Third places and the cult of Othership

It's a club in a sauna! It's therapy! It's addictive.

I: Joining the cult

One thing about me — I love participating in a fun new fad. So when I kept seeing people I know posting on Instagram about Othership, a sauna and cold plunge place here in Toronto, I knew I had to try it out.

Calling Othership “a sauna and cold plunge place” leaves a lot out, so let me try and paint a fuller picture. You start each Othership class by changing into your swimsuit and sitting on a towel inside of their dimly lit tea room. The lighting is warm with orange and red tones, the place always smells like cedar incense, and the seating consists of plush stacked couches that mirror the benches of the sauna.

At the beginning of class, most people who come in groups speak in hushed tones, sipping herbal tea and waiting for the guide to start class. The guide arrives (they are easy to recognize; most Othership guides are fit and hot), gives an explanation for how the class is going to work for newcomers, and usually guides everyone through a couple of breaths together. Anyone who has taken a yoga class before will recognize the cues. Inhale (one, two, three, four…) aaand sigh it out with a big exhale (aaaah). After that we head into the sauna.

The sauna is arranged in arena-style seating, centred around the guide, who stands in front of a sauna stove wearing a Britney-style popstar mic. If you’ve read this far, you are probably wondering why a sauna and cold plunge experience requires a guide in the first place, and why these sessions are set up as classes. This is where things get cultish. I would describe Othership classes as being vaguely spiritual, therapy-adjacent, self-improvement focused guided breathing classes that happen in a sauna. The guides treat the cold plunge component as a metaphor for overcoming hardships in life. You can do hard things! I’m not sure how much I buy that part, but I do find the post-plunge adrenaline rush quite euphoric.

If this all sounds like a wacky combination because it is one; I hadn’t experienced anything like it prior to attending. To give you a sense of the range, here is a handful of the classes I’ve attended:

• Rose, thorn, bud: The guide asks the class to visualize 3 different things: a positive memory (the rose), a negative memory (the thorn) and something they’re looking forward to (the bud). For each segment, the guide plops down a snowball with a different set of essential oils on the sauna stove while guiding the class through some breaths. When we get to the thorn, the guide tells everyone to conjure up a painful memory. An ashy scent is placed on the stove. The lights in the sauna go out completely and everyone is encouraged to let out a scream as the guide bangs a gong. Lots of people cry in this one.

• Arctic tundra: My personal favourite class; it’s very chaotic. The guides take you through several rounds of cold plunges while banging on drums. There’s a snowball-tossing game. Everyone chants and yells and there is a dance party at the end. Oh yeah, and this one happens at 7am.

• Loving kindness: Pretty much a Buddhist Metta meditation if you’ve ever done one. You picture 3 sets of people; one you love, one you feel friendly towards, and one who you dislike. You send each person positive, loving thoughts. At the end of the class the guide has you turn to a stranger in the sauna (lol) and send them warm, loving thoughts.

• Reggaeton social: A club night in the sauna. They bring in a DJ and people dance, chat, and move freely between the sauna and cold plunge areas.

At the end of every class, the guide opens the floor for people to share their thoughts. I am still surprised by how often people do share, and how often they share deeply personal things. One woman in a class I was in told us she struggled with feeling like her fiancé loved her. A man shared that he physically disciplined his son for the first time and felt horrible about it. Usually I cringe at overshares like this, but in a place like Othership, where we’re already doing absurd things (paying a stranger to tell us how to breathe, while half-naked in a sauna with other strangers, after sitting in 0.5°C water for 2 minutes), I can see how it might be cathartic.

---

II: Cultivating openness

If this sounds like the opposite of a fun time to you, I understand. Usually I find it difficult to participate in cheesy group activities like this unironically, but something about the earnestness of the attendees and physically shocking sensation of a cold plunge makes it very easy to loosen your inhibitions and do whatever activity the guide is walking everyone through. I’ve read a couple of interviews with the founders of Othership and one of their goals was to create a social space similar to a club or a bar where you could feel loose and free without drugs or alcohol. Their mission seems successful to me; it’s very easy to talk to strangers at Othership, and after a class I always leave feeling euphoric.

I’ve been thinking about what makes Othership such an enjoyable social space to be in, and I’m reminded of my frustrations with people complaining about a lack of third spaces. If you’re unfamiliar, a third space is what sociologists call a social environment separate from home or work. From Wikipedia: “Your third place is where you relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances.”

In recent times, I’ve mostly seen this concept referenced by people on the internet who blame their loneliness on the absence of third spaces. This has always felt unsatisfying to me since coffee shops, bars, clubs and community centres do still exist. I don’t disagree that modern life can be socially isolating, but when people speak in this way it’s like they’re implying that our social ills would be solved if we simply had more free places for people to gather. I guarantee that if this happened, we would still all be on our phones and avoiding eye contact.

What people seem to want instead is a change in social norms around approaching strangers, but nobody wants to be the instigator. This is understandable since rejection is embarrassing and no one wants to be seen as creepy or weird. But it means that a lot of us are unsatisfied with our social lives.

The genius of an Othership class is that there’s a different set of norms such that it is weirder not to engage with the people around you.

No phones

This one is simple. Due to sauna/cold plunge logistics it is impractical to bring your phone inside. When you are sitting on the couch before class, it becomes more awkward to sit in silence rather than talk to someone beside you. Is this what life was like before phones? Insane.

Shared ritual

I think that for any social setting to be non-awkward, one must always have an activity to do. This provides an escape from being trapped in a stale conversation and provides fodder for more discussion.

Forced socialization

Occasionally in class, the guide will tell you to turn to someone you do not know and give you a prompt for discussion. Forced socialization is surprisingly effective. It becomes weirder not to play along and talk to people. I am reminded of university orientation week, where such forced interactions turn into real connections.

Social filtering

Articles about Othership never fail to mention that a single class costs $55¹. They say this like it’s a bad thing, but I am both an elitist and a capitalist and I think that it’s fine. Having a high-ish cost ceiling means that the people who register for classes are more likely to be like me (fit working professionals) and I’m okay with this level of filtering.

Interest-based events and groups are the best way to meet people. The problem with advertising any place as a venue to socialize is that if that is the primary goal, your group will be overrun with weirdos who have trouble socializing IRL. As an aside, this is why advertising run clubs as dating groups will never work (it attracts people who are there for the wrong reasons).

Physical relaxation

The post-cold plunge endorphins cannot be oversold here! It’s super refreshing to be able to experience a physical and social “loosening” without alcohol. Everyone feels good, so the vibes are good, so people are chatty and fun.

---

So that’s the Othership review. Overall, I love it. The sauna/cold plunge part is relaxing and it’s scratched an itch for me socially lately. I would love to see more places try to cultivate a similar set of norms, because I think that the spa element is only tangentially related to the vibes. I wrote in my last post about wanting to enjoy things more genuinely, and I’m glad I took the plunge!! 🪐

1. With discounts or monthly passes, it’s closer to $35/class which is much less costly than a night out!