Taking the heat - and chilling way out - at Othership

Written By

Michael Sommers

2 years ago

When I first enter Othership, I’m a little scared. This despite the fact that when I walk into the reception area, my senses are immediately soothed by an exquisitely curated combination of warm wooden walls, chill music, the wafting scent of cedar and the amiability of the receptionist.

Lulled into sharing, I blurt out, “This is my first time and I’m a bit nervous.”

The receptionist looks as if he gets it.

“My first time, I only lasted 15 seconds,” he confesses, before vividly describing the sensation of being attacked by thousands of little stabbing points of pain.

“But when I finally did the whole two minutes, I felt so amazing afterwards,” he continues, adding that the experience motivated him to join the Othership crew.

As he hands me two towels, he assures me, “You’ll love it.”

At Othership, “it” is an ice water bath whose average temperature – 4 degrees Celsius – is equivalent to that of a Great Lake on a balmy winter day.

Aside from the receptionist, multitudes who have visited Othership since it opened in early 2022 love plunging into these icy baths. More precisely, they love the emotional and physical sensations experienced during, and especially after, taking the plunge. The benefits are myriad; medicinal, transformational, even transcendental – especially when combined with the ice bath’s antithesis: a steamy, sweat-inducing, pore-purifying stretch in an oven-hot sauna.

As the sign hovering above the front door on Adelaide Street announces, Othership is a “Sauna + Ice Bath.”

But it’s actually a lot more.

This was something that Toronto really needed. It builds connection and belonging.

A beautiful dance

Amanda Laine performing Aufguss at Othership.

Ten years ago, when Amanda Laine and Harry Taylor met and began seeing each other, they often visited Taylor’s family cottage on Georgian Bay. A highlight of these visits was spending time in the family sauna. As Laine confesses, that was where the couple bonded. Plunged into darkness, against an aural backdrop of reverberating sound bowls, the sauna became an important catalyst for their falling in love and their plans for creating a life together.

Laine and Taylor dreamed of doing something that would help people and make the world a better place. Their eureka moment occurred when they realized that the sauna (combined with dips in the icy lake) wasn’t just the incubator, but the thing itself. Over the next three years, they deep dove into the ins-and-outs of heat therapy while completing one of the world’s top sauna master training programs in the Netherlands.

However, back in Toronto, when they shared their plans to open a hot-and-cold bathhouse, multiple friends exclaimed, “What a coincidence! There are two other guys in the city looking to do the same thing!”

The “two other guys” were Robbie Bent and Myles Farmer. Bent had kicked an addiction habit and subsequently rebooted his personal and professional life with the help of meditation, psychedelic medicine work – and ice baths. His faith in the power of extreme cold was such that he built an ice bath in his Geary Avenue backyard. Together with his friend, Farmer, and his partner, Emily Hunter, he began inviting friends and neighbours over to partake in nightly sessions that included sound, aromatherapy and meditation. When participants confessed to feeling so much better afterwards, the trio realized that they’d struck a deep collective nerve. By summer’s end, the impromptu backyard baths had garnered a tight community of over 300. Then, as Fate (and mutual friends) would have it, they met Amanda Laine and Harry Taylor.

Despite being competitors, when the five got together to exchange ideas, there were so many “fireworks” that joining forces to collaborate was inevitable. While Laine and Taylor literally brought the heat, Bent, Hunter and Farmer knew all about taking a (cold) plunge. Laine describes the partnership that ensued as “a beautiful dance.”

Relationships, friendships, partnerships, otherships

The precursor to Othership was called Inward. Operating out of Bent’s renovated garage, it consisted of an ice bath, a tiny sauna and a tea room. But as the community continued to grow, the five partners realized that the business needed to grow as well. Then the pandemic hit.

Breathwork – which Laine describes as “an active form of meditation” – had always been integral to the hot and cold sessions. In traditional meditation, you passively observe your breath in its natural rhythm. However, with breathwork, you actually control your breathing – and in doing so, your autonomic nervous system. Not only can you energize or calm yourself, but you can also completely change your physiology.

“Breath control is one of the most powerful things available to us,” says Laine. “And you don’t have to go out and buy it.”

Staying calm became crucial as the world went into lockdown. When Inward’s community mourned the end of in-person sessions, the partners responded by hosting breathwork classes via Zoom. Their popularity led to the launch of the Breathwork app.

Although they filled a real need, the online breathwork sessions and app were meant to complement, not replace, the intensely social and multi-sensorial IRT experiences that had begun in Bent’s backyard. As the pandemic receded, the partners began looking for a space where people could congregate for three essentials: heat, cold and community.

