Revitalise your mind and body with our Ice bath + Finnish Sauna experience - a powerful contrast therapy that reduces stress, promotes relaxation, and enhances overall well-being by alternating between the soothing heat of a sauna and the invigorating cold of an ice bath, stimulating circulation, reducing inflammation, and improving mood and mental clarity. (increases dopamine by up to 500%!!)
ICE BATH + FINNISH SAUNA CONTRAST THERAPY ROOM
Here at Clear Mind Studio we are always striving to bring you the best in science backed wellness to help clear your mind, calm your inner critic and build your stress resilience. That’s why after becoming OBSESSED with cold plunges combined with traditional Finnish saunas, we knew we had to bring this to you too. I actually find it hard to put into words how amazing I felt after my first cold plunge (into the Scottish North Sea combined with a seaside Finnish sauna). I felt so energised. I felt high on life. I felt calm. I felt like my negative mind chatter or inner ego chatter quieted, as it was very difficult to think or focus on anything apart from my body and breath. I felt the dopamine rush. I felt the adrenaline rush and the feeling of euphoria. I felt like this is something I 100% want to bring to the Clear Mind community because I want you to feel exactly like I felt after my first cold plunge.
Who is our ice bath for?
Although many athletes and sports teams use ice baths for athletic performance and recovery, here at Clear Mind Studio, we use it for every day mental performance and clarity. Feeling stressed? Lacking energy? Lacking motivation? In a mood? I can guarantee a session in our ice bath will shift these feelings for you and leave you energised, motivated and with a clear mind ready to take on your day. They also help build stress resilience, which we could all do with more of.
So what are the benefits of using an ice bath?
Many people use cold exposure specifically to get better at dealing with stress. You can use the ice bath to help you increase your stress threshold and shift your body state as a way to train your mental state so that you can better cope with stress in real life. Ice baths test you physically and mentally, but by concentrating on your body and your breathing you will be able to move through ‘walls’ of discomfort, which will increase your adrenaline and dopamine levels. Your body will become comfortable with adrenaline surges (hello fight or flight!) and you will be able to handle sudden unexpected, stressful situations much better. Ice baths not only increase your levels of adrenaline and dopamine it can also be used to elevate your mood for long periods of time. The ice bath can elevate your dopamine from anywhere between 250% to 500% - I can testify to this, I was in a state of euphoria after my first ice bath. People report feeling vast improvements in mood and vast improvements in levels of cognitive attention and increased energy.
Other benefits of regular ice bath use include:
+ Speeds up muscle & injury recovery
+ Reduces inflammation
+ enhance mental performance
+ enhance physical performance
+ improves fat burning
+ improves skin conditions
+ builds mental toughness
+ Supports a healthy immune system
+ Improves lymphatic circulation
+ Increases red blood cell count & growth hormone levels
+ Improves levels of endurance & recovery
+ Increases cardiovascular health
+ Improves sleep & reducing stress
+ Increases metabolism
What is Contrast Therapy?
Contrast therapy is the name given to the therapeutic technique of alternating between hot and cold temperatures. It is often used in physical therapy, sports medicine, and rehabilitation to improve circulation, reduce muscle soreness and pain, and speed up healing of injuries BUT is also a really useful technique to calm your mind, reduce stress and build resilience. Finnish sauna is best coupled with an ice bath for contrast therapy as a Finnish sauna can get up to temperatures much higher than an Infrared sauna, typically between 90 and 110 degrees celsius. A typical protocol would be 20 minutes in the sauna followed by 3 minutes in the ice bath followed by air drying for 2 minutes then repeating 2 times.
Sessions at Clear Mind Studio are 60 minutes and you can bring up to 3 friends with you. ($30 per extra person)
HOW COLD SHOULD THE ICE BATH BE?
This is different for everyone. It depends on your cold tolerance, your metabolism and a number of other features. Instead of focusing on the degrees celsius (cause everyone is different) it’s more important to focus on the environment and your mind's reaction. The ice bath should be cold enough so that you hit a mental ‘wall’ which is when you think you’d really like to get out but you know you can stay in safely without risking your health. Uncomfortably cold but you can stay in safely. The temperature of this will vary for you day to day and will vary from person to person and will also depend on the time of day that you have your ice bath. The ice bath at Clear Mind Studio can be set between 0 and 15 degrees celsius.
How to use the ice bath to improve your mindset
If you have done an ice bath, you’ll already know that they are tough… really tough. But the more you do them, the easier they become. The science of mindset tells us that if we are doing something deliberately and we believe that it’s going to be good for us, it actually can lead to a different set of physiological effects than if something is happening to us against our will or without our control. Ice bath = deliberate cold exposure. You are placing yourself into a cold environment on purpose in order to extract a particular set of benefits. It involves getting uncomfortable. You are training and stimulating your vagus nerve, and focusing on your breath and your body and your mind and the ability to tap into your positive mindset. When your body is under voluntary stress, like in an ice bath or cold plunge it forces you to become present, unify your willpower and put in the hard work - which at the end results in a release of dopamine and natural dosage of courage. By doing this practice, you will then consciously and subconsciously take this mindset into your day ahead, as well as how you approach other forms of stress in your life.
Why a traditional Finnish sauna with the ice bath?
If you’ve been a regular user of our infrared saunas, then the main difference you’ll notice when you step into our traditional Finnish sauna is that it’s A LOT HOTTER! SO HOT - approx 90-110 degrees celsius. Because the Finnish sauna is hotter, and therefore has the ability to rapidly raise the core body temperature, it’s ideal to be combined in a room with an ice bath or cold plunge for what’s known as ‘contrast therapy’. A typical session at Clear Mind Studio, would go for approx 60 minutes and would look something like 20 mins sauna, 3 mins ice bath, 2 mins air drying, repeat 2 times.
The Clear Mind Studio ice bath experience.
Our Odin ice bath is in a room with a traditional Finnish sauna. There’s also a shower in the room and a bench area where you can keep your belongings. It’s your own private room for 60 minutes for you and whoever you choose to bring with you (the room can fir up to 3 friends).. We created the room this way so that you can hop from the sauna to a quick rinse off in the shower and straight into the ice bath then straight back into the sauna. No running up the corridor to find a shower or changing rooms. We like to make things as stress free as possible.
The Odin Ice bath was chosen by us, after a lot of research as, not only is the cedar wood aesthetically pleasing, the ice bath is also high spec with many features that other ice baths don’t have.
The Odin does not use an external chiller. Unlike other “ice baths” on the market, which pump the water outside of the bath through an external chiller to cool the water, The Odin's water is cooled by the interior stainless steel tub.
The Odin uses a cooling compressor (like those used in walk-in freezers) to cool the water via copper coils that are wrapped around the interior stainless tub and covered with insulation.
This allows the Odin to reach a true 0º degrees Celsius - in fact, if left on at these low temperatures the Odin will make its own ice!
Odin is also known as the clean ice bath with a full filtration and sanitisation system with a 50 micron filter and an Ozone generator to sanitise the water. This keeps the water circulating and cleaner for longer. (no sharing the same bath water with your entire sweaty gym class).
***Bringing a friend with you? email or phone us to let us know! Cost for an additional person for the ice bath + Finnish sauna room is $30pp.
