1 Introduction

COVID-19 has been a tough lesson for the entire educational sector worldwide, causing the largest education disruption ever (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021). In some countries, the education lockdown was more of a catastrophe than in others, which has caused huge inequalities and suffering (Meinck et al., 2022; UNICEF, 2022), even in higher education (UNESCO, 2022). Like at other educational levels, there is a need for research-based studies in higher education, in which the experiences of various teaching and learning activities, as well as assessment methods, developed during the COVID-19 restrictions are evaluated (Brown & Baume, 2022; Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021).

This chapter presents experiences from a voluntary course conducted by the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki during the COVID-19 university lockdown. In five years, the sustainability-focused phenomenon-based learning course (in the following called PLS course) has been developed and studied, evaluated, and further developed with the help of research. The course is part of the project Sustainable World Heritage Learning through a Phenomenon-based Approach (SveaSus), which addresses the sustainability challenges through pedagogy. Specifically, the SveaSus project focuses on promoting understanding and knowledge about sustainability at World Heritage sites and how to work cross disciplinarily, and even transdisciplinarily, and multilingually through multimodal solutions (Wolff et al., 2019). With sustainability and World Heritage as the focus, the project develops phenomenon-based learning, which is a learning approach that is interdisciplinary, collaborative, student-centred, and is based on authentic problems (Wolff, 2022). The learning is linked to the students’ interests and emotions; it emphasizes wide-ranging learning situations and at its best, encourages ethical and existential discussions (Wolff, 2022; Wolff et al., 2019).

A basic theory behind the project is phenomenology, especially Merleau-Ponty's ideas of the phenomenology of sensations (Merleau-Ponty, 2012). Merleau-Ponty (2012) allocated bodily experiences and doings before knowing. He was critical to Cartesian dualism and did not believe it was possible to overcome corporal consciousness, since humans are essentially embodied and social, according to him. Their consciousness is strongly entangled with their bodies as well as with each other. In the SveaSus project, embodiment plays a major role. Another theoretical foundation of the project is Bildung. A central feature of Bildung is that it encourages humans to reflect critically on the past and thereby transform the present towards a future they find more acceptable from a collective global perspective (Beck et al., 2015).

Through theoretical and practical development and research, the aim of the project team of eleven members and a large partner network of experts is to implement the theories employing art and embodied methods (Wolff et al., 2019). They are also developing collaboration and searching to implement the results among new target groups. The research includes developing theories as well as methods, and collecting and analysing empirical data in the form of texts, videos, interviews, pictures, et cetera. This chapter concentrates on results from data in the form of the diaries which the students wrote as streams of consciousness after sauna bathing.

When the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to shut down university education worldwide, and replace it with remote courses, the SveaSus team had planned a course built on an earlier pilot version. Like the pilot, the course took place at Suomenlinna sea fortress that is one of Finland’s World Heritage sites situated close to the capital Helsinki. It was the first time this course was offered in the course programme for all the faculty’s students. The course had to be run online, but the students could visit the islands in small groups, if they wanted. This new arrangement was a great challenge. How could anybody authentically teach and learn about World Heritage without being on the site? The problem was solved by adding the sauna bathing as a course environment. This might sound surprising, but in 2020, the Finnish sauna culture had been inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. If the sauna bathing was as special as that, it was special enough to have it in our course. Therefore, in addition to World Heritage, the course came to include Cultural Heritage.

Saunas play a major role in Finnish culture. In Finland there are at least two million saunas (Laatikainen, 2019) for its 5.5 million inhabitants. Saunas are found in a variety of Finnish buildings, like private homes, apartment buildings, summer cottages, gymnasiums, swimming pools, hotels, and are often even separate buildings. A typical Finnish sauna is a small wood-surfaced room, with stepped boards, and a stove with a basket or tray of rocks. The energy comes either from firewood or electricity. Steam is created by throwing a ladle of water on the stones (in the Finnish sauna culture this is called “löyly”). According to Laukkanen et al. (2018) the recommended temperature for a sauna bath in a Finnish sauna is in general between 80 and 115 degrees Celsius. In the sauna, one sits, naked, with others for a while and perspires (see also, Karhunen, 2013). The duration of a stay in the sauna depends on the comfort and temperature of the sauna bather, but it usually ranges from five to 20 min (Laukkanen et al., 2018).

Sauna bathing has a strong tradition in Finland; it is more a ritual than an act of hygiene (Laatikainen, 2019). However, even if most Finns go to the sauna once a week (Laatikainen, 2019), not all the students on the course had this opportunity, because some lived in small flats without saunas, because public saunas were closed during the lockdown, or because they could not visit family or friends with saunas. Therefore, we decided that if the students were not able to go to the sauna, they could also write or make an audio clip after other bathing activity like showering, bathing, or winter swimming instead of sauna bathing. However, the exercise of especially sauna bathing suggested an emphasis on learning through embodied experiences when engaging directly and personally with a practice of immaterial cultural heritage particularly for the Finnish culture. This embodied learning environment encouraged the students to approach learning and obtain academic efficacy through an intuitive approach, empowering them to trust their own meaning-making as learners.

Since the SveaSus project was running before the pandemic and already included research, interventions, and methodical explorations, it was easy to directly start collecting the experiences during the distance education years. Therefore, this chapter provides so-called best practice as an example of how teaching and learning could be realized alternatively during COVID-19. Unlike most other studies focusing on how education went online because of the pandemic, this study shows learning as an embodied and conscious part of a course instead of its digital implementations. There are many medical research reports on the positive influence of sauna bathing on physical health, but to focus on which thoughts, experiences, and emotions the bathing trigger are odder. In addition, the stream of consciousness approach gave access to the students’ reflections. Therefore, the combination of sauna bathing and stream of consciousness writing or recording (voice/audio diary) as part of a distance higher education course makes this study unique.

The aim of this study was to gain insight into the students’ lifeworld during the COVID-19 lockdown. To reach this aim, we investigated the thoughts that are born when sauna bathing (or other bathing) followed by stream of consciousness writing or recording becomes part of a course in higher education. The research question is: What did the students write and talk about in their (sauna) diaries?

Based on our results, we discuss whether stream of consciousness writing or recording after sauna bathing (or other bathing) might be a useful pedagogical approach during a lockdown, and if and how this kind of approach could be applicable in higher education in general.

2 How COVID-19 Changed Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

In March 2020, higher education had to change its practice rapidly, and convert to online education. Worldwide, this quick change paved the way for digital learning (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021), also in Finland (e.g., Mäkipää et al., 2022). However, this meant tough challenges everywhere since the faculties had to discover how to deliver quality education and support the students in engaging in meaningful educational activities even if they were not on campus. Consequently, the transition from face-to-face learning to online learning was neither unproblematic for teachers and other educational staff members, nor for students, even if their experiences differed (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021). Nobody was prepared for this fast makeover of teaching and study routines, referred to as “Education in Emergency”. In addition, all involved often also experienced unpleasant changes in their own or their family members’ lives, because of restrictions such as prohibiting access to workplaces, travel restrictions stopping people from seeing their friends and relatives, or because they or somebody close was seriously ill (e.g., Neuwirth et al., 2021). Challenges especially emerged due to students’ deteriorating mental health (e.g., Petillion & McNeill, 2020; Sarasjärvi et al., 2022) in a risky and often lonely time, in which it was no longer safe to step outside one’s home and meet other people (Wolff, 2020). Other problems were the unequal availability of the internet and digital devices.

In higher education, both teachers and students reported positive as well as negative teaching and learning experiences, due to the changes caused by the pandemic (Oliveira et al., 2021). However, Neuwirth et al. (2021), see the challenges as new learning opportunities. Therefore, they encourage teachers to “re-envision” and “re-imagine” both the curriculum design and its implementation. They think faculty members as well as students need to be creative and adapt to new ways of teaching and learning, so the online learning situations would provide a sense of both “normalcy” and “purpose”.

In an Italian study involving students from six universities, the researchers used photo diaries (photos with texts) as a part of a psychology course to explore the students’ experiences during COVID-19 (Gaboardi et al., 2022). As in our study, the diaries were both included in the course and used as research data to capture the students’ daily lives and their contexts. The results of the study by Gaboardi et al. (2022) show that the photos and the verbal descriptions focused on the students and their everyday lives. Family members and pets were common in the diaries, and many of the diaries revealed emotions. Spending time with significant others, pets, the outdoor environments, and food were often mentioned as something positively destructive, which provided emotional support, whereas objects, like laptops, were associated with something negative. Food, on the other hand, was seen as both something joyful and something sad. It was also obvious in the study by Gaboardi et al. (2022) that the students enjoyed telling their own stories about their daily occupations and thoughts.

