In the Age of Biohacking, Nature-Based Saunas Are Still the Most Restorative Wellness Getaways

My normal recovery routine after a long night out involves a brisk walk, light breakfast, and perhaps a hair of the dog. I didn’t have that time luxury on a trip to San Francisco a few years ago, as I was scheduled to drive up to Napa for work before lunch. So I took the advice of one of my best friends growing up and followed him into the Bay at sunrise.

The water was somewhere in the 50s, according to guesses from a smattering of locals doing the same. We submerged to our necks and shivered for as long as I could stand it. We didn’t worry about the exact temperature or how long we stayed, and distracted ourselves with the birds and rhythm of the morning. I’m by no means a regular cold plunger, but this felt truly restorative. More so even than the precisely measured hot-cold cycle in an upscale sauna complex I did with the same friend during his bachelor party in Las Vegas.

The benefits of hot-cold water treatments are a big part of today’s wellness conversation. Travel companies have responded, with hotels and day spas promoting treatments measured to the half-degree, catering to those determined to not let a vacation interrupt their biohacking routines.

Yet what if true wellness requires a more hands-off approach? Something more connected to nature than to what you can keep on a spreadsheet?

Photo: FjordPhoto: FjordPhoto: Fjord

These questions resonate with the founders of a Fjord, a new floating sauna and plunge experience in the Richardson Bay, just north of San Francisco in Sausalito. Recently opened, it’s the first floating sauna in the San Francisco area, and Fjord saw an immediate response to their anti-biohacking approach to sauna culture.

Fjord intentionally avoids wellness tropes, instead positioning itself as a recreational and social experience built around thermal activities, co-founder Alex Yenni tells me. Fjord’s approach is “more pure fun and not so hardcoded in body optimization.”

Photo: Fjord

Fjord has access straight into the water and Mount Tamalpais in the distance. It offers a “rare opportunity for people who live in the Bay Area who’ve never swam in the bay,” Yenni says, a “floating destination where it’s just silence and seagulls and sailboats and seals and weird weather patterns and microclimates. It’s a very immersive environment.”

Fjord makes the biohacker’s definition of “optimization” feel far away even here in Silicon Valley, where much of the biohacking tech is developed.

Balancing nature in wellness tourism

The Global Wellness Institute predicts that “wellness travel” — loosely defined as any travel where a major focus is on improving one’s mental or physical wellbeing — will be a $1.4 trillion industry by 2027. It’s one of the fastest growing travel categories, and hotel programs and companies that cater to tourism have quickly moved to meet the moment. The number of hotels offering wellness programs is growing, even if it doesn’t always make money. That’s led to everything from your standard massage business, to a Six Senses resort with the “latest targeted biohacking tools” (and dog massages, for what it’s worth), to on-site genetic testing.

Within the broad wellness umbrella, an analysis of TripAdvisor reviews, bookings, and recommendations found that one of the biggest subsects of wellness travel revolves around water experiences: cold plunges, thermal spas and hot springs, and wellness cruises.

Photo: Fjord

The places that are most overly coded as wellness getaways often tout precision and science, whether it’s 24/7 tracking of your vitals or hot-cold water treatments timed down to the second. It’s a data-backed approach to answer what biohackers are looking for. Over analyzing can ruin the whole point, however.

“When we’re fixated on timers and exact temperatures, we often miss the profound relaxation and joy that practices like sauna bathing can offer,” says Marcus Coplin, a naturopathic medical doctor and the medical director for The Springs Resort in Colorado and Murrieta Hot Springs Resort in California, both of which are fed by natural flowing, deep-earth geothermal mineral water that’s unique to place. “The most compelling research on sauna benefits comes out of cultures where it’s a social, recreational, or even ritualistic activity, ingrained into daily life. These cultures often use saunas as a way to disconnect from the daily grind and reconnect with loved ones and community.”

Contrast therapy, or alternating hot and cold exposure, can help with relaxation and clarity, says Tammy Pahel, the vice president of spa and wellness at Carillon Miami Wellness Resort and the chief wellness officer at Alchemy Wellness Resorts. Pahel adds that “perhaps the most compelling aspect of sauna culture today lies beyond the physical. Increasingly, wellness seekers are drawn to thermal rituals not only for their benefits, but for their feeling of a reconnection with self, breath, and presence. There’s an emotional intelligence in these rituals, a capacity to ground us in the body and the moment.”

