Therma Spa takes a Nordic concept and plants it firmly on Canadian soil. An outdoor spa village might feel incongruous in a land where temperatures dip below zero in November. But Thermea spa village builds a world where wood burning stoves provide needed warm, winter hats comprise essential spa-sitting equipment, and thick steam shrouds the whole village in mystery. All put together Thermea Spa Village becomes a must-do activity.

Thermea Spa Village Winnipeg is the second of three Nordik spas that Spa Village operates in Canada. The first opened in Quebec in 2005, and the latest member of the team opened recently in Whitby. When Thermea Winnipeg opened in 2015, they hailed it as the “first Nordik spa in the prairies.”

What is a Therma Spa Village?

It does feel ironic to have a Nordic spa in Winnipeg (although, they are all the rage in Canada). The city feels practical and workaday. The spa, located on the edge of a suburban housing tract feels utterly luxiurious. Though you can look out over the edge of the Thermea property and see neighbors walking their dogs, Thermea feels like a world apart. From your dry sauna, you feel like an alien, quietly eyeing human life (they walk completely bundled up in parkas and furry hats, while you watch them, clad only in a bathing suit).

Note: Thermea sits in a small wood. In November, those trees are bare and the views stretch for a while. I suspect that in other seasons, lush leaves may make the site feel even more isolated.

You can easily spend a whole day at Thermea Spa Village. As a fan of spas, I must admit that I love a spa that allows you to bring a book on site. I can only sit and soak and clear my mind for so long, but I can sit in a spa with a good book for hours. Add in comfy chairs with warm blankets crackling woodfires where I can also read my book? I’m totally sold.

The Thermea Spa Village Process

Thermea centers around a simple “Nordic cycle“: hot, cold, relax. The cycle, which apparently goes way back in cold Scandinavian countries, proports to promote health and relaxation (and makes all sorts of other health claims, as most natural “healing” processes do).

Hot

Thermea Spa Village offers so many ways to get hot!

The spas

Spa goers start out hot. The Village offers a variety of hot options: a warm pool at 86F/30 C, a hot pool at 102F/38C, a Finnish sauna (a wooden tube with two long benches inside, a ritual sauna (a much bigger dry sauna space, with multiple levels of benches, and two steam saunas (one orange and one eucalyptyus). Cyclers are supposed to spend 10-15 minutes in the hot portion of the cycle.

I enjoyed the fact that Thermea Spa Village encouraged me to bring a hat (my head got cold in the spa!) and a book. Some spas do not allow books in the pools, but Thermea does, which I appreciated as a solo visitor. Note: many pool visitors read in the pools the early morning, but as the day got later, I felt like I was the only one with a book in the pools.

The Dry Saunas

Thermea contains two dry saunas. The main sauna is the ritual sauna, which contains three tiers of seating. The sauna is made all of wood and feels very natural. I only spent time in there during the rituals, but it seemed like a comfortable place to warm up as well.

I loved the Finnish sauna, essentially a wooden tube, with the coals and a large window at one end, and two long wooden benches along the sides. Looking out the window, in the woods, while warming, made the experiences feel very natural and special. And, although the tube looks tiny from the outside, it’s actually quite spacious. I spent a while in there with a young man and we chatted a while, but felt like we were quite far from each other in the sauna (a good thing: you don’t really want to be packed together in a small sauna!).

The wet Saunas

Thermea offers two wet saunas. The complex that contains the wet saunas (which I would call steam rooms) also contains washrooms and an exfoliation room.

The wet saunas provide different aromatherapies. The first is orange and the second is eucalyptus. The man I chatted with in the Finnish sauna said that he had to warm up to really prepare for the eucalyptus sauna because it felt very intense. The steam rooms felt very similar to me, but one may have been hotter. I enjoyed both scents and the rooms felt hot but not uncomfortable. Beware of the steam in the wet saunas: sometimes it gets so thick, it’s hard to see if there is anyone else already in there! Several times, newcomers nearly stumbled on those already in the rooms.