During the COVID-19 lockdown it was not possible to be on campus; teachers had to be creative about the learning environment. People learn all the time and everywhere. Learning takes place through formal learning environments, but also in other contexts and situations (Vähäsantanen, 2013). The twenty-first-century university campus consists of a range of different general and specialized spaces such as laboratories and lecture halls (Sandström et al., 2022). A learning space is seen as a dynamic entity and “the relationship between the dimensions of the environment and people is exactly what counts as the learning environment, through intelligent activities and interactions” (Sandström, 2020, p. 20). A socio-cultural perspective on learning treats knowledge formation and learning as a social phenomenon. Related to this is the idea of recognizing outside the classroom learning as an equal contributor to knowledge (Biggs & Tang, 2011).

To create qualitative learning opportunities, it is necessary to expand the learning environment outside educational institutions. Especially the development of the skills required for future teachers are always contextual matters. One of the important qualities of teachers in twenty-first-century education is critical thinking and creativity, the practice of thinking outside the box (Good, 2008). In our study, we chose saunas and to have other bathing proceedings as the focus not only because of the sauna’s status as Intangible Cultural Heritage, but also since these procedures were already a part of the students’ daily lives. Yet, as a part of an assignment, they became a new approach.

3 Sauna Bathing

Water and bathing as an embodied experience has always been important for humans (Hannus, 2018). The sauna bathing and similar traditions can be found all over the world (e.g., Groark, 2005; Hahn, 2016) and especially in Finland (see, Blåfield & Blåfield, 2019). Sauna bathing is an ancient human tradition. It can take many forms, but archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that it is at least several thousand years old. For good reason, Finland is the nation most associated with the practice (Tsonis, 2016). Sauna bathing is a significant part of Finnish culture even outside the sauna: poems, songs, and games have passed the word sauna for generations. In the sauna, people have been born, the course of life has been discussed and loved ones have been washed away for their last journey (Edelsward, 1993; Karhunen, 2013; Laatikainen, 2019). The main difference compared to saunas and any form of sweat bathing in the world is that the Finns have exported their model worldwide more successfully than others in the last 100 years (see Björkroth & Engberg, 2022; Tsonis, 2016). The inscription of the Finnish sauna on the UNESCO list means that the Finnish Heritage Agency together with Finnish sauna communities and promoters of the sauna culture are committed to promoting a living Finnish sauna tradition in many ways. In addition to its vitality, it ensures the continuity of the sauna tradition and emphasizes the importance of Finnish sauna culture as part of Finnish customs and everyday tradition, as well as part of well-being and democracy (Finnish Heritage Agency, 2020). The sauna building has played a significant role, both culturally and historically, as a meeting place in everyday life, according to Karhunen (2014). Public saunas were often the only place for proper bathing. Karhunen (2014) describes how the sauna etiquette involves packing a sauna basket with a sauna whisk made of birch twigs in addition to washing supplies. They also explain that the sauna whisk was used for whipping the body to relax the muscles while throwing water on the stove while sweating in the heat. The sauna whisk was already a feature of the sauna in European urban saunas as early as the Middle Ages but has remained so in Finland until the mid-twentieth century. In the public sauna, people exchanged gossip with people they knew while washing. The children's sauna trip was often topped off with a bottle of lemonade, Karhunen (2013) tells.

Alongside the weekly customary culture and emerging evidence that beyond its use for pleasure, sauna bathing may be linked to several health benefits (see, Laukkanen et al., 2018; Laukkanen & Laukkanen, 2020), saunas have also been associated with a spiritual, sacred dimension of experience (Anttonen, 1996). Visiting the sauna has been described as a kind of rite of passage, whereby the individual moves from one social status to another (Suojanen, 2000). The repeated ritual of purification associated with sauna referred to the individual symbolically moved from dirt to cleanliness. Going to the sauna was a ritual that separated the sacred from the everyday from the specificity and holiness of the sauna space: the sauna was like a church. The sauna is still a place for relaxing, but also a place that inspires and spurs creativity (Laatikainen, 2019). According to a psychoanalytic perspective, the sauna is successful at promoting a sense of well-being because it offers “the bather a wide variety of opportunities to discharge the instinctual tensions deriving from the early stages of personality development, for which no proper outlets exist in other social context” (Edelsward, 1993; Tähkä et al., 1971, p. 65). The significance of sauna bathing as mental cleansing is also discussed by Seesmeri (2018). The research opens the sauna experience and the meanings of the sauna through bodily and sensory experience. This experience is multisensory and strongly attuned to memories. The sauna places the experience in a special relationship between the place and the landscape, in connection with which the senses present at that moment raise the memories about the sauna and the shared cultural meanings as part of the experience. The sounds and smells tune people to experience the sauna as it was experienced before (Seesmeri, 2018). Similarly, as sauna bathing makes people quiet, it also stirs up discussions and thoughts.

Going to the sauna is a ritual, even in its most mundane form ... Sauna bathing awakens many senses and the landscapes of our memories, and perhaps that is why the experience is perceived as so comprehensive. The landscapes of sauna are not only environments that recall tangible details, but rather vague memories ─ moods, glimpses evoked by sensory experiences, returns to moments that lead to something important. The memory of the body transports the bather between the past and the present. (Laatikainen, 2019, p. 17)

4 Stream of Consciousness and Reflection

A spontaneous stream of thoughts, in which the thoughts flow freely, is called stream of consciousness (Sripada & Taxali, 2020). Buchanan (2018) specifies the stream as not merely thoughts, but also sense-data like perceptions, memories, and sensations, which the mind develops without self-censorship or self-reflection. When discussing the idea of “stream of consciousness”, the author William James is central (Buchanan, 2018; Osowski, 1989). In the nineteenth century, James uses this metaphor as a name for a specific literature genre. In the twentieth century, stream of consciousness was discussed in relation to authors like Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Arthur Schnitzler. These authors did not describe the inner life of their book characters as clear and structured, but instead as chaotic and confusing (Kriegel, 2015; Sang, 2010). This means that their thoughts about a specific topic could suddenly be followed by a completely different topic (Sripada & Taxali, 2020). William James saw consciousness as something personal, active, and selective (Osowski, 1989). In addition, he meant that all thoughts are surrounded by other thoughts, and that the thought of something is different from the thing. By the “stream” metaphor, he captured the consciousness as continuous, flowing, steadily changing, and diverse (Osowski, 1989).

According to Wallace (1989), the stream of consciousness is both content and a technique. The content incorporates incoherent inner psychic existence and functioning, and it becomes visible through techniques of indirect and direct monologues and free associations. The technique of stream of consciousness is a kind of inner looking to receive insight into who one is. As stories about other people, it becomes a way of having insight into other people’s inner life (Kriegel, 2015). Virginia Woolf is known for the “indirect interior monologues” that she describes through her characters, especially in the novel To the Lighthouse (Sang, 2010).

There are many interpretations of consciousness, and some of these perspectives see consciousness as something real and robust, a view in which sensory experiences, bodily sensations, and conscious thought are noticed as equally real as mountains and trees (Dainton, 2000). Stream of consciousness prose captures bodily sensations, sensory perceptions, and emotions, but also thought processes and intellectual aspects of emotions (Kriegel, 2015). Thus, through streams of consciousness writers, thoughts, hopes, and desires of other people can be imagined and reflected on.

5 The Study’s Theoretical Approach

Qualitative educational research is often based on phenomenology. This is not far-fetched, since “a phenomenologist … is concerned with the essential structures of cognition and their essential correlation to the things known” (Husserl, 2001, p. xviii). Edmund Husserl, who is seen as the philosopher who founded the school of phenomenology, argues that knowledge cannot be understood as independent of human consciousness (Willis, 2001). By contrast, knowing is subjective and the subjects are intertwined with the meaning they recognize.