Farmer, a King West restaurateur, was the one who tracked down the ideal space on the corner of Adelaide and Brant. Ironically, the previous tenant, Footwork, was an after-hours club that Bent had frequented back in his pre-sobriety days. As he confessed to Toronto Life, “It felt so powerful to reclaim the space for something restorative.”

By then, it had become clear to the partners that “Inward” didn’t really represent what they were about. The community they wanted to build, the transformations they wanted to nurture, were all about looking outward, connecting with others and Otherness.

Recalls Laine, “I remember Sarah Dobson, who was designing our logo said to us, ‘There are so many ships in our lives; relationships, partnerships, friendships... What you’re doing is creating another world, another place for people to belong as well as an otherworldly experience’.”

Such considerations – plus the fact it looked great on a hat – “is how we became Othership.”

Going with the (free) flow

Othership hats and other branded merch are the last things I glimpse before entering the ship itself. Designed by Toronto’s Futurestudio, the interior’s cavern-like rooms flow organically into one another, separated by unexpected angles, curves and corners. The lighting is restfully dim, casting a honey-like glow onto the walls, a mosaic of breeze blocks, textured riverstone tiles and red cedar. The colours are a harmonious desert blur of ochre and earth tones. Scattered on altar-like nooks are burning candles and incense that releases Othership’s signature scent – handcrafted by Taylor using four different types of cedar – into the air.

In a central area beyond the unisex changing room, a dozen or so young-ish, damp-ish women and men are moving around, contemplative or quietly chatting. Wearing a welcoming smile and a towel around his waist, our guide, Jef, casually kicks off our Free Flow session by inviting us to hydrate with cold water or hot Clover Botanticals’ adaptogenic tea, the latter containing stress-reducing valerian root and ashwagandha.

Free Flow sessions are recommended for newbies who want to experience Othership in an unstructured manner, while still having recourse to a guide. But Othership also offers a wide range of communal guided classes geared towards reaching certain emotional states. These run the gamut from primal awakening and releasing your inner warrior to hardwiring happiness and untangling (i.e. chilling out). Depending on the desired final state, classes may incorporate stretching, movement, affirmations and vocal releases, sensory-enlivening practices and meditation. Uniting them all is breathwork + hot + cold.

Bringing the heat

After chugging a cup of calming tea, I head to the sauna, handcrafted out of western red cedar, with room for 50 sweaty people. After a few minutes of deep-breathing to the playlist curated by Taylor – which morphs effortlessly from medieval chants to 21st-century lounge without missing a beat or breath – I’ve broken a sweat. In order to reap the full benefits of the heat, Jef recommends a sauna stay of 15-20 minutes.

According to the science, regular sauna sessions can do a lot of good. Exposure to heat can boost cardiovascular health by triggering some of the same brain and body mechanisms – such as increased heart rate and blood flow – that are activated when you work out. Saunas can also increase the release of growth hormones that stimulate muscle growth, strengthen bones, repair tissue and increase metabolism. On an emotional level, heat activates the brain’s endorphins, enhancing your mood. This explains why coming out of a sauna can leave you feeling mildly euphoric, or at the very least, majorly relaxed.

I’m already supremely mellow as Jef starts ladling essential oils infused with grapefruit and tangerine onto the hot stones. As the stones hiss and vapour rises, Jef whips off his towel and vigorously fans the perfumed steam. He does so with dramatic flourish that is part contemporary dance and part Spanish toreador. It’s ceremonial… and quite beautiful. When I commend Jef on his performance, he confesses that among the courses Othership guides must take is a Towel Waving class (part of Aufguss, a sauna ritual typically lasting 15 minutes that incorporates heat, essential oils and music).

I don’t know what enchants me more: inhaling citrusy sauna steam and feeling it course through my body, or knowing that there’s such a thing as a Towel Waving class…

Taking the plunge

To say that I feel incredibly chill upon exiting the sauna, seems contradictory, particularly when after a cleansing shower – and another cup of de-stress tea, this one savoured in front of the fireplace of the tea room – I’m heading to the bathhouse proper, where four tubs filled with transparent icy water await.

Jef is going to guide me through my first plunge. This begins with me standing on a wooden platform, overlooking the ice bath, while he leads me through some breathwork. Deep inhale for four long beats. Hold. Deep exhale for five long beats. Hold. Repeat.

After a couple of minutes, Jef sets the timer at the head of the bathtub and counts down five seconds. At zero, I step into the calm water, at first feeling nothing. Then everything.

Jef had warned me that when you set foot in an ice bath, during the first 10 seconds, your nervous system automatically kicks into fight or flight mode.

Instead of taking flight, I’m staying put by breathing for all I’m worth.