Once your skin gets warm, you can try out the exfoliation area, which is really just a two-person shower stall with two bowls of salt. One salt is flavored with lavender and the other with lemon and rosemary. You scrub your moist skin with the salt and then rinse off with the provided handheld showers. You leave feeling quite clean and refreshed

Cold

Thermea Spa Village offers two cold plunge options at 60F/15C. The top one includes a waterfall, so the “cold plunge” gets every bit of you. Right in front of that pool stands another, same temperature, but you control how much water gets on your upper body and head. I love the format of these plunges: long and narrow, they have steps at each end, so you descend, walk through, and climb out. Somehow, the walking plunge always feels more natural to me than cold plunges where you have to jump in and then jump out the way you came. The cold portion of the cycle is only meant to last 10-15 seconds. I may have walked through those pools a bit more speedily than that!

I did find it amazing that, with air temperature just around freezing, Thermea had to heat the water for the cold plunge!

Relax

Therma Spa Village also contains a range of relaxation options and given that I had a good book, I enjoyed them all.

Outdoor relaxation spaces

Throughout the village, wooden Adirondack type chairs surround fire pots, burning real wood, often topped with eucalyptus or other aromatics. Chairs come draped with heavy wool blankets and even in the biting cold, you can get quite cozy.

For warmer weather, Therma also offers an array of cafe tables and chair hammocks, but their lack of proximity to the fires made them less appealing on this cold day.

In the center of the village sits a roof-less, cabin-like space with a wood burning fire in the center. This room also contains Adirondack chairs and wool blankets. The walls give the impression of being inside while blocking out the wind. This area, which seats about half a dozen people, provides a warm and cozy place to relax.

The problem with being outside is that all of those relaxation areas exist at the whim of the weather. Though we got no rain or snow (which I think I might have kind of enjoy in the pools, but would not enjoy on dry land), wind conditions meant that the spa had to stop stoking the fires about halfway through my visit (like in Southern Californias, wildfires constitute in threat here). As a real fire is one of my great joys, that bummed me out.

Indoor rest areas

So, I explored the fully indoor relaxation areas. A cabin at the back, called Relaxa, contains two relaxation rooms (and a wide variety of complimentary drinks and herbal teas). The back room contains big cushions (wide enough for two) and some heated stone benches to lay on. Each cushion backed up to a wall with headphones channeling calming music. I saw lots of people here just taking naps, often snuggled up with a partner.

The front part of the cabin is a stepped tiled space, with the steps in deep curves, so that when you sit on them your body curves over them, with your butt low, your knees and little elevated and your legs gently draped over a tile hump (had to describe, see a picture here). These seats also have headphones available. This space has more natural light and people here seemed to be more alert, reading, and sometimes chatting. My favorite part of this area had to be the knotted ropes along the seating, to help you pull your self up from the lounging position.

Note: the chatting can get controversial! The village is supposed to be silent. Staff walk around with chalkboards that say “Shhhh.” Signs in the meditation cabin say, “Wellness is happening. Silence please.” So, when two ladies next to me got into a fairly animated (quiet, but not whispered) conversation, another women in front of us kept shooting them dirty looks, until finally a man asked them to please take their conversation outside. People definitely chatted quietly in the outdoor areas, which felt more covered by the sound of wind and pool jets. Overall, don’t come here to catch up with a friend; the experience is better when it’s quiet.

Thermea Spa Village Rituals

As the silence suggests, Thermea Spa Village promotes itself not just as a place to bathe and rest (like a Korean Spa or a work-a-day kind of Japanese onsen), but as a sort of sacred place of health and rejuvenation. So, the spa also comes with rituals.

The large dry sauna houses most of the rituals (though the relaxation room does have mediation sessions). When the rituals begin, the leader hits a gong in front of the ritual sauna and spa goers file in (they bring nothing but a towel to sit on).