Even if Husserl (2001, p. 168) denotes that intuitions inspire meaning-making, he does not see intuitions as enough, but states that “we must go back to ‘the things themselves’”. According to Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 7), phenomenology is “the study of essence … such as the essence of perceptions or the essence of consciousness”, in which the word “essence” implies a lived experience, a linguistic construction, or a phenomenon (van Manen, 1990). Of interest in phenomenology is the humans’ “lifeworld”. Therefore, the researcher’s task becomes one to “capture a certain phenomenon of life in a linguistic description that is both holistic and analytical, evocative and precise, unique and universal, powerful and sensitive” (van Manen, 1990, p. 39). The phenomenological researchers do not rely on calculating measurable features or have an interest in objective cognitive aspects, but are engaged in pathic knowledge, which means that they rely on

the sense and sensuality of the body, personal presence, relational perceptiveness, tact for knowing what to say and do in contingent situations, thoughtful routines and practices, and other aspects of knowledge that are in part pre-reflective, pre-theoretic, pre-linguistic (van Manen, 2008, p. 20).

Pathic understanding relates to empathy and sympathy; it is, thus, not mainly intellectual, or technical, but non-theoretical, existential, emotional, embodied, situational, relational, temporal, and actional (van Manen, 2008; van Manen & Adams, 2010). Studying pathic dimensions of practice is dependent on a special language that can communicate the lived sensibility of the lifeworld through for example experiential stories. Yet, this kind of sense of pathic in others’ existence can be the focus of the researchers’ reflection.

Consequently, the researchers employ their own emotions and simultaneously emotions are subjects for phenomenological inquiries as a central part of lived experience (Elpidorou & Freeman, 2014; van Manen, 2008). Scarantino and de Sousa (2021) shortly denotes emotions as being a subject’s phenomenologically prominent response when experiencing a noteworthy event which can trigger distinctive bodily changes and deeds. Therefore, emotions can be viewed as both a private mental state but also as an embodied state (Krueger, 2014).

In addition, understanding of lived experiences relates to the idea of the intentionality of consciousness, which encompasses the idea that human consciousness always is directed towards something (Sundler et al., 2019). This implies that humans’ experiences reflect something that is meaningful against a specific background or something experienced earlier (see, Merleau-Ponty, 2012). Yet, as Alhazmi and Kaufmann (2022) maintain, to explain human experience is challenging, since humans are complex creatures with multifaceted experiences that are simultaneously psychologically oriented, culturally driven, and socially structured. Therefore, a phenomenological study requires flexibility, and is based on empathy. It recognizes both the researcher’s and the participant’s subjectivity in relation to the phenomenon of study.

In this study, we use the term “reflection” for both the students’ purposeful thoughts regarding their own experiences and the meaning-making of them, but also the researchers’ thoughts based on the students’ diaries. “The purpose of phenomenological reflection is to try to grasp the essential meaning of something” (van Manen, 1990, p. 77).

The choice of a phenomenological approach appeared relevant in a study focusing on the students’ stream of consciousness. Phenomenology is also a basic theory in the SveaSus project, and it is therefore appropriate (Wolff, 2022). Consequently, the sauna diary idea relates to phenomenology.

6 The Course Modification and the Sample

During the COVID-19 university lockdown, the PLS course that is the context of this study included lectures on sustainability and sustainability education, World Heritage and cultural heritage education, sustainability and mathematics education, phenomenon-based learning, biodiversity, digital storytelling, co-teaching and multilingualism, and the Finnish sauna culture. Besides lectures, the students participated in three workshops on corporal perspectives on ecology, improvisation in art education and life, and nature eurhythmics. In addition, the students worked in small groups with video story telling making short films on sustainability topics. To support the group work, one of the teachers (T2) offered three tutoring sessions per group. The course ended with a one-day seminar, in which the groups presented their digital stories and in which students and teachers jointly discussed the pedagogical implications and implementation of the course outcome. The mandatory assignments included the digital story groupwork, the individual sauna diaries, and individual essays. Only the essays were assessed with a numerical score.

Since the students were a heterogenous group, their daily context during the COVID-19 lockdown was all but similar. The sample of the sauna diary study consisted of 16 students who varied in age from young to middle-aged adults. They attended five study tracks within the Faculty of Educational Sciences studying to become teachers and other experts in Education. Their study languages were Swedish, Finnish, or English. Some students lived alone, others with partners, and some were parts of families with children. The students lived in various kinds of buildings, such as family houses or small flats. The housing impacted on whether they had access to a sauna or not. There was a total of 47 diary entries, of which 29 were in written format out of which two of the students wrote some of their texts by hand, and one student had transcribed their talking into text. Sixteen of the diaries were in audio (or video) format.

7 Stream of Consciousness Diaries After Going to the Sauna

The sauna bathing diary in the form of a stream of consciousness writing exercise was one of the mandatory assignments in the course. The students wrote diaries three times during the duration of the course, repeating the writing between the in-depth teaching days of the course. As the assignment, students were first instructed to sauna bathing. After they had finished bathing, they were instructed to spend 10 min either writing or recording their voice as they wrote/spoke using the method of stream of consciousness. The students were asked to reflect freely on both the course topics as well as experiences, emotions, and thoughts that had emerged during the time they were sauna bathing. The students were encouraged to write or record from a state in which they still had the sensations of the experience in their minds. In particular, the students were instructed to avoid rationalizing, self-censoring, and editing their texts in real time (or afterwards), but rather they should let their thoughts come out as they came to mind and write them down as such, simply focusing on how they had felt during the sauna bathing experience and how they felt afterwards in their present state of writing or recording. The time frame of ten minutes was chosen to not overwhelm the students with an unconventional format of learning diary assignment but still to give enough time that allowed them to enter a deeper state of engagement and exploration utilizing the method. A phenomenological learning approach also requires reflection. According to Moon (2000), reflection has been misjudged in education, but could be denoted through various learning activities using written, visual, oral, or performance modes of expression. In their article on reflection and assessing reflection, Barton and Ryan (2014) argue that in higher education reflection needs to be taught and assessed via multimodal approaches, otherwise the reflective practice remains superficial (p. 410).

Due to varying circumstances, such as the living environment and lack of access to public saunas because of the lockdown, students were alternately offered the opportunity to do the assignment after taking a shower in a mindful way, creating an experience like sauna bathing. The repetition of the exercise functioned as a kind of embodied learning diary, as the students were studying and exploring topics and phenomena linked both to sustainability and cultural heritage education during the course. Thus, the sauna bathing, or the act of showering mindfully, served as an anchor which had the opportunity to create and serve as an intimate and personal learning experience and environment. As such, this assignment acted in relation to the other assignments and content of the course, all of which took place in another way of relating to the surrounding world, be it lectures or interpersonal discussions and group work exploring phenomena. However, it is worthwhile mentioning that a student with an artistic education and background was a member of the course team, and they initiated this new idea among other more untraditional methods on the course during the COVID-19 lockdown.

8 Ethical Aspects and Research Integrity

This study was conducted with ethical considerations in mind according to the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity’s guidelines to The Finnish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and Procedures for Handling Alleged Violations of Research Integrity in Finland 2023 (Finnish National Board on Research Integrity, 2023). Within qualitative research, ethical tensions and considerations rise throughout the process and reflexivity has an important role (see also Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). The main considerations relate to data collection and reporting the results (see also Creswell, 2014), but also to the reflexivity of the researcher in relation to what the informants chose to share. The ethical dimensions of conducting qualitative studies are procedural ethics and “ethics in practice” (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). Within procedural ethics, we include acquiring research permission, informing the students about the research both orally and in writing. Participation in the research was voluntary and the material collected for the project included obtaining informed written consent of the informants. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic consent was obtained digitally.

The “ethics in practice” relates to the everyday ethical considerations arising during conducting research (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). To this can be included reflection on the topics arising in the students’ writing and talking. The “sauna diaries” were given as an obligatory assignment to complete the course. Even if the task did not require sharing intimate or sensitive information about oneself when writing or talking in a state of stream of consciousness, there was a risk that students could reveal more sensitive information about themselves than they might intend. Some students talked or wrote openly about personal matters. With this in mind, we have been careful with the material, and the data was anonymized before analysis. More sensitive parts were left out of the analysis to protect the integrity of participants. In our definition, sensitive information writing or talking includes very personal issues not relating to the course. Such issues are studying or talking with someone else or recording, talking, or writing about someone else’s personal matters.