In truth, I feel as if I’ve become my breath.

I also feel amazingly calm inside, this despite the fact that I am indeed experiencing the sensation of being attacked by thousands of little stabbing points of pain. Strangely, however, it’s not a pain that “hurts.”

Jef is beating a sound bowl and the gongs reverberate with my breath.

“Thirty seconds,” he announces.

Thirty seconds is when the benefits of the cold begin to kick in as your stressed body activates hormonal responses. Such benefits include reduced inflammation and muscle soreness, improved circulation and a strengthened immune system. Cognitive performance gets a boost, as do energy levels.

“One minute,” says Jef, announcing the halfway mark.

Long inhales. Long exhales. The breath is all that matters. It feels like an eternity. It feels outside of time.

“Two minutes,” Jef calls, his voice triumphant.

I stand up and step out. My legs, initially unsure, are vibrating with a million tiny pinpricks. But I feel so alive and cleansed, not to mention filled with “I did it!” braggadocio. According to research, extreme cold nearly triples normal levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, both of which are serious mood boosters. Aside from elated, I feel purified, maybe a little bit reborn. I feel so good that I maybe want to cry.

Social impacts

Upon leaving Othership, I feel so incredibly Other… that all I want to do is come back.

Apparently, this is a common reaction.

As Taylor points out, from the outset of the Othership journey, “we’re feeling more vulnerable and open because we don’t have any clothes; that big part of our identity that protects us and keeps us within our shell is gone. But then we’re partaking in the hot and cold together. Our heart rates are increasing at the same time and our breath paces are all syncing up. And we’re going through something difficult together. Anytime you look at an example in which a couple, or a culture, goes through something intense together, they’re inherently bonded by that experience.”

At Othership, the shared experiences of extreme hot and cold cause barriers to drop and people to open up to strangers, often on a deep level. Such connections are all the more rare, and precious, in a city where so many suffer from what Laine refers to as “digital loneliness,” an ailment that became particularly acute during Covid. Laine recalls pandemic stories of friends who grew to hate Toronto. While some moved away, others found a reason to stay once Othership opened. They claimed it gave them a home.

“This was something that Toronto really needed.” declares Laine. “It builds connection and belonging.”

Taylor agrees. “I often see two people at Othership who seem to be having an amazing time. I go over and introduce myself. ‘How long have you been friends?’ I’ll ask. ‘Oh no, we just met.’ they’ll say, or ‘We met last week and we made a date to come back this week.’ And I think to myself, Yes! It’s working!”

Although the classes foster social interaction, on weekends, Othership also offers Evening Socials. During these two-hour, late-night sessions, the music is a little louder, the lights a little dimmer and the guides throw out questions for communal consideration that serve as ice breakers. The vibe is very social, but not in a clubby sense. As much as Othership is an anti-spa, it’s also an anti-club. Although some of the same dynamics are at play, Taylor points out that instead of the exogenous alcohol high that we rely on to shed our inhibitions, Othership promotes an endogenous high that comes from within.

“It’s a very pure state,” he notes.

“And you wake up feeling really great the next morning,” adds Laine.

The continuing journey

In its brief time on Earth, Othership has really taken off. Google reviews are uniformly (5-star) rapturous. The media has taken note, with profiles in U.S. publications such as Forbes and Vogue lamenting the (inconvenient) fact that to take an Othership journey necessitates journeying to Toronto. At least for now...

A second, much-bigger Othership – with the same concept and flow, but double the number of ice baths and a super-sized sauna – is under construction in Yorkville (in a former Brooks Brothers store, of all places). The estimated opening date is spring 2023. Plans are also in the works for an NYC outpost.

“It’s brought something totally new to Toronto and it’s something every city needs, which is why we’re expanding,” declares Laine. She agrees it’s interesting that cautious Toronto, more prone to copying proven trends than jump-starting them, is the cradle for a pioneering lifestyle and wellness concept.

Taylor is quick to point out that Othership draws on many cultures and sources of inspiration, some going back millennia. But it does so “in a unique way, with a certain spin that the modern world hasn’t seen” – and with Toronto DNA coursing through its veins.

“All five of us are Torontonians and we share a pride in having opened Othership in this city and seeing the effect it’s had here,” says Taylor. He has fond memories of the original Othership: the six-person sauna in Bent’s garage where each partner hand-picked friends to come over and have a sweat together. It was personal and meaningful and allowed for the creation of a community, organically, from scratch.

“No matter how much we expand, no other city’s Othership will ever have that same quality or story or journey,” he observes.

In other words, every other Othership will be other, a notion that is ultimately kinda hot – and also pretty cool.

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