Important note: these rituals get really full. I visited on a Tuesday morning (arriving when they opened) in November (when I feel pretty sure attendees were almost entirely locals) and both rituals I attended filled the sauna. For the second ritual, some folks got turned away. There is something a little off-putting about a meditative ritual that begins with people essentially running to get a spot!

Sweat and Stretch

Hourly, throughout the day, Thermea Spa Village hosts “rituals” in the Ritual Sauna. Most of the rituals are Aufguss, which is the welcome ritual, but a few get a bit more specialized. The advanced rituals took place later in the day (too late for me), but I loved the first ritual of the day: Sweat and Stretch.

The Sweat and Stretch ritual, which took place at 9am, seems like hot yoga (although not terribly intense, and bear in mind that I’ve never done hot yoga!). But attendees sit in the sauna, sweating, and the ritual leader walks us through a series of stretches.

For each set of stretches, the leader melts an aromatic snowball in the coals of the sauna, releasing scented steam throughout the sauna. Each snowball has a particular scent and although I didn’t catch the association of each scent with each series of stretches, it added to the feeling that we were doing something cleansing.

The stretching was basic — we stretched our backs and arms and necks, breathing deeply to take in the warm scented air. I am not a yoga expert, but the warmth does seem to make stretching feel easier, and I did leave the sauna feeling looser and refreshed. I enjoyed it! It’s not exercise, but it feel invigorating.

Aufguss

The Aufguss ritual initiates beginners to the Nordic Spa rituals. Some spa literature refers to Aufguss as a “show” and it did feel more like a show than a ritual. (Aufguss rituals vary from site to site. Mine seems to be on the simple side but they all have similar elements. Read here for a fancier version.)

Like the Sweat and Stretch, Aufguss times itself with snowballs. For each portion of the show, the leader places a new snowball on the coals, smashes it, circles it with water to release the steam, and then performs the ritual. Each new snowball comes with a new scent and a new song (I didn’t recognize the songs, but I they felt like pop songs: I probably should have known them). The ritual involved the leader moving around the sauna flipping, turning and throwing a towel. Ostensibly, the towel movement pushes the air and aromatherapy into the audience (as well as some cooling breeze). Mostly, I found it fascinating to watch the choreography, like a primitive version of my child’s high school’s flag team’s movements.

I preferred the Sweat and Stretch. It felt more active. But I enjoyed Aufguss and recommend attending it. It’s part of the experience. Although the website sells this as a spiritual event, it feels more like a show, but a fun one.

Hint: the seats higher up in the sauna get very hot (heat rises!). And the ritual sauna remains open for lounging between rituals. The rituals fill up fast (I nabbed the last open seat in the upper corner). I recommend settling in in the sauna a few minutes before the ritual begins, so you save a space before the gong rings and everyone else rushes in.

Other Thermea Spa Village Amenities

The Village really does contain a village full of activities. I didn’t even sample them all!

Thermea Spa Restaurant

An onsite restaurant provides food, snacks, and drinks (including cocktails) all day. Offerings looked good, but as I only stayed for about three hours, I didn’t stop for lunch. People definitely enjoyed sitting in the spas with their cocktails. And, if I stayed for the whole day, I’d appreciate being able to eat on-site. The restaurant offers both indoor and outdoor seating.

Treatments

Thermea Spa Village offers a wide range of spas and beauty treatments (facials, etc.). When I tried to make an appointment (a few days ahead of when I wanted to go to the spa), all of the treatment options had already filled up. I attended early on a Tuesday morning in November! So, if you plan to attend on a weekend or during busy season, I recommend booking well in advance! So, I cannot speak to the quality of the massages, but I suspect they are lovely. Truly everything about this spa felt high quality. However for $167 (Canadian), massages felt dear and I was fine just enjoying the Village (entry is $97 Canadian).