Informant integrity has been considered in the analysis by using code-names such as Student 1 (S1), Student 2 (S2), and so forth. Similar pseudonyms are used for teachers: Teacher 1 (T1), etc. We did not gather information such as gender, sex, or exact ages. In the analysis, we used the gender-neutral pronouns they/them to avoid gender stereotypes, and to protect the informant identification. All citations presented in this chapter are in English, most often translated either from Swedish or Finnish.

9 Data Analysis

Two main branches of phenomenology are descriptive and interpretative phenomenology, the latter also called hermeneutic phenomenology. In the data analysis for this study, we used hermeneutic phenomenology, a combination of hermeneutics and phenomenology, which does not strive for generalizations and to find similarities, but rather its aim is open minded discovery of the uniqueness. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation (Henriksson & Friesen, 2012). The researchers and interpreters search for meaning through examinations of the parts and the whole in a circle-like process. This cyclic process is an interplay between the researchers and the text (Rasmussen, 2004). “Phenomenology is the study of meaning, particularly as it is lived and as it is structured through consciousness” (Henriksson & Friesen, 2012, p. 1). In our case, this was through the students’ lifeworld “as they [the phenomena of the lifeworld] appear, reveal, and show themselves, and as they give themselves in our consciousness”, before they have even been named, conceptualized, abstracted, and/or theorized (van Manen, 2023, p. 3). Hermeneutic phenomenology studies meaning and experiences through an interpretative research approach. Through the stream of consciousness, every student assigned meaning to the phenomena of their lifeworld that is their experiences (what happened to them) (see, Henriksson & Friesen, 2012; van Manen, 2023).

For the first data analysis, we conducted a thematic analysis to structure the meaning of the text (see, van Manen, 1990). At this stage of the analysis, we used the Atlas.ti software programme for a thorough searching, by initial coding (see Saldaña, 2013) and organizing the data into themes (see Sundler et al., 2019). The initial coding was categorized into seven themes informed by the theoretical basis of this study, of which the code “Sensitive” was left out of the analysis due to informant integrity.

Following the thematic analysis, we dug deeper into the data using interpretation. According to van Manen (1990), the phenomenological researcher must live the questions and become the question. It is about going back to the question itself repeatedly. The researcher needs to pull the reader into the wonder of the study. Therefore, we wanted to draw both ourselves and the readers into the lifeworld of the students. As van Manen points out, this approach repeatedly demanded reflections and clarification, reading and rereading. Varying examples to describe the phenomena is a way to address phenomenological themes (van Manen, 1990), which is used in this study to illustrate the thoughts the students revealed in the diaries.

Hence, with Finlay’s words, the analysis turned out to be a thoughtful dialogue, and even a dance.

“Caught up in the dance, researchers must wage a continuous, iterative struggle to become aware of, and then manage, pre-understandings and habitualities that inevitably linger. Persistence will reward the researcher with special, if fleeting, moments of disclosure in which the phenomenon reveals something of itself in a fresh way.” (Finlay, 2008, p. 1)

10 Results

In this section we present what the diaries revealed, since the research question is: What do the students write and talk about in their (sauna) diaries? We present seven main themes and give examples from three of the diaries as entireties.

10.1 Thoughts Emerging from the Diaries

The assignment instruction had guided the students when writing or recording in the diaries. Many times, when their talking and writing drifted towards something other than studying, the students started with meta-talk about how they should go back to the assignment or topic related to the course. The students who chose to perform the task as an audio exercise instead of writing a text produced more data due to writing being slower than talking. Students who talked in some of the diaries and wrote in others commented that talking felt longer. The content of the diaries evolved mostly around sauna bathing, bathing other than sauna bathing and to the students’ experiences related to the course or other academic study. Additionally, the students wrote/talked about matters related to embodiment, and described personal matters, social interactions, phenomena related to nature and the COVID-19 pandemic. Talking was preferred by many students as it was easier than writing and allowed them to think more freely and not being able to censor it in a similar way that writing is self-censored. In the written diaries it was noticeable that the texts had been edited whereas in others there were misspellings and typos. We call the seven themes of the phenomenological thematic analysis Bathing (including sauna bathing and other bathing than sauna), Embodiment, Study, Personal reflections, On being social, Sustainability and nature, and Lockdown. The themes are liminal and cannot be completely separated, which also will be illustrated in the analysis.

Interestingly, the students who had been to sauna wrote/spoke more about their experiences during their bathing than students who undertook other forms of bathing or did not reveal whether they bathed or showered at all. One student wrote and reflected around the meaning of the sauna when not being able to access it. However, the data did not provide evidence that sauna bathing itself enhanced writing or speaking in a mode of stream of consciousness, but deep and varied reflections were found in several diaries, whether carried out after sauna bathing, showering, or when no description was available of the bathing or showering. It seems that the stream of consciousness method instead played an important role in enabling students to express their reflections. The most evident difference between sauna bathers and non-sauna bathers in the data was that the sauna bathers used more space in their diaries to express the actual sauna bathing whereas non-sauna bathers wrote and spoke more consequently on more varied matters. Therefore, in the presentations of the themes below, we have not separated sauna bathers from others, but analysed the data more holistically and concentrated on the contents.

Emotions are a cross-cutting phenomenon observed throughout the material but cannot fully be separated as its own theme. In the following presentation of the analysis, we also provide insights into the emotions in the material. Students wrote and talked about emotions in several ways, about both positive and difficult emotions, such as enjoyment, relaxation, joy, hopefulness but also excitement, stress, and worry. They were worried about many things in the course, such as making sound recordings for the diary (they could choose to write instead), participating in group work on digital storytelling (jointly making short films), participating in multilingual groups, and working with the course’s examination tasks. Surprisingly, they did not talk as much as one could have expected about the COVID-19 situation. Yet, there were students who felt sad about the situation. Additionally, it was noticeable that students often directly addressed the teacher who had given them the assignment. Below we first present a more extensive analysis of the themes. The presentation is followed by an in-depth analysis of three students’ diaries.

10.1.1 Bathing

Bathing was the most prominent theme in the material. Most of the students (15 students in 34 diaries out of 47) described or mentioned whether they had been in the sauna or if they had showered, taken a tub bath, or had a winter swim. Some students’ diaries only described their experiences of the sauna bathing and rituals. They compared wood-burning saunas with electric saunas and according to the diaries, the preference was for a wood-burning sauna. Warming the sauna, oneself and being closer to nature was mentioned in many diaries. In this theme, descriptions of embodied experiences with several senses were quite noticeable. We will address them further in the theme Embodiment. Many students also described or reflected on their relationship to the sauna as a cultural heritage but also what their relationship was to other bathing. Students shared and reflected on their memories related to sauna. These memories were often childhood memories and depicted the culture and rituals of sauna bathing.

Wood-burning sauna and then a sauna by the sea is the best, and I have great memories of these with my siblings. For example, I remember that during summers I had been jogging and after that warmed the sauna and then went there and having a relaxing evening. So those are incredibly nice memories I really like. (Student 12, diary 3, audio, no information about bathing or showering)

Here, S12 talked about their childhood memories in their parent’s summer cottage. They described what they used to do before sauna bathing with the family. S12 also described a lot of childhood memories of the sauna relating to being a part of a sports team, for which sauna bathing is a social activity. Exercise can be seen as a part of the rituals of sauna bathing and other students also wrote about exercise and sports in relation to sauna bathing. The students also described sauna bathing as a place where discussions between people took on a life of its own.

Somehow the conversations in a sauna and what one is discussing there has its own life and its own way of moving. I experienced that this is something that somehow is tied to my earlier sauna experiences. Now when I am sauna bathing, I remember those earlier times when I have been sauna bathing. I realised that it in fact is something that in the sauna one is actually not thinking about anything else. One lives naturally or automatically in present time. One cannot have a phone in the sauna, and neither can one be disturbed by other things. One is sitting naked in the warmth and letting the thoughts flow. (Student 11, diary 3, audio, after sauna bathing)

S11 described their experience of being in a sauna as something so intense that one is very strongly in the present time. The thoughts and discussions evolved during sauna bathing have their own life and flow. When being naked in the warmth one is instinctively in the now. These thoughts showed that sauna bathing can evoke particular kinds of thought flow and initiate various discussions.

