Shaun Boggan knows he isn’t the stereotypical wellness consumer. The 45-year-old tradie moved to Australia more than a decade ago from Scotland, a place where “people are more interested in going to the chip shop than they are taking care of themselves”. But after his father died, Boggan found himself drinking heavily. In search of a healthier habit, he started going to a new Finnish-style sauna that had opened near his home in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

Boggan was initially apprehensive about getting near-naked and sweating it out with a bunch of strangers. Now, 18 months later, he is “totally hooked” and goes for two-hour sessions three or four times per week. He says it calms him down, clears his head and makes him feel physically lighter. The board shorts Boggan used to rock on visits have been replaced by “the smallest piece of underwear possible, because it’s so hot”. Each visit sees him rotate between the sauna, heated to 90C, and a cold plunge pool, chilled to just above freezing.

“The state of euphoria that you feel after you’ve done that combination of the two things, there’s nothing really like it,” Boggan says. “I used to pay a lot of money to get that high in Scotland when I was in my 20s.”

Boggan is one of many Australians who have plunged into hot-cold therapy lately. Sauna has long been a way of life in northern Europe, where friends and family routinely gather to sit, chat and sweat before dunking themselves in cold water or snow, then repeating. But until recently Australia’s sauna options have been limited, existing as part of a broader pampering experience in day spas, or as a rather different kind of establishment within the gay community. In the past few years that’s changed, with dedicated sauna spots opening around the country, bringing the joy of stripping off and sweating it out to the mainstream – and, just maybe, changing Australian attitudes to public nudity.

Nikita Miltiadou, co-founder of the Blue Mountains Sauna in Leura (Boggan’s sauna of choice), says they set up shop in 2022 to fill a gap in the Australian market. Miltiadou’s business partner is of Russian and German descent and couldn’t find the sort of dedicated sauna establishments she was used to this side of the equator.

Miltiadou says European culture “is epic” for social connectedness. But, in Australia, saunas “would be little additions to a gym, or they would be in an aquatic centre, and that’s about it. And with that came no real understanding of the sauna etiquette behind it.”

Blue Mountains Sauna turns away about 100 hopeful customers a day on weekends, Miltiadou says. They are in the process of expanding the location to meet demand and opening a second spot in Victoria. Miltiadou is also helping to establish an Australian sauna association, and estimates at least 20 new sauna facilities have opened around Australia in the past two years. There are barriers to expanding though – for instance Miltiadou plans to fight for easier access to insurance, and to work with local councils on permission to erect wood-fired saunas by the beach, where punters can enjoy a natural cold plunge in the ocean.

Miltiadou’s won’t be the first sauna-focused organisation in Australia – but, perhaps, the first Australia is ready for. A short-lived organisation called the Australian Sweat Bathing Association advocated for bringing a European-style sauna culture to Australia “in 2017 – and no one cared … it just didn’t really resonate at the time”, Miltiadou says.

Nigel Reeves was a member of the Australian Sweat Bathing Association. He says Miltiadou’s assessment that there wasn’t enough local interest in sauna culture in the 2010s is probably “a fair comment”. He believes one tool has helped to change the game.

“There’s always been a lot of people really interested in saunas – I think social media has just made it much more mainstream,” Reeves says.

Since those Australian Sweat Bathing Association days, the long-time sauna enthusiast has launched his own business: a floating sauna built on a pontoon in Tasmania, where guests dip into the 8C waters of Lake Derby to cool off. It opened in mid-2020 and “became an overnight Instagram sensation”.

Now, Reeves is expanding – he is opening a floating sauna on Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin in September or October, and has sauna projects under way in Western Australia and New South Wales. Reeves initially aimed his Tasmanian business at the mountain bike riders who use the trails at Lake Derby but found “my market was much deeper than I thought”.

Reeves says “all ages and all backgrounds” have proved receptive to the once-foreign concept of shared sweat sessions.

“Australians are no different, as humans, to Europeans,” he says. “After the first 30 seconds, it’s completely natural to be sitting there sharing the experience with complete strangers … And Australians have not held back, really.”

Miltiadou says Australia’s fresh enthusiasm for the sauna follows a global trend – the UK and the US have embraced the sauna too. He thinks it’s a post-Covid reaction – after fearing human contact, the sauna offered something “that is unashamedly as opposite to that as can be, which is going into a room and sitting there with sweaty people in close confines”.

The pandemic alone may not be responsible for sauna’s new popularity. For some, part of the appeal is the all-too-rare chance to disconnect, as many establishments do not allow phones inside. Our changing attitudes to alcohol have also likely driven visitors. With many open until 9pm most nights, the sauna provides a space to unwind and catch up with friends that isn’t a pub – particularly in winter, when Australia’s beaches and parks are less appealing. Then there’s the newly popularised idea of the ice bath, care of Dutch athlete and author Wim Hof, who published his book touting its benefits in September 2020.

Whether the benefits of cold water immersion outweigh the risks is up for debate, but research does show sauna use has potential mental and physical health benefits. Charles Steward, an academic at the University of Nottingham Medical School who studies heat therapy, says the potential benefits of saunas include improvements to blood pressure, blood vessel function, cardiovascular fitness and metabolic health – physical rewards that are “similar to that of exercise”.

That assessment comes with caveats. Sitting in the sauna won’t improve your bone density, your muscle strength or help you burn any meaningful number of calories, Steward says – for all of that, you will actually need to exercise. But there is, he says, initial evidence from Scandinavia that suggests regular long-term sauna use can reduce substantially the risk of cardiovascular disease.

“I think as long as you’re going regularly, upwards of three sessions a week, you should see some of the health benefits,” Steward says.

While Australian consumers may be taking to the sauna with gusto, one final frontier remains: nudity.

Going nude in the sauna is par for the course in Europe but, Miltiadou admits, is still a little “on the nose” in these parts. To delicately introduce the idea, Blue Mountains Sauna runs both single sex and occasional all-genders nude sessions. Those interested in attending the latter have to make a special request to book, then get approval from staff, who work to ensure every session has a good gender balance. They prioritise couples and regulars.

“We get a lot of requests from, I’ll say it, single men,” Miltiadou says. “And those we do have to filter through and see who’s there for the right reasons and who’s there for any other reasons.”

Shaun Boggan, who has sampled the nude sessions but prefers keeping his undies on, feels Australia may not be “psychologically 100% ready to just let everybody just sit in there naked”.

It’s funny enough, he says, being a sauna regular in a small town.

“When you bump into people [from the sauna] out in the street, sometimes you don’t recognise them. Like, something’s different about you – ach, because you’ve got clothes on! That’s what it is.”