The benefit of saunas and cold plunges, Coplin adds, is from regularly building your body’s response to low-dose temperature stress (regularity being the key word here). Constant monitoring and rigid routines can negate any positive effects of the practices themselves when sticking to the program becomes a chore.

Big data has its place, but at the end of the day, it’s about feeling well, not just measuring it, Coplin adds.

“The moment wellness becomes about performance rather than presence, you’ve lost the therapeutic benefit,” says Ryan Pomeroy, who leads Pomeroy Lodging, which operates Alyeska Nordic Spa in Alaska and Kananaskis Nordic Spa in Canada.

“You simply can’t replicate what nature provides,” Pomeroy says. “Nature adds elements that can’t be measured or optimized: the sound of wind through trees, the changing seasons, the visual meditation of mountain landscapes and rock formations. These aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re therapeutic in ways that indoor facilities simply cannot replicate.”

And, importantly, it’s difficult to over optimize in nature where you can’t control the sunrise or the temperature. “The unpredictability forces you into presence rather than performance,” Pomeroy says. “Indoor facilities, no matter how well-designed, become another controlled environment where people can fall back into tracking and measuring.”

Bridging recreation and wellness in a natural environment

Photos: Fjord

At Fjord, the more relaxed approach has clearly been well received by the city and the community. Reservations are booked out for months. It’s a departure from the lifestyle that Yenni had prior after nearly 20 years in the creative agency world. That line of work left him unfulfilled, he says. It spurred the desire for a reinvention focusing on what can be felt in person rather than transmitted through film sets and streamed videos.

The core mission is to “break people out of their hermetically sealed bubbles” and help them “actually feel something visceral,” Yenni says.

His cofounder at Fjord, Gabe Turner, had a similar motivation at a similar time. Together, they set out to bring a California ethos to the global appreciation of hot and cold experiences at Russian banyas, Finnish saunas, Japanese onsens, and Turkish hammams.

Photo: Fjord

Fjord represents a move “toward something more analog,” Yenni says, offering a “real physical and social connection.” Something different than the lackluster sauna and super-chilled tub in a windowless room that’s familiar in urban hot and cold spots. Without the natural environment, “the third leg of the stool is missing: reconnection and the experience of being in nature.”

While Fjord opened at a time when wellness travel and interest is very much having a moment, Yenni and the Fjord team started planning before the current hype and are intentional about avoiding the typical wellness tropes. Still, it doesn’t hurt that the benefits of hot-cold experiences has gone mainstream. “The work has been done for us that there’s enough critical awareness around the benefits around hot and cold,” Yenni says.

Fjord’s tagline of “feel something” targets an experience that’s not specifically what one would find at a high-tech, data-backed treatment center. It’s more in the lane of a recreational and social experience, with the added benefits of being good for you.

Location may be one of the most important factors in a natural sauna experience, but it’s not always an easy find. Permitting a location with natural beauty was “probably the hardest part about the project” for Fjord, Yenni says. It involved approval from eight different agencies, and a strong commitment to sustainable design. Architect Nick Polansky reused abandoned infrastructure like a decommissioned wave attenuator from the 2013 America’s Cup, repurposed second-hand shipping containers, and utilized sustainable second-growth California redwood for Fjord. Clean electric and no toxic runoff helps Fjord “blend seamlessly into the environment” and be good stewards to the nature around them, Yenni says.

Photo: Fjord

Fjord’s approach clearly resonates with the public just as much as my first plunge in the Bay did years ago. Guests run the gamut in age, background, and culture, from young adopter types to the elderly, Yenni says. It has had to shut down its booking platform a couple of times already due to being book out for months at 100 percent utilization.

Yenni and the Fjord team are “sprinting to figure out how we offer this to more people.” They’re already in talks with the city of San Francisco about potential partnerships for expansion. More saunas as social spaces that embrace their surroundings through thoughtful, sustainable design can only be a good thing. In time, the biohackers may realize that, too.

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