10.1.2 Embodiment

In the diaries, much of the content of the Embodiment theme related to being in a sauna or other bathing but also on naming emotions. Students described sensations such as how their surroundings looked, smelled, sounded, and felt. They described bathing with strong experiences of changes in how to experience the surroundings. Below is a citation from S8 who described their experience after winter swimming:

Very soon I was struck by a complete peace and warmth and happiness. I felt like smiling. My whole body was warm, especially the toes that are often cold […] After swimming, I did not feel that people and nature were at war with each other, I felt grateful to live in this kind of a place, in which people can relax for free in various ways, in the sun, in the water, in the sand, in the forest, in the wind, on the ice. People seem calm when they walk where the sea, the canal, the park and the forest provide a rest from the car noises. (Student 8, diary 1, written, after winter swimming)

Here S8 had just started the winter swimming season. The excerpts illustrate their experience after the swim. Even though swimming in ice cold water, S8 experienced their body becoming warm and they felt happy, and it made them smile. S8 experienced a shift in how they perceived the relationship between people and nature. They felt gratitude for their local nature as something that can offer peace from the noise of the traffic. The excerpt depicts, in a strong way, how by swimming in the cold sea, S8 experienced a change because humans and nature are not “at war” with each other anymore. Earlier in the same diary, this student expressed the view that swimming is quite uncomfortable and that they had not experienced it earlier that year, but afterwards it was rewarded. In other diaries the students described the role of the sauna and winter swimming and taking cold showers as a recovery activity after hard training. Moving between cold showers and a warm (moist) sauna became a part of exercising, but vice versa, exercise was also viewed as something that made bathing even more enjoyable as a part of the sauna bathing ritual.

10.1.3 Study

The Study theme of the diaries related to studying, especially the PLS course and the students’ other study and to reflections on their future profession. The diaries were one of the assignments of the course, and the students also reflected on this. Even though most students did not meet face-to-face during the course, they reflected a lot on the group work process and on social aspects. Many delved deeper into reflection on course topics such as sustainability, phenomenon-based learning, and assessment, both as part of the course but also in relation to the students’ own experiences outside university and their professions. They also reflected on other course experiences like workshops and lectures. Even if the following excerpt reflects on the theme “Social”, it illustrates how one student talked or wrote about the course tasks and groupwork:

It will be interesting to see how the division of labour will work. And then when we will film things. But then one cannot meet. Or do not have to meet. I don’t know. It feels interesting, I think like that this course like assignments seem somewhat interesting but at the same time they seem like those which may become a huge farce. Like the result is like just, just completely like nothing. (Student 13, diary 1, spoken, after showering)

S13 reflected on what collaboration for groupwork will look like at the beginning of the PLS course. Thus, they, as some others expressed worries about the project, due to it challenging them while they could not meet face-to-face. However, S13 was positive when they found it “interesting”, even if it could become a “huge farce”, according to them. This depicts uncertainties, because the assignment was challenging for the students, but it also triggered learning.

The students also revealed difficulties or struggles with their studies. Most of the diaries, included these kinds of thoughts. They experienced difficulties related to many issues, like stress on performing in all studies, distance studies, group work and the time of the year, when usually many courses simultaneously have a lot of deadlines. Some students said that they do not have time for anything else but studying and work.

Even if I know that what I am to write is not the healthiest lifestyle, it is still the way my reality is. What I am prioritizing first is school and work and because of quite simple reasons – to receive study finance I need to get study credits and to pay my rent I must work. Therefore, these two are of highest priority on my to do list and higher ranked than, for example, nice spring walks outdoors or sleeping. (Student 10, diary 1, written, no information about bathing or showering)

Regardless of how stressed one is, when one goes to the sauna, not all thoughts disappear, but one is not quite as worried about it. Right now, I have my thesis writing, which is not progressing very well and with my new job, and friends one does not have time to see. (Student 14, diary 2, the student’s own transcription, after sauna bathing)

These citations illustrate experiences of heavy workloads and the need to prioritize study and work even over healthy habits such as sleeping, exercising, and meeting friends. Even so, S10 also described how nice it was that the course had embodied assignments that felt good and provided well-being for them, such as going out for a walk while listening to a lecture. S14 described sauna bathing as being a stress reliever, even if it did not diminish the heavy workload. These excerpts show the intertwinement of embodiment, personal reflections, and positive experiences the course provided, even though experiencing strains. The diary assignment was commented on often. The experiences expressed by students could vary:

Yes, I have liked this assignment, and it has given a little – what should we say? Like, earlier when one could be on site, it was possible to like to reflect with one’s fellow students on the way to the metro or bus station. Since it has not been possible now, so I experience that this is maybe possible to reflect and to like go into oneself a little and think about what one actually has experienced. Instead of this, often with this distance studying one can like close the computer and then one goes to lay down on the bed and the study day is like erased from the memory very quickly and for me the human contacts et cetera does not become very memorable, and the lectures and so on disappear very, very easily [from the mind]. (Student 13, diary 3, audio, after showering)

What should I think about? Should I think because of thinking or should the thoughts come freely to me. Am I perhaps the only one who has problems understanding the assignments, is it me who is stupid, or do I just think differently from all the others? Think freely. Think to think, no this is hardly the way it works. I hope others are struggling as hard [as me]. (Student 16, diary 1, written, after showering)

The excerpts above from the theme Studies demonstrate that the diary writing or recording caused both positive and negative feelings. S13 experiences the diary as being a kind of alternative to spontaneous non-formal everyday discussions between students about study. They also found value in the work with the diaries since it triggered learning. This illustrates well how study and reflection do not only happen during lectures or other scheduled formal sessions, and how these informal discussions disappeared due to the COVID-19 lockdown. However, there were also struggles with getting on with the stream of consciousness writing or recording as the example of S16 shows. S16 also experienced difficulties in understanding other assignments and is wondering whether they are alone with these thoughts. Both student S13 and S16 expressed the view that they are longing for discussions with their fellow students.

10.1.4 Personal Reflections

Personal reflections included thoughts on issues that were private in nature and seldom appear in university course assignments. The students shared details of their daily life, thoughts about their family members, childhood memories, the future profession, their present mood, and comments on what happened around them at that moment of writing or talking. The students also reflected a lot on the diary assignment and the emotions and sensations awoken by that. The following excerpt from S6’s diary illustrates a reflection on how personal the stream of consciousness method is and how it affected them:

I noticed in myself that when I started recording this that before I pressed this REC my heart like started to pound and I started to wonder what this reaction is. But then I realised that I had never done anything like this. And well, it is indeed anyway a quite kind of personal. A personal issue. And just because of that, because I have not done this kind of thing it might feel a little difficult. But...guess it does not help, it does not help but to start recording and talk. (Student 6, diary 1, audio, after showering)

S6 described their experience of bodily sensations and emotions before starting their recording. This excerpt would also fit under themes “Embodiment” or “Studies”, since S6 provided an insight into how they experienced the starting of the assignment. However, even if starting the task might have been difficult, S6 overcame their nervousness.

As mentioned, the students were a heterogenous group also when it came to how they lived and with whom. Some students lived with a family, something they also reflected on in their diaries. S15 described themself being very inspired by the audio-visual project and sharing the work with their family, both with children and their parent:

How like that inspiration I have gained from the course and then like from those course peers and then from my work and from nature, so I have unconsciously shared it with those around me. And then surely also consciously because I have sent clips and things for example to my parent like “Check out what I have done” and they have also been very, very approving with their comments like “Wow, have you done that by yourself?” (Student 15, diary 3, audio, no information about bathing or showering)

S15 experienced the inspiration from the course as something they unconsciously shared with their surroundings. The student described sharing their work with their parent who reacted with amazement, which S15 felt very good about. These kinds of citations show tangibly how study can be intertwined with the students’ personal lives.

10.1.5 On Being Social

The On being social theme depicted students’ reflections on or descriptions of interaction with other people and family members. The students wrote and talked a lot about interactions with other people both face-to-face and via Zoom. Some students also expressed missing others’ companionship and they felt lonely. However, a few students met face-to-face outdoors for the group work, even though most of the interaction took place remotely with digital applications.

I am already a little nervous, well not nervous but like such a nice small excitement in “Yes, we will see”. (Student 6, diary 2, audio, after showering)

Here S6 expressed being nervous or excited about meeting with their group members for filming. Even if the students met during online teaching and talked with each other online, rare joint on-site activities made them nervous. Constantly, many students talked or wrote about missing joint on-site interaction with other students. Being able to meet with others to collaborate is expressed as follows in S10’s diary.

