or you feel faint, dizzy, or unwell, leave the heat or cold area and get support.

If pelvic floor symptoms or persistent tension are part of your concern, sauna isn’t a substitute for assessment. You can read more about pelvic floor physiotherapy and the kinds of concerns I support in my practice.

A gentle rhythm for the Nordic cycle

There isn’t one correct number of rounds, or one ideal temperature, for everyone. The facility’s guidance and your own health matter. If you’re new to sauna, and cold, a simple, conservative rhythm can help you stay attentive rather than focused on doing more.

1. Begin with a short first round. Choose a comfortable place to sit in the sauna and start with about five to ten minutes, or less if that feels right. If you’re experienced and feeling well, you may be comfortable staying longer, but there’s no prize for being the last to leave. Follow the facility’s limits and step out as soon as you feel unwell.

2. Cold, deliberately. In the Nordic cycle the cold is not a formality between heats. It is half the practice, and the phase that does the most. This is where a cold plunge, or cold to whatever level is a genuine challenge for you, comes in: it switches the nervous system on, and the recovery afterward is where the steadiness is built. What counts as a challenge is individual. For one woman it is thirty seconds in a plunge; for another it is a cold shower worked up to over weeks. Start where you are, keep the exposure short, and let the intensity build gradually with practice rather than in a single visit. What matters is that the cold is real enough to ask something of you, and that you can return to calm under your own breath.

3. Rest. Notice your breathing, steadiness, and how warm or cold you feel. Then do nothing for a little while. Wrap up warmly, sit in the quiet, and let your body return to balance. This rest phase is where the recovery from the cold finishes its work, and where the nervous system continues to shift back down. It is as much a part of the cycle as the heat or the cold. If you feel comfortable and want another round, you might return to the sauna for a shorter visit. For many beginners, one or two rounds is plenty. Resting between rounds, or ending after the first, is a complete choice.

4. Drink to thirst and replace what you’ve lost. Arrive normally hydrated and have water available afterward. Sauna sweating means you lose fluid; water helps replace it. Avoid alcohol around sauna use, and don’t try to compensate by drinking excessive amounts all at once.

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Pelvic Floor Physiotherapy

Upcoming Experiences

A woman wrapped in a towel standing outside a wooden sauna overlooking a serene lake and pine forest during sunrise.

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As the days grow shorter, the change from warm sauna air to cool autumn outdoors can feel especially vivid. Your skin notices first. Your breathing may shift. You might feel your shoulders draw up or your body brace against the chill.

In my work as a pelvic floor physiotherapist, I have often been asked how the Nordic cycle of heat, cold, and rest affects the body. I believe deeply in this practice: the coming in, the going out, and the resting in between are what make it restorative. Hot, cold, and rest — each phase has its own work to do, and together they make up a cycle that has been part of Nordic life for centuries. Women today are returning to it for their own reasons: stress that will not settle, tension that will not let go, and bodies moving through seasons of hormonal change.

What warmth, cold, and rest ask of your body

In the sauna, your body works to release heat. Blood vessels near the skin widen, and sweating helps cool you. When you step into cooler air, your body starts conserving warmth. Blood vessels near the skin narrow, and you may notice your muscles tense or your breathing become quicker. That response is ordinary; it is one way the body adjusts to its surroundings.

Warmth invites softening. Muscles loosen, the breath deepens, and for many women the whole body settles. In menopause and perimenopause, when temperature regulation can feel unsettled and sleep is harder to come by, the comfort of steady heat can feel like permission to unwind. Heat has long been used as a way of easing tension and inviting rest.

Cold does something different, and it asks something real. A deliberate cold plunge, or cold to the level that is a genuine challenge for you, is not a breeze on the way back to the heat. It is a true physiological event. Your body responds immediately: heart rate and breathing rise sharply, and the whole system switches on, fully and deliberately.

