I caught wind of RECESS Thermal Station, Montréal’s first social hot-cold circuit experience, through a post a friend had sent me that promoted the sauna’s impressive Aesop product partnership. My friend Jeff and I were in Montréal on somewhat of a wellness tour — walking over to the redeveloped neighbourhood of Griffintown from the Cité du Multimedia, where we had done an infrared mat pilates class at the recently opened ERE. We were bouncing on endorphins and the sweet handwritten notes on cue cards that seemed to be tucked into all the city’s corners. There was a palpable shift in Montréal’s most sleekly designed spaces, with health, wellness, and community moving to the centre of the conversation.

We arrived at RECESS for a Guided Slow Flow hot-cold circuit. The reception desk in raw cold-rolled steel is delineated by a glass block screen. Deeper inside the 418-square-metre space, the facility — established by Adam Simms and Marilyne Gagné and designed by Montréal-based architecture studio Future Simple Studio — features as its crowning jewel a cylindrical wooden sauna, a warm, oak-toned sanctuary that visitors step into from a compact unisex locker area lined with wood storage.

The central oculus light above the coal drum was like a restorative sun as our guide, Valérie, hovered nearby infusing scents into the steam. We stretched out on the three tiers of slatted wood benches that are arrayed along the sauna’s circumference to encourage exchange and interaction — hearing each other’s breaths rise in the air.

After some rounds of guided breathing exercises and “happy baby,” our group was escorted out of the second door of the sauna. It led to the facility’s cooler zone, a cavernous, dimly lit space equipped with Aesop-stocked showers and a cold plunge reimagined into the expanse of a custom pool.

Surrounding the sauna, stone benches invite conversation, while a tea station offers hydration and quiet reflection.

Unlike the traditional single-person cold-plunge tub, RECESS’s cold-plunge pool can hold 12 people in a shared bath. I’m not always a fan of timed-exit guided sauna experiences, but the collective cold plunge towards the end of the 75-five minute session made it well worth it. Valérie encouraged our group of about 10 people to hum together as we exhaled into the 3°C water.

Our hums melded together into a three-minute chorus that echoed off the tiled floor and sculptural stone wall feature nearby. Cool blue light rippling across the water reinforced the sanctity of the experience, as our group fought the urge to resurface, and my heart slowed to a steady pulse. After the plunge was over, I sat for a moment to collect myself. I retreated to a beanbag chair in the recessed, curtain-wrapped lounging space, where people were already congregating, cupping mugs of hot tea.