My experience is that it is challenging because one cannot meet except for via a screen. It is always something else to discuss with some stranger via screens than when one would be in a classroom, it would feel more natural that way. The thoughts flew further to other courses and experiences of group works during Corona and I conclude that it has worked well if one is familiar from before and then less successful works that have only happened via screens. That is, when one knows each other well enough from before one can call and talk about the assignment. When one does not know it becomes formal and inflexible to only discuss via Zoom. (Student 10, diary 1, written, no information about bathing or showering)

This citation brings forth the difficulties with collaborating and getting to know other students remotely. Collaboration was experienced by S10 as easier via Zoom with the students they knew from before. Working with peers, one already knew, made it easier to call and discuss the tasks, whereas for S10, interacting and collaborating via Zoom with people they did not know from before felt inflexible and formal. Collaborating might therefore have been more of a struggle, due to not being able to get to know other students as it is when meeting face-to-face.

10.1.6 Sustainability and Nature

The Sustainability and nature theme contained mostly descriptions of weather, human relations with nature, and surprisingly few reflections on sustainability. The students also discussed the relationship between sauna and nature. Some students were talking about the sustainability of bathing (sauna bathing, showering, and so on). One student did not have access to a sauna but also found it difficult to get into the bathing mood for the stream of consciousness diary:

Showering is not quite the same [as sauna bathing]. Especially since I decided to shorten my shower time, for ecological reasons. (S11, diary 1, written, after showering)

In the same diary, S11 stated that they missed sauna bathing. Instead of sauna bathing they took a shower, but it was not the same, especially due to them having shorter showers due to ecological reasons. Also, other students mentioned how they similarly took small steps towards more sustainable choices in their daily lives. Sustainability and humans’ relationship with nature were common topics in many diaries. S6 reflected as follows about this when discussing their group work:

So sustainable development and like in some ways this nature, in relation to nature, this nursing of a personal relationship with nature and the importance and that we are not here, our existence is not self-evident, and nature must be respected and that is not here quite self-evident that it is existing. And we are destructive - we might affect its well-being with our own actions. And then that how we can get our target audience young children – how do we have these things brought forward to them in a gentle way. (Student 6, diary 2, audio, after showering)

Here S6 reflected on personal relationships with nature and how to address this phenomenon for younger children. The way S6 thought about this brought forth the students’ worries about how humans have destroyed nature and how to address this in a “light” way not to worry the young children too much.

10.1.7 Lockdown

The last theme, Lockdown, considered the students’ reflections on or descriptions of matters concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. The students reflected on being alone or lonely due to the lockdown and restrictions, they discussed mental health issues both on societal and personal levels. Some also depicted embodied matters such as moving, exercise and taking cold showers as help during the lockdown period.

The lockdown affected all people, but in several ways. Some experienced it as being difficult, even catastrophic, whereas for some it became possible to spend time at home and do what was most important for oneself when one lived with their family. Here follow two excerpts from students who told about how they had personally experienced COVID-19, but in different ways:

My experience is that very many people have it awfully difficult right now and for some reason, it feels almost like this talking about mental health has almost taken steps backwards and become – not really a taboo – but a little like more difficult to talk about maybe. That one has gone to a state of which all groups may complain about their problems, or like right now so okay, that you cannot complain if you are a student. And if you are writing your student matriculation at a distance, so this is not something which is worthy of complaint, that it is now your life could be much worse. But at the same time, one understands that it is, it is something that is stressful, and this is something that has affected very many people. (Student 13, diary 2, audio, after showering)

It does not disturb me at all with any bloody Corona or something so that one cannot go somewhere because I have all that I need here at home. (Student 15, diary 1, audio, after sauna bathing)

In their diaries, S13 discussed most thoroughly about the COVID-19 situation and how it affected them, but also how they observed it affecting others. In the citation above, S13 talks about experiencing the discussion around mental health taking a step back, that is regress or revert to it being more difficult to discuss. They are referring to the wider societal discussion on how the lockdowns and restrictions have affected young people and especially students. S13 thinks that as a student they are not allowed to complain about the situation because the situation could be much worse, even though it has affected a lot of people in a harmful way. However, S15 reflects a lot on the positive sides of the situation for them, even though they also show concern for the situation in their diaries. In the citation above they conclude that COVID-19 is not disturbing them at all because they have all they need at home. The two last citations show a large contrast in how different the situation was between students in different situations and reveals some of the inequalities of the COVID-19 lockdown.

10.2 Diary Cases

To give a deeper and more unique view of the diaries, the following text describes three of the diaries more in detail. These cases provide insight into the uniqueness of the diaries and their content, as well as how the students’ streams of consciousness took new paths and entered new themes during the writing or talking process.

10.2.1 Student 2

S2 wrote the second diary after visiting a public sauna in the building in which they lived. When writing they let their thoughts wander back and forth. The first and third diaries were written and the second was an audio version. They described having been able to go sauna bathing before writing the second diary, whereas the first and third did not include information about bathing or showering. S2 explained that they lived an unstructured life. They found it difficult to concentrate and jumped between reading the newspaper and studying. The COVID-19 lockdown felt scary, and S2 even thought of what would happen if they did not open their laptop. Who would care? In addition, S2 felt that it was difficult to decide what to do and they really missed being at the university meeting what they called all the nice people there.

I thought the introduction to the course was amusing and human and began to miss being at school with all warm and amusing people who look completely ordinary, but they know a lot about something and are professional but also someone's parent, sibling, and child.

However, in the second sauna diary, S2 was lucky to be able to study through the internet, and S2 especially mentioned the course lecture and improvisation with Teacher 3 (T3) living in a country with a time Zone different from Finland and expert related to embodied learning. S2 found it fascinating that someone so far away in another time zone could inspire the students to perform bodily movements. S2 started talking about sauna bathing, temperature changes, and about how they had read in the newspaper about the benefit of putting one’s head in a bucket with cold water to release anxiety. These thoughts led to the issue of studies causing stress at the end of the academic year. S2 went on talking about phenomenon-based learning. According to S2, there was no point studying if it was not possible to connect the knowledge to an entirety. According to S2’s experience, the students had forgotten most of what they learned at school. On the contrary, during this phenomenon-based course, they were not offered ready-made answers, but learnt to search for more questions. S2 liked to watch the other groups’ digital stories, and the many ways of realizing them. They said that they took a language course simultaneously with the PLS course and found common matters between improvisation in this course and the language course.

In the third diary, S2 talked about how committed and involved they became because of the PLS course, even if they had never met any other students or the teachers in real life.

It is interesting how involved one becomes in a course theme and in the relationships that arise there, also when it is on Zoom. One really felt engaged and involved, even though one was not even once in the same physical room as the others.

S2 experienced dialogues and reflections. They also liked the final seminar discussions on the last course day:

I also thought it was nice that this last day gave time for thorough discussion with Teacher 1 who always manages to contribute a sense of focus and assured seriousness. It is interesting to see what leaves a mark after a course. During the occasion, among other things, we discussed how something experienced is translated into thought, and which processes are required for that to happen. We concluded that precisely reflection and discussion with other people is a process that means that what is experienced is formulated and shared. It gave me a bit of motivation in another course which pretty much consisted entirely of reflecting on the specific learning. If you don't remember why you do something, it inevitably becomes unmotivating.

S2’s diaries revealed that they did not like to be isolated from their fellow students and teachers The isolation made it difficult to concentrate on studying. However, they liked to participate in the zoom sessions of the course. To meet others on Zoom felt good: “It's so nice that people come to Zoom and listen and share and go to the sauna and send WhatsApp messages” (S2’s first diary). In their diaries, S2 talked about small daily activities like drinking coffee, about how they walked to the sauna, and about what made them happy or caused stress. They also discussed the course, its parts and content, and what triggered learning, how their own learning happened, and how they experienced the teaching. In the diaries, a sad sense of longing for the pandemic to end and of returning to “normal” life was obvious.

10.2.2 Student 3

S3 went to their own sauna and wrote mostly about sauna bathing. All S3’s diaries were in written form. All their diaries had descriptions of the student having been to the sauna before writing. Their writing was poetic with expressive formulations.

Now the rain was mixed with snow and the wind increased, the sky was completely grey. Across the lake I saw big waves rolling in. Yes, I had seen right, in the open bay, the ice had already disappeared, but in the innermost bay there was still ice on the lake.

