The Nordic Sauna & Cold Ritual — Facility Edition

A licensed guide for spas, hotels, gyms, and retreats

Your guests have a sauna. Most of them have never been shown how to use it.

In the Nordic countries, nobody explains the sauna — we learn it as children. Your guests haven't had that, so they guess: workout clothes, five minutes, straight back to the locker room, and the best part skipped. In January 2026, The New York Times asked Europeans in America what they notice in American saunas. Their list is the one this guide answers. This edition gives your team the ritual as it is practiced in Sweden and Finland, written so staff can teach it in one shift and guests can follow it without help.

What's inside

The guide

The ritual, step by step, with house timings that work

Guest manners: what to wear, the towel, the steam, the phone

What guests get wrong, and a kind sentence your staff can say for each

Suggested staff routines, and what to say to a first-time guest

Suggested safety wording for your signs, waivers, and website

Traditional or infrared: a side-by-side comparison, and how to use the guide if you have one, the other, or both

The research over two pages: the heart, blood pressure, stroke, and memory, the new Swedish research on what women report, and three sentences you can use on your website

Why guests come back: how to build frequency, whether the sauna is sold by the visit or included in a membership

A short history of the Nordic sauna

Print pages

Two signs, ready to frame: traditional sauna and infrared sauna

Both signs also as separate print-ready files, so any sign shop can make them in aluminum or acrylic

A take-home card for every first-time guest

A ten-visit card to bring them back

Open the guide in Adobe Acrobat Reader (free), type your facility's name once, and it appears on both signs and all four cards.

Who it's for

Day spas, bathhouses, hotel spas, boutique hotels, gyms and clubs, and wellness retreats — any facility with a traditional sauna, an infrared sauna, or both.

About the author

MARIE THERESE was born and raised in Sweden. For nearly twenty years she welcomed guests on an ironworks estate in Dalarna that her family found abandoned and restored — work the municipality of Ludvika honored with its first beauty award. Rooms for the night, an estate café serving lunch, conference days, and an interior design shop. She is the author of The Back to Basics Elevated Living Blueprint, a Scandinavian 30-day reset for steady energy, deeper sleep, and a calmer baseline. The sauna was never wellness to her. It was where the evening went.

The details

19-page PDF plus two print-ready sign files, US Letter, instant download

American English; temperatures in °F with °C

Choose your license: one location, or up to three locations

General information about the Nordic sauna tradition, not medical advice. Your facility remains responsible for its own rules, safety, and compliance.