The changing Rooms

Magnetic bracelets control everything at Therma Spa Village (from making purchases to opening your locker). Locker rooms seem well organized. They don’t supply a ton of amenities for putting yourself together (though there are hair dryers and cotton swabs) so make sure to bring whatever tools you need if you’re going somewhere after your spa visit.

Lockers are small, but big enough to hold your clothes and bag.

You receive a towel and a robe at check in, but the kind man who checked me in assured me that when my towel/robe got cold I shouldn’t “be too polite” check ask for new ones. They are happy to give another.

Tips for Enjoying the Thermea Spa Village

When to go?

Go early in the morning (they open at 8am) or later in the evening (they close at 10pm). When I arrived just after 8am, I saw only one other person soaking in the tubs. By 10am, the pools seemed full. One closer look, I saw people occupying all the seating. But I also saw that people moved in and out quickly, so it was not impossible to get in). The early ritual filled up, but not as fast as the 10am, which felt almost like a Disneyland ride.

I did not try the Therma Spa Village at night, but although I could not book appointments for treatments in the morning last minute, I did see some evening appointments available. So, I think that evenings may be quieter. I bet the nighttime is also quite beautiful.

I’ve heard that the weekends get very busy and very loud. So, as with so many things, try to go during the week if you can. But, no matter when you go, understand that the facility is not huge and I suspect it’s always quite busy. Don’t imagine that you will have the place to yourself.

The best part about the spa is that people rotate through areas fairly regularly. Although the spas or saunas may look full, if you watch for a minute, you’ll find yourself rotated into a spot.

How long to stay?

I think 3-4 hours gives you enough time to experience all of Thermea Spa Village’s offerings. (Note: I did not take time from spa-ing for a treatment!). However, I did feel like I would have been happy to spend the entire day. I could have easily settled in with my book in the spa or the relaxation rooms and enjoyed some lunch. The place felt peaceful and lovely and like a place where I could easily settle into relaxation and doing nothing.

Thermea Spa does not allow phones; it’s actually quite freeing not to be able to scroll or check messages. I snuck my phone in to grab some photos, but otherwise did not use it and I’m glad I didn’t. It’s peaceful to have no phone! Enjoy it!

What to bring

Thermea Spa Village is a coed, bathing suit spa. Unlike many other spas I’ve visited, you keep your bath suit on at all time and all spaces, except for the changing areas, are coed. Bring a comfortable swimsuit, ideally one you don’t mind walking around in (it can get annoying to put on the robe everytime you switch areas).

You also want to bring flipflops or shower shoes. The rules say that shoes must be worn in the village. I frequently left mine by my robe and did not have any problems, but important to have the shoes in case (you also want them for the washrooms).

If it’s cold, I’d recommend a hat or beanie. The wind can get cold on your ears even when your body is soaking in lovely warm water. I’d also recommend a book or puzzles or journal. Thermea presents you with lots of time to sit and relax, but disallows phones, so bring your analog leisure activities.

I brought a light tote to carry my hat and book and just hung the bag on a hook with my robe, so it was easy to get my things (and keep them out of the wet). I also brought a reusable water bottle and kept it in my bottle.

Finally, depending on what you plan to do after your spa day, bring the toiletries you need to put yourself back together before you leave. The spa has some hair dryers, but not too many other amenities in this area.

Parking

I easily found a parking spot when I arrived about 20 minutes after the spa opened. But, by the time I left, the lot was full and street parking stretched for a block or so. I suspect that at busy times, parking may include a bit of a walk. Just bring some proper outdoor walking shoes in addition to your flipflops!

Final Thoughts on Thermea Spa Village

I’m so glad I went. And, I almost wish I had planned a whole day. It’s a great place to sit and relax and, for a California girl like me, a wonderful place to feel like I really got to enjoy some wintery cold (outside!). I’m excited to try out some of Thermea’s other Canadian offerings!