When S3 wrote the first diary, it was snowing, and they started thinking of their own childhood. S3 felt both physically and psychologically relaxed and was grateful for being able to live in a country with clean air and they felt lucky to be able to participate in what they thought was the most wonderful immaterial cultural heritage, the Finnish sauna.

Sauna means purity both in physical and spiritual form. I can also enjoy the sauna because I know it is a sustainable act. It is a tradition that I have inherited from my grandparents and a legacy that I have passed on to my children.

At the end of the first diary, S3 explained that they were eager to participate in the course, it felt right for them. The second diary started with thoughts about the weather and how they enjoyed going to the sauna. S3 reflected on the course. The digital story tutorials had started that day, and they felt sorry because two of the group members had been absent. Yet, S3 thought that their groupwork had started well and they had received positive feedback from Teacher 2 (T2). However, S3 kept thinking about something that T2 had said, but the group did not understand. However, they thought that they would be able to solve the problem, and after all, S3 found the course uncommon and creative.

In the third diary, S3s talked about work they had done in the garden before bathing in a small separate sauna in the same garden. They went out swimming in the sea many times during the bathing even if the water was very cold. Then they started talking about the course. All S3’s group members were disappointed when the digital story telling task was assessed as either passed or failed. They would have preferred grading. It did not feel fair, according to them, to not be graded, since they had ambitiously offered both time and energy to make the film. The group had also discussed the essay and found it demanding since it had to be based on literature.

S3 liked the T3’s creative teaching a lot. According to them, it was a new element in the rigid Finnish reality. They said that they wanted to use that teacher’s pedagogy in their coming work as a teacher. The third diary ended with S3 talking about them feeling relaxed: “The heat has lowered my blood pressure and I have a sense of harmony. I am already looking forward to the next time I go to the sauna”.

S3’s diaries contained many thoughts about sauna bathing, the weather, and nature sceneries. In addition, they talked about the workshop, the group work, and the course assessments. When the thoughts related to the present time in the sauna, they were mostly in a good mood, when they talked about course-related issues, both positive and negative thoughts emerged. There was a sudden shift in the topic from the poetic life-affirming beautiful expressions to a whiny tone in S3’s diary that reveals that this student wanted to think positively but did not always succeed.

10.2.3 Student 4

S4’s diaries (all in forms of videos) were a good example of the stream of consciousness, since the topic fluctuated between diverse issues. They had recorded all their diaries straight after sauna bathing. First, they talked about their relation to sauna starting from their childhood. Even if sauna bathing in childhood was something positive S4 claimed that they were not dependent on regular sauna evenings anymore. Yet, when a friend living in another part of the country visited, they went to sauna with a group of friends, since when meeting friend’s sauna is a must, according to S4. Now, S4 told that they [together with a partner] had moved to a flat with their own sauna, and thought they would use the sauna more, since they knew it was good for their health and it is also relaxing. However, S4 told they take cold showers every day, and does also enjoy cold showers during sauna bathing. They thought about sauna in connection to World Heritage and culture, if sauna could become a World Heritage, who invented the sauna, whose heritage Suomenlinna was and what else in Finland or in other countries could become a heritage. After this S4 started thinking about sustainability, whether a wood-burned or electric sauna is better for the environment, and if a sauna near a lake brings one closer to nature. Maybe chopping wood and lighting a fire in the sauna stove would be sustainable living, they wondered.

In the second diary, S4 talked about how they had been out jogging in snowy rain, compared this with running in sunshine, and argued that sauna is best when one feels cold. From this they went on thinking about weather, and that wind and rain also have their charm:

We humans are always so critical and so fussy—you could say so fussy about the weather. Only a certain kind of weather is good and then they often randomly choose something they are dissatisfied with, like that it is too hot or cold or too many flies, too many mosquitoes or blah blah blah. It is too windy, too calm, too hot, or too cold. So, maybe we should think more about appreciating all kinds of weather for all kinds of weather are part of this planet.

Then they again thought about who invented the sauna, and why it feels better in the sauna when the weather is cold and ended up thinking that all weather is good weather. The third diary started with them talking about how occupied they were with study at this time of the year. This sauna bathing took place after a visit to the gym. After hard muscle training, sauna bathing felt relaxing, S4 meant. They started talking about the PLS course, and about treadmills, and how stupid it is to run indoors on a treadmill and stare on a wall, when one can run outdoors. To run outdoors does not consume any more energy than what comes from the food. Not even if one would produce energy by running it would be any better than running outdoors, they pondered. From that the thoughts focused on the human tendency to always change things instead of being satisfied, like on the Suomenlinna World Heritage, where so much of nature is changed by buildings and soil fillings.

Humans are never really satisfied, but basically, yes basically, humans are never really satisfied. Yet, this is probably part of the reason why we have come this far, we have come to the top of the food chain, because we are never satisfied. It's not only that, but it's probably a part of it. It's always too cold, too hot, too dry, too wet.

However, S4 claimed that humans have also discovered good things. To be at the top of the food change is for better or worse. Humans have learnt to cure illnesses, and so on, so it has become better, but not for all creatures. Some animals are endangered. Then a warplane flew overhead the building S4 was in, and they started talking about war, and how both humans and other animals fight over territories and food as well as partners. Yet, S4 ended by saying that humans can destroy the entire planet.

The thoughts that S4 presented in the three diaries moved from details associated with their own life to thoughts that related to the state of the entire planet. The focus changed fast from something personal to something general. Since every word was in audio form, the transcribed text was long, and continued many thoughts. Obviously, the thoughts about the World Heritage and the sauna, the thoughts on intangible cultural heritage, and the thoughts on sustainability were all a result of the course topics. When in the sauna, as well as when S4 talked about having been running, they reflected on issues related to the topics of the course, but not the course methods or content as such, nor the other students or the teachers. Thus, S4’s diaries were about the student’s own exercises, sauna bathing, and further reflections based on the course topics.

The three diaries above showed that the students’ situations varied a lot. During the COVID-19 lockdown, S2 expressed the opinion that they felt alone much more than S3 and S4. While S3 seemed to enjoy being on their own in the sauna, S4 had a partner and went to the sauna with them. S3 had a family that occupied their time, and S4 went on with their active life, enjoying sports, and so on. Therefore, some of the students were isolated and restless during the university lockdown because of the pandemic, while the life of others was not much different from before.

11 Discussion

The aim of phenomenological research is having the researchers view a phenomenon in a new way that leads to them changing their own perspective of a phenomenon (van Manen & Adams, 2010). What we did in our World Heritage course was to combine an old cultural habit with an emergent situation, COVID-19, that changed the daily lives of not only the students in our course, but also of our teachers/researchers, most other people involved in higher education, or any education, and indeed most people in the world. Since the situation felt all but safe (see Wolff, 2020), we wanted to apply a safe and pleasant setting for the study (the sauna) in which the students should feel free to relax and uncover their inner thoughts and lifeworlds.

Undoubtedly, this study opened our eyes for the lifeworld of the students during the COVID-19 university lockdown. First, since the students shared a lot of details about their everyday life and more intimate thoughts on how they lived and how they felt (see also Gaobardi et al., 2022), we also learned a lot about what it meant to be a student not only during the lockdown, but also in general. Second, the diaries provided insights into how heterogenous a group the students were. The research question is: What do the students write and talk about in their (sauna) diaries? We have described the main content using seven themes. In addition, we have focused on three students’ diaries as entireties.

The data were simultaneously a course assignment in the form of diaries. When completing these diaries, many students had adapted a stream of consciousness way of writing or talking, in which the thoughts moved spontaneously from one topic to another. A striking result was the notion of the setting for the outside classroom learning, the sauna and other bathing, as a factor that affected how the students accomplished their assignment (Biggs & Tang, 2011). The sauna has remained a place that enables a close-to-nature experience reaching back into the past. Such an experience also corresponds to an aesthetic experience that breaks away from normal everyday life (see Seemeri, 2018). We could see examples of both sauna bathing triggering memories (see S4 above) and inspiring aesthetic experiences (see S3 above). Another interesting observation was that the students shared more in their diaries than they usually do in university assignments. Their thoughts did not always have any order or pattern (see, Sang, 2010), but fluctuated between different time perspectives (cf., van Manen, 1990): memories of the past, the present situation, and the future. The students thought about real issues and situations, but also imagined. Simultaneously, the places varied from the actual sauna or bathing setting and its surroundings to other places the student had visited earlier in life, the same day or at some other time (see Seemeri, 2018). Focus moved from the subject being written or talked about (the student), to family, friends, the study community, and sometimes it reached a global context.

