Northern Lights Sauna is bringing a new experience to the Wausau area
Heather Schuette and Brittany Burns opened the new business behind Whitewater Music Hall last month
I had a little start when I realized just what I’d signed up for.
When the women behind the new business Northern Lights Sauna reached out about doing a story, I was in a mood to shake things up a little. So I responded asking “what if I interviewed the owners of the sauna in the actual sauna itself?”
They thought it was a cool idea too, and it was all set. And that’s when I realized I would be conducting my first-ever shirtless interview. I’ve flown in a rickety World War II era bomber, I’ve been in the basement of an accused killer, with about 20 assault rifles strewn about, and I’ve walked in on police training in an abandoned hotel where about five officers trained their guns on me during a training exercise (thanks Chief Deputy Kontos!).
But I’ve never conducted an interview in my swim trunks. Good thing I’ve been keeping up with my morning CrossFit-style workouts.
I met Brittany Burns and Heather Schuette at Northern Lights Sauna’s welcoming area. From there, we made our way to the sauna, got in swimwear, and entered the sauna.
Burns and Schuette would work out together at the YMCA and sit in the sauna together afterward, Schuette says. A sauna business hadn’t occurred to either of them, but for Burns’s birthday in December Schuette took her to the community sauna in Stevens Point, and the two fell in love with it.
The two sat down with the owner in January to talk about the business specifics and left with the idea to start their own.
From that, Northern Lights Sauna was born. They opened the sauna in September in the open space behind Whitewater Music Hall, and they also rented a space on the corner of Whitewater Music Hall which houses their office and welcoming area.
New customers enter into the welcome area and can book a community session or a private rental as well. The duo, or one of a dozen community volunteers, makes sure they have towels to sit on and a water bottle, and then it’s off to the heat.
Sessions are three 15-minute bouts with a break in between. The group also set up a fire pit with places to sit around between or after sessions, and there is even a cold bucket of water to douse oneself with between sessions, as well as an outdoor shower.
We conducted the entire interview in the sauna during the first of two sessions I took that day (I had another interview scheduled and so didn’t have time for the third session). It was not my first encounter with extreme temperatures. I’ve visited several hot springs in Japan, for instance. I usually found I could get used to even the hottest of them, except for one at a countryside ryokan (traditional hotel) in the Japanese countryside. And I’ve used saunas at health clubs before.
But this little wooden room feels pleasant, and despite being in a parking lot, and trees adorn the window in the side giving the feel of a wooded location. You feel the heat immediately, of course, but it takes some time for the sweat to kick in. Schuette and Burns say your heart rate increases to something similar to zone 2 cardio when you’re in the sauna.
How have Wausonians taken to it? So far, they’re getting both the curious and the sauna devotees. “We had one lady who wrote in her description of have you ever sauna’d before, said ‘yes, Finnish sauna is a way of life,’'“ Burns says. For many others, though, it’s a brand new experience.
Business has started off pretty well, but Schuette and Burns say they expect even more people to take advantage of the sauna in the winter when the cold weather sets in. “We’ll be encouraging people to jump in the snowbank,” Schuette says.
Check out Northern Lights Sauna on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and at northernlightssauna.com.
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