The Finnish Zen experience.

When we think of the word zen, our minds go to the East, to countries like Japan and India. Finland certainly doesn't come to mind, not even as a fantasy. And yet! Spending five days in a summer cottage, as the Finns call their wooden country houses, isolated and tucked away in the forest, in front of a lake, I lived this unforgettable wellness experience called Nordic zen.

“What do you miss most now that you don’t live in Finland?” I ask my Finnish friend Lea, who moved from Helsinki (the Finns pronounce the first letter) and lives in Tallinn six years ago. We met in Helsinki, however, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the Estonian capital. To see the city, to visit “Ainola,” the home of Jean and Aino Sibelius, and to experience, even if only for a few days, the Finnish summer as a local experiences it, before crossing the border and continuing our journey to Estonia. We are sitting inside the wooden sauna, sweat pouring down, the temperature is 100 degrees Celsius, and when I pour water from the bucket onto the stones on the wood stove, as she told me to do, a piercing wave of hot steam permeates my entire body. “The process of preparing the sauna and the smell of fresh burning wood,” she answers me in her soft voice.

Finland is known as the land of a thousand lakes, driving to Kuhmoinen, a village in central Finland and crossing lush forests, you get the impression that it is the highway that crosses the lakes and not the opposite, that the lakes are close to the road. After two hours of driving we leave the main road to take a smaller one to leave that one to enter a dirt road that will lead us to her summer home. According to Statistics Finland, there are almost half a million official summer homes in the country, as of December 2017. Although there are large and luxurious ones, traditional ones are small with an average size of about 50m2.

He drives slowly as if he doesn't want to disturb the peace that spreads over nature. It's eight thirty at night, but it's still daylight when we arrive. We don't open a gate or go through a fence. The houses here have neither. We simply enter a space where the entrance is "mapped" with a column that writes the number. The first word that comes to mind when we park the car, put it to charge (even in the middle of nowhere there is the appropriate installation) and see nature is magic. It's as if everything has come out of a painting painted with pale colors. A small wooden house in front of a wonderful lake with a pier that leads you to the water. My first impression, however, is that I have come to a campsite as he shows me the spaces. Because all the spaces of the house are not in a single space. Although the main house consists of the living room with the dining area, the open kitchen and the two bedrooms with the absolutely necessary furniture, in another house or better yet, a cabin is the ecological or otherwise dry toilet, in another the two separate guest rooms that can accommodate one more piece of furniture besides the bed, in another the storage room, in another the sauna and in another the barbecue.

“We come here to live next to nature, to relax, to (re)find our inner balance, to have a simple and enjoyable time cooking and making pies from berries that we will pick, to enjoy walks in the forest, the peace and quiet, taking a sauna and swimming in the lake. But also to gain energy,” my friend tells me with a smile. Over the next five days, I experienced and felt exactly what she was telling me.

An old Finnish saying goes that the sauna, the Finnish temple of heat, steam and relaxation, is the poor man's pharmacy, the natural cure for everything that ails man, woman or child. So every Finnish summer cottage has a sauna. Because here, a sauna is not considered a luxury but a necessity. And every day, in the afternoon, Lea prepares the sauna by heating it, putting logs in the stove.

The sauna is not only an integral part of our everyday life but also of the Finnish well-being, because it is much more than just a simple wash. Traditionally, because it is a centuries-old tradition, it is considered a sacred space where people entered to cleanse the body and purify their spirit, many women washed and gave birth in a sauna, today, family, friendly and professional meetings are held, so that the Finnish sauna as a culture has been added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List since 2020.

Inside the sauna, the traditional way, when they are private, is to be naked, but when they are mixed, public and in sports centers it is necessary to be wrapped in a towel. I have half-lying on the wooden bench and although I am not used to it I manage to stay for a while to my friend's surprise. But the best part is when I go outside and go for a dip in the cold water of the lake. An unprecedented feeling of rejuvenation and euphoria overwhelms me so that after a short time in the water I am ready to re-enter the hot sauna and do this process again. And combined with the yoga practice we do in the morning, these five days I felt even greater the vital force, the connection we have with nature, the freedom of simple things with a deep joy.