The body as refuge: recovery, sauna and performance

Par Gabriel Goldberg 15 January 2026 10 min read

We live in a world that rewards permanent vigilance. Notifications never stop, decisions pile up, and the very idea of rest has been transformed into yet another form of optimization. Cognitive fatigue is no longer a warning signal reserved for entrepreneurs — it affects anyone who thinks for a living, anyone who carries the weight of responsibilities that do not switch off at six in the evening. Managers, creatives, freelancers, parents juggling between worlds: we all share the same paradox. We know we are tired, but we no longer know how to stop. Effort has become second nature. It is recovery that has become difficult. And it is winter, with its low light and short days, that best reveals what we refuse to see the rest of the year: that we are running on empty, that the body has accumulated a debt that willpower alone can no longer repay. A few years ago, I realized I no longer really knew how to rest. I slept, yes. But I was not recovering. My body was there, but my mind kept spinning — night and day. This text is an attempt to put into words what I have learned since. The lie of continuous performance For a long time, I believed that performance was measured by intensity. The more I worked, the more effective I was. The less I slept, the more I proved my commitment. It is a lie that many entrepreneurs tell themselves — and that startup culture glorifies. But the body does not lie. After a few years, the signals became impossible to ignore: chronic tension, waking up at…