What follows matters just as much. After that first shock, the body begins its own recovery: heart rate settles, and the nervous system shifts from full alert back toward calm. The cold is not only a jolt; it is a wave the body learns to ride, from full activation back down to ease. That wave is the training. The more you practise it, the better your body tends to get at moving between stress and settle — and the steadier many women feel in everyday life.

Deliberate cold also wakes something up in the brain. Cold stimulation releases norepinephrine, a chemical closely tied to alertness, focus and drive — and it raises dopamine, the chemical many people know as the "happy hormone." What makes cold different from the quick spikes and crashes of stimulants is the shape of the curve: cold-induced dopamine climbs gradually and stays elevated for hours afterward. Part of that lasting feeling also comes from the act itself — choosing to step into something hard and coming through it — which is where many women describe the clarity and quiet confidence that follows a good cold round.

Over time, regular cold exposure is also associated with changes in how the body handles energy, including the activation of brown fat, tissue that burns energy to generate warmth. For women whose metabolism shifts through perimenopause and menopause, this is worth knowing about — not as a quick fix, but as part of the larger picture of how the body adapts.

Rest is the phase most often skipped, and the one I would least want you to miss. Between heat and cold, the body needs time to register what just happened and return to balance. This is where the nervous system continues it's downshift, and where the deep rest of the Nordic cycle actually happens.

Your pelvic floor is a group of muscles too. Like other muscles, it may feel more guarded when you’re cold, tense, or shivering, and more at ease when you are warm and settled. There is limited research measuring how sauna or cold exposure directly affects the pelvic floor, and I would not describe heat or cold as a treatment for pelvic floor symptoms. What I can say is that women who carry tension — jaw, shoulders, breath, pelvic floor — often find the full cycle gives them somewhere to put it down: warmth to soften, cold to reset, rest to let the whole system settle. The cold should still be cold: a genuine challenge for you, not something merely endured. And you should still listen to your body. If something feels wrong rather than merely challenging, that is information, not weakness.

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A serene senior woman wrapped in a cozy blanket, relaxing in a wooden chair by a window overlooking a tranquil lake.

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When to pause, and who should check first

Leave the sauna or cold area if you feel dizzy, faint, confused, nauseated, unusually short of breath, weak, or uncomfortably chilled. Chest pain or palpitations call for immediate attention. Please don’t wait for a timer to ring if something feels wrong.

Heat and cold both place demands on the body, and the contrast asks for a little more than either alone. If you have heart or vascular disease, uncontrolled blood pressure, a condition that affects temperature sensation or circulation, or take medication that can affect blood pressure or fluid balance, check with your healthcare provider before trying heat-and-cold contrast. If you’re pregnant, or if you’re newly postpartum, ask your healthcare provider what is right for you before adding heat and cold cycles to your week. When in doubt, choose rest and ask first.

Let yourself be guided

You don’t have to manage every transition by yourself. A guided Nordic cycle can make it easier to choose a gentler round, take a longer pause, or simply sit out a cold plunge while someone else holds the rhythm of the hour.

Nordic spas around Nova Scotia offer guided and drop-in options, from Saltair Nordic Spa & Wellness in Baxters Harbour to other beautiful spaces across the province. Wherever you go, the invitation is the same: arrive, listen to your body, and let the structure be held for you while you decide what feels comfortable.

Sometimes the kindest part of an hour is not having to plan it all.

If you’d like a little more context about sauna, my earlier Wellness Journal article, “Sauna as Self-Care: Nervous System Healing”, explores a different side of the experience. Here, I wanted to focus on the practical rhythm of warming, cooling, breathing, and knowing when enough is enough.

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As the season turns, a sauna visit doesn't need to be extreme to be worthwhile. Let warmth be warmth. Let the cold be genuinely cold, at the level that challenges you. Let rest do its quiet work in between. And let your body's signals, not a challenge or a trend, help guide what comes next.

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This week, consider giving yourself one unhurried hour of warmth, rest, and choice.