Redesigning Connection Part One: The Sauna Effect
- Jez Belas
- 18 hours ago
- 2 min read
I work in ‘the wellbeing space’. But, my screen time is embarrassing.
Since leaving teaching in 2022, it has quietly ballooned. Laptop. Phone. Desk. Repeat. Days spent talking about human connection while toggling between tabs.
We’ve built a world where we are permanently reachable and rarely available.
I rejoined the gym recently. Everyone is wired in. Headphones on. Eyes down (sometimes at screens on treadmills). Entire lives curated through playlists and podcasts. Fifty people in one room. Zero interaction.
Then I started using the sauna.
No phones. No headphones. No hiding.
Just heat and time.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: I’ve had more meaningful conversations in that wooden box than I’ve had in most “networking” spaces this year!
A nineteen year old who feels completely lost after education.An eighty-two year old who has figured out what actually matters.Honest conversations about fatherhood, regret, AI, health, purpose.
Not because we’re exceptional communicators.
Because we’re trapped together and there’s nothing else to do.
When someone speaks, you actually listen. Not half-listen. Not wait for your turn. Not glance at a notification. Listen.
We talk endlessly about belonging and community in schools and workplaces, but we design environments that often destroy attention.
Open plan offices. Constant notifications. Back to back meetings. Screens in every pocket.
Then we wonder why connection feels thin.
The sauna works for a few simple reasons.
Undivided attention is forced. Shared discomfort lowers defences. Side-by-side positioning feels safer than face to face interrogation. And friction creates presence. Presence is now rare, which makes it powerful.
I bought a home sauna (not another midlife crisis?!) for the health benefits. The Finnish longitudinal research linking regular sauna use to reduced cardiovascular disease and increased longevity caught my attention. The idea of hormesis, controlled stress strengthening the body, makes sense.
But the real adaptation hasn’t been physiological.
It’s relational.
Some of the most important conversations I’ve had with my two boys recently have happened in there. Shoulder to shoulder. No screens. No escape route. Just heat and honesty.
It has made me question something.
Are we accidentally designing connection out of our lives?
In schools. In homes. In organisations.
Maybe the answer isn’t more. Maybe it’s removal.
Take away the phone.Take away the noise.Take away the easy escape.
What’s left is discomfort. And then, if you sit in it long enough, connection.
This is the first in a short series exploring how we might redesign connection in a hyper connected world.