Hot and Cold. From Sauna to Sea: The Finnish Way to a Happy, Healthy Life

Hot and cold contrast therapy is fast becoming the must-do wellness experience. This new book inspires readers with insights into the powerful Finnish method of alternating between a hot and cold environment in order to boost health and happiness and delves into how experiencing these contrasting extremes of temperature can change your outlook, your wellbeing and your life.

The sauna was recently ranked as the No. 1 global wellness trend by the Global Wellness Summit. Cold-water swimming is also a growing trend and is being proposed as a cure for all manner of things – from improving mental health to boosting immunity. But why is being hot good for you, and why is submerging into icy water good for you? And what about alternating between the two? What exactly is hot and cold therapy and why is it so vital for physical and mental health?

Dive into the unique world of hot and cold via Finland, where a good steam and an icy dip in a lake or the sea are the foundations of wellbeing for mind, body and soul.

This definitive guide by two experts takes readers on a journey into the transformative powers of hot and cold by pairing the sauna, that quintessential hot Finnish steam bath, with a cold-water dip. Along the way, it serves up the inspiration and practical tools for creating a wellness retreat at home using the Nordic contrast bathing philosophy, wherever you are in the world.

The Finnish hot and cold method boosts happiness by increasing wellbeing and encouraging connection with nature. It’s the secret to how the world’s happiest nation keeps calm and carries on – no matter what life throws at them. Now you too can learn their secrets.


Everyday Sisu

Sisu is a powerful mindset that makes Finland one of the happiest countries in the world, despite long winters, social isolation, and a history of challenging times.

Words that express happiness can help you improve your own. Katja Pantzar, author of The Finnish Way, says that a good sense of “sisu,” a Finnish concept that means not giving up in the face of challenges, can improve physical and mental well-being, which has the spillover effect of happiness. Practicing sisu “means using resilience-building skills such as looking for solutions when faced with setbacks and trying to break out of negative lifestyle habits and thought patterns,” Pantzar adds.

In Everyday Sisu, journalist Katja Pantzar explores the simple practices that make Finnish life so stable, sustainable, and healthy for body and mind, even when life doesn’t go as planned. You’ll discover ways to boost your mental and physical resilience to face life’s challenges head-on, including:

  connecting with nature

  strengthening community

  using what you have

  reframing what you can’t control

  adopting a solutions mindset

  finding strength in the struggle

Featuring insights from Finnish experts in mental health, wellness, sustainability, social justice, and more, this practical and empowering guide presents a roadmap for overcoming what you thought you couldn’t — and finding hope and tools to create a brighter way forward.


Daily Sisu: How to tap into Finnish fortitude for a more resilient life

Daily Sisu is an illustrated, hands-on guide on how to use sisu – the unique Finnish concept of fortitude in the face of challenges – in your everyday life.

Do you need some motivation to help you boost your wellbeing? Daily Sisu provides simple and sensible ways to improve your health and wellbeing based on the Nordic lifestyle in a portable handbook.
Daily Sisu offers up a range of practical everyday solutions to use at work and play from incidental exercise to cold showers and winter cycling, the easy Nordic diet, and embracing Nordic simplicity (own less, utilise considered consumption), with tips and inspirations to guide readers on how to create a healthier, and ultimately happier, way of living.

 


Rights sold:

WORLD ENGLISH: TarcherPerigee/Penguin Random House
JAPAN: Hojosha


Finnish Way

U.S. title: The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness through the Power of Sisu

Find your sisu: the Finnish concept of resilience, grit, and determination – part memoir, part guidance.

 

Forget hygge–it’s time to blow out the candles and get out into the world! Journalist Katja Pantzar did just that, taking the huge leap to move from North America to the remote Nordic country of Finland. What she discovered there transformed her body, mind and spirit. In this engaging and practical guide, she shows readers how to embrace the “keep it simple and sensible” daily practices with the power of sisu that make Finns one of the happiest populations in the world, year after year.

Topics include winter swimming, movement as medicine, forest therapy, healthy eating and the Nordic diet, and the gift of sisu: Why Finns embrace a special form of courage, grit and determination as a national virtue – and how anyone can dig deeper to survive and thrive through tough times.

In Finding Sisu discover the ways in which you too can integrate this age-old philosophy of hope and perseverance into your life, wherever you are in the world, whatever challenges you may face.

Find your courage. Find your grit. Find your sisu.


Rights sold:
BULGARIA, Skyprint
CHINA, Yeeyan Publishing
CZECH REP., Mladá Fronta
FINLAND, Siltala
FRANCE, Belfond
GERMANY, Bastei Lübbe
HUNGARY, Jaffa Kiado
ITALY, Marsilio/Sonzogno
JAPAN, Hojosha
NETHERLANDS, Kosmos
POLAND, WUJ
PORTUGAL, Marcador
RUSSIA, AST
SPAIN, Roca Editorial (WS)
THAILAND, OpenBooks
TURKEY, Mona Kitap/Alfa
UK, Hodder/Hachette (WE) (orig. publisher)
US, Tarcher Perigee/Penguin Random House

 


Katja Pantzar

Helsinki-based writer, editor and broadcast journalist Katja Pantzar was born in Finland and raised and educated in Canada. A freelance member of the Finnish public broadcasting company Yle’s news team, Pantzar is a regular contributor to Blue Wings, the in-flight magazine of Finnair and Helsinki correspondent for Monocle 24.

She is the author of three guides to Helsinki: The Hip Guide to Helsinki, Helsinki by Light and 100 Things to Do in Helsinki. Finding Sisu is the first book Pantzar has written that will be published outside of Finland.