Even if the students were open and revealed a lot about themselves and their daily contexts, they also reflected on their studying and many other matters. The students’ experiences and the emotions they gave rise to were visible throughout the diaries. Thus, they revealed which emotions the experiences caused in the form of bodily sensations (see also, Krueger, 2014). In their diaries, many students shared thoughts about how they experienced the course and its various moments. They reflected on both positive and negative learning experiences in relation to study due to the lockdown (see also, Oliveira et al., 2021). Teachers’ actions, group work, the group members, and their thoughts about themselves as students were also present in the diaries. As earlier mentioned, it was sometimes obvious that the diaries had a receiver, since in a few diaries the students were clearly addressing the teacher who gave the assignment by the pronoun you or the teacher’s name.

The mutual learning assignment offered an unusual learning environment outside the campus. Yet, even if the students at first were unsure about the diary task, they soon responded with openness and trust. There might have been several reasons for this, for example, that they felt safe with the teacher, who was a student like them, or maybe the sauna diary assignment was a way to have the spontaneous discussions they could not hold in cafés and corridors together with their fellow students.

The stream of consciousness method after the sauna or other bathing proved to be an interesting and exceptional assignment for both the student and the researchers. The assignment was flexible not only regarding how the students expressed their ideas (orally or in written form), but also regarding how they chose to bathe before writing or recording. Thus, what was meant to be explicitly a sauna diary became a bathing diary, or simply a stream of consciousness diary. The students shared thought processes, emotions, bodily sensations, and sensory perceptions both relating to sauna bathing and other experiences. This openness is usual in stream of consciousness writing or talking (see Kriegel, 2015). Many students favoured recording their talks instead of writing, since they found it easier. The diaries in which the students chose recording as the form of communication, their ideas were in general deeper than the written ones, perhaps because talking is faster than writing, and they could express more in a ten-minute talk. Talking was also noticeably more suitable for producing non-censored streams of consciousness whereas it was most obvious that some of the students had edited their written diaries, while others had left errors in their texts.

Reflection plays a key role in higher education (see also Barton & Ryan, 2014). In their diaries the students had time and space to reflect, even deeper than in other kinds of learning assignments in which reflections are asked for, such as essays or various other kinds of learning diaries. Therefore, the stream of consciousness method could be used as an assignment when reflection is an aim. Especially, it suits distance education as it provides space for more open reflections, which are not always included in distance teaching. However, the sauna diaries also contained non-reflective, more spontaneous thoughts, which are interesting as well, as a part of the assignment. All these reflective as well as non-reflective thoughts were important for the students, perhaps more important than they could have been in a non-COVID situation. However, students always live a stressful life, as many students in our study told us. To stop for a while and “be forced” to focus on one’s own thinking, is fruitful even if there is no pandemic situation.

When planning course assessment in higher education, grading, and measuring learning outcomes is often in focus, but our results show that the students experienced things during this course that they seldom are invited to reflect on in more customary courses. In addition, when they are asked to reflect, there is not necessarily time enough or any pleasant and relaxing atmosphere in the location in which new thoughts could emerge. According to Barton and Ryan (2014), teachers in higher education need to encourage their students to participate in deep reflective disciplinary discourses through multimodal triggers for the reflection to become authentic. Instead of only using language as a tool to express the reflections, Barton and Ryan also recommend bodily and artistic approaches. It is obvious that the stream of consciousness after the (sauna) bathing approach in our course triggered many kinds of thoughts, not only about the course. Sauna bathing, a bodily experience, was also in focus in their reflections. Remarkably, they often placed sauna bathing in relation to sustainability that was the main topic of the course. Thus, the bodily experience played a role as a trigger for reflections on the course content.

In our study, the students expressed their reflections through writing, but also orally, and visually. The teachers were surprised by the students’ straightforward sincerity and the teachers gained new insight from the diaries on what it is like to be a student. However, also the students appreciated having the opportunity to tell their stories. Most of the students who talked or wrote about their opinion of the diary assignment claimed that they liked it. A few students had difficulties activating their stream of consciousness at the beginning, but along the three diaries the thoughts often increased in depth. Interestingly, in a study by Mäkipää et al. (2022) on distance education at the University of Helsinki, the students listed learning diaries and videos as the least appropriate assessment exercises. The results of our study contradict that study since the stream of consciousness diaries and audio-visual projects were reflected on as interesting assignments. Yet, it might be difficult to compare the sauna diaries directly with more traditional learning diaries. Even if there have been many studies investigating the use of learning diaries in various contexts during the COVID-19 lockdown, they are mostly different from the learning diaries we developed and have described here, also different from what we have used as teachers on other courses.

The diversity of the student groups is important for a teacher to acknowledge, since not all parts of a course nor all assignments suit all students’ life situations, whether in a lockdown situation or at other times. Likewise, the students’ personality and background vary, and this relates to how they perceive specific course tasks and assignments. Many students said that they experienced stress because of the various course moments, when they had to collaborate with new students in groups, or meet new teachers, something that teachers might not think about, since students seldom reveal these feelings to the teacher.

Because this course was a part of a development project, the course had more resources, including teachers, than usual. This made the relationship between students and teachers more challenging. Yet, with one teacher and 100 students the course could not have been run the way we did now. Since the students were few, one of the teachers could immediately read the diary assignments and react if needed. Thus, the diversity of students could be treated as individuals, and not as part of a mass. Pedagogy in higher education needs sufficient recourses to meet and take all the students into account and support them in their studies.

In our role as researchers in this study, we formed a heterogenous group with various pre-understandings affecting our thinking. Thus, our pre-understanding as researchers included both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. In addition, we had a short experience of education during COVID-19, and our experiences varied. However, all of us had numerous experiences and memories of saunas and sauna bathing.

We found hermeneutic phenomenology to be an adequate method to analyse the students’ diaries in the form of texts and audios. This method made it possible to study the complex material in depth. Since several researchers read the material and discussed the findings, we could increase the reliability of the results. However, an interpretation is always somebody’s way of viewing the material, and there is always a risk of over-interpretation, misinterpretation, and unawareness of actual circumstances. As Rasmussen (2004) claims, nobody can choose their prejudices. All are trapped in their own cultural and historical background but must do their best to transform themselves to avoid misunderstanding.

12 Conclusion

The aim of this study was to gain insight into the students’ lifeworld during the COVID-19 lockdown. To reach this aim, we investigated the kinds of thought that are born when sauna bathing followed by stream of consciousness writing or recording becomes part of a course in higher education. Especially, we wanted to know what the pedagogy of stream of consciousness writing or recording after sauna bathing could offer in an educational online course, and if and how this kind of diary writing could be applicable in higher education in general.

Among the students, a lot of interesting thoughts were awakened by the sauna bathing. We do not know if the same thoughts would have been exposed to the same extent without sauna bathing. Even if the many sauna diaries often showed examples of complex streams of consciousness, some of the students that did not go to the sauna, exposed interesting stream of consciousness diaries with deep reflections as well.

In an unexpected university lockdown situation, stream of consciousness writing or recording in combination with sauna bathing was a considerable idea that made the student exceed their comfort zone and spend time on introspective reflection instead of being constantly connected and influenced by other people's thoughts through the internet. When describing the previous months, a student writes: “I have developed a lot through reflection of my cognitive thinking. This course in phenomenon-based learning has been special and creative” (S3, diary 2) and another student talks about the course with the words “it was like nothing else I have experienced before” (S9, diary 3). When having read the diaries, we as teachers feel that this course and this task was not on the wane. In a critical situation, in which the teaching must search for new forms, teachers, like the students in this study, need to use all their creativeness and plunge into the unknown and move outside their comfort zone. We took that risk, and despite our shortcomings, we found a pedagogically applicable method that is worth developing into other contexts and without saunas or bathing. For sure, there are thought-provoking things to do other than sauna bathing. Why not try stream of consciousness writing after swimming in the ocean or river (see, Hannus, 2018), walking in the forest, or dancing in the rain? Why not do as we did, include somebody from another field of studies in the course planning and listen carefully to their ideas about going beyond the “comfort” zone of already tried teaching methods. Therefore, we hope that the course realization we have described in this chapter will be tried out in new ways and new contexts, further developed, and followed up with further research.

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” (Vincent Van Gogh)