Thermal Spa Experience at Banya

The Banya thermal spa experience of extreme hot and cold exposure helps to produce heat shock proteins, which support a healthy immune system. Studies have even shown that these proteins help to reduce the body’s long-term stress response and decrease inflammation – helping with muscle and joint pain and even reducing the symptoms of depression and anxiety.

By heating the body to a high temperature and then cooling it down, a traditional Russian Banya experience causes the heart to beat faster in the steam sauna before slowing right down in the ice bath. This process strengthens the heart muscles, stimulates blood vessels and can help protect against certain serious cardiovascular health conditions.

Please consult your doctor if you have chronic cardiovascular conditions before using hot and cold therapy.

Stress causes an increase of norepinephrine (adrenaline), epinephrine and dopamine in the brain and body. Deliberate cold exposure has the same impact – but without the worry or anxiety, meaning it helps train the body to learn to combat and control stress in a calm, relaxing environment – maintaining mental clarity in the process. By improving mental resilience through these thermal rituals, we can also increase mental acuity and the ability to focus.

Jetlag disrupts the body’s natural circadian rhythms – which impacts sleep patterns. Changing your core body temperature through intense cold exposure helps to reset these rhythms, promoting restful sleep. The intense cold of the ice bath or bucket shower also helps release adrenaline and stress hormones that help combat unwanted travel tiredness or lethargy – while the increased oxygen levels in the blood help to reduce the aches and pains that can follow a long flight.

Intense heat therapy helps promote a feeling of mental calm and relaxation, and can even help ease conditions such as depression and anxiety. Heat exposure helps produce endorphins and hermetic stress hormones (sometimes called ‘good stress’) which help to decrease the body’s stress sensitivity and increase tolerance to everyday stress.

Outside of that, the ritualistic nature of the Banya and the self-reflective process allow for an almost meditative experience that roots you in time and place, away from everyday stress.

Hot and cold contrast reduces your lactic acid build-up and the increased levels of oxygen in the blood, caused by the increase of heart rate in the steam sauna room, help muscles recover quicker and muscle injuries heal faster.

Cold water therapy and exposure helps to convert white fat cells into more metabolically and thermogenically active beige and brown fat cells – allowing us to burn more calories.

The intense steam and heat opens the pores on the skin – helping expel toxins and dead skin cells and reducing the signs of ageing. In turn – studies have shown that Banya and sauna also promote healthy blood flow and oxygenation, which can help maintain a healthy weight (when combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise).

Steam and aromatherapy treatments help open up the sinuses and promote healthy breathing and vascular elasticity. In addition, the heat on the skin and the increase in body temperature can help to simulate a ‘fever’ – which provides your immune system with a strength workout that will pay dividends when called on for real.