SaunaScape

NOT a spitoon. Photo by fooishbar on Flickr

The Chicago Tribune’s hip social news outfit, Red Eye Royalty has a post, 5 simple sauna rules. They are rules we can all live by:

1. Don’t SPIT on the sauna rocks!
2. Get permission before you turn up the heat!
3. Hurry up and close the door!
4. Don’t wear street shoes!
5. Never sit bare bottom! (“What makes you think someone wants to sit in a puddle of your booty juice?”)

A commenter adds a 6th: When conversing, be mindful of others there who don’t want to hear about how “Tysheena’s baby daddy’s cousin came in her house a slept with Jerome in her bed.”

[Red Eye Royalty]

Photo by Paint Monkey on Flickr

In our quest to find new and interesting sauna tidbits to share with you, we spend a lot of time combing the web looking for information.

This weekend, we stumbled upon Sauna Times, a blog run by Glenn, a “Joe American” living in Minnesota. We find the similarities between his site and ours uncanny, right down to the choice of the background images. He seems to be quite a personable fellow. So much so that with this post, Sauna times now has a place in our links page.

What really caught our attention on his site though, was his post “Hotel Sauna: How to Take One.” A laminated copy now resides in our briefcase for our next stay at a hotel with a sauna.

We have noticed that most hotel (and health club) saunas, especially here in the USA, tend to be overly dry from disuse. This becomes part of the problem: If the sauna is dry and hot, it irritates your respiratory system. Most  forbid you from throwing water on the rocks, so the only solution is to turn the temperature down. You end up sitting in a warm room, which really doesn’t do much for you.

Sauna Times has a simple solution for all of this: As soon as you check in, turn on the sauna full blast. Give it 20 minutes or so to heat, then:

Flush the hotel sauna. Generously douse with fresh water:

• the bench area where you’ll be sitting.
• the hotel sauna rocks with water (they should bark back, if not, the sauna is lame, call housekeeping if you’re especially irritated).
• anywhere else you feel the urge.

Why?  underused hotel saunas can build up dust and stagnation, this ‘cleansing’ will get your hotel sauna fresh and ready to rock.

After this, reset the timer again, and give the sauna another 30 minutes to recover from this washing, and you’re ready to begin the sauna process, which Glenn distills succinctly: “It’s like the instructions on a box of laundry detergent: sauna, rinse, chill, repeat.”

[Hotel Sauna: How to Take One] Sauna Times

The sauna sequence recommended at Sauna in Deutschland

The “Sauna in Deutschland” site of the German Sauna Federation, has a helpful chart showing the proper routine for your visit to a German sauna. The image attached to this post has my translations into English of the original German version.

The German method adds warm foot baths to the mix, something that is not seen among other cultures visits to the sauna. They use these as a way to gently warm the body before entering the sauna and to help recover after cooling down.

The basics of the sequence are:

• Allow a minimum of 2 hours for your sauna visit, and don’t forget to bring towels, sandals, soap and shampoo with you.
• Before you enjoy your sauna take a warm shower.
• To sweat faster in the sauna, dry off fully, and take a warm footbath before entering the sauna.
• Take a sauna session, no longer than 15 minutes, or shorter if you start to feel uncomfortable.
• Laying down in the sauna gives a more even heating of your body. If you are going to do this, you should sit for the last 2 minutes to prevent yourself from feeling lightheaded as you exit the sauna.
• After your sauna, get some fresh air to replenish your body’s oxygen.
• Cool yourself down by dousing yourself with water: Either with a hose for gentle cooling, a deluge shower, or by taking a dip into a cold plunge pool. Before you use the cold plunge, you should rinse the sweat from your body. You should chose a more gentle cooling method (e.g. the hose) if you have high blood pressure.
• After cooling down, take a warm foot bath to rewarm your body.
• Taking another cold shower will help train your blood vessels.
• Now relax, by taking a rest in a reclining chair, using the tanning beds, or getting a massage.
• If you are going to take another sauna session, repeat the sequence from the warm shower.

Mihael Cankar, a Finn living in Helsinki, has been maintaining his Finnish Sauna site since 1994. He has achieved his mission of bringing information about sauna culture to the internet.

He covers all of the important topics for the potential sauna-goer: How to Use the Sauna, Health Issues, building and maintaining Your Own Sauna, and the History and Traditions of the sauna. He rounds out his own content with judicious links to content by others, including Dr. Weil and a first-time sauna goer.

Pay his site a visit, and you’ll never wonder what Avantouinti means again.

[cankar.org/sauna]

Plans for Kalle Hoffman's current sauna, rendered in beautiful ASCII from his sauna building FAQ

For those of you looking to build your own sauna, a good reference point is Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Page and Sauna Building FAQ. Kalle is a Finnish software developer living in the San Francisco area. His pages recount lessons learned while building a few of his own saunas.

Better yet is his FAQ, which is more a digest of interesting e-mail correspondence he’s had dating back to 1995. It’s a cross between a bully pulpit and a show and tell, but very informative. Most interesting are his collection of ASCII sauna plans that he’s shared with his correspondents over the years. He also has plans for The Kallenator, a sauna stove made from two old 40-gallon hot water heaters.

A couple properly enjoying the sauna at Europabad near Karlsruhe, Germany

Why is it that we Americans think naked is dirty? Is it our Puritanical history? Our consumerist culture? Or the years of repression of our sexual urges by Hollywood censors? Why else would there so many forums and books written about our collective hang-ups being naked with friends, family or strangers, and especially those of our own gender it makes you think that Tobias Fünke had it right…

Or not.

Naked is the best way to enjoy a sauna, steam bath, or hot tub. That’s not just my opinion. Millions of Finns, Germans, Swedes, Russians, Koreans and Japanese feel that way too. It’s also a proven fact for a number of reasons:

Your skin is your largest organ. It is the first line of defense protecting your body from harm. One of the weapons at its disposal is the lowly sweat gland. The sweat gland produces a clear secretion that is mostly water, but contains some electrolytes (like salt) and waste products, and discharges it directly on the surface of the skin.

Sweat serves three purposes: Cooling, by the water in the sweat evaporating; Protection, since the water dilutes contaminants that contact your skin and the salt kills microorganisms that try to grow on it; and Excretion as certain toxins in your body are most efficiently eliminated through sweat. Using a sauna or other heat bath exercises your skin. Isn’t it best to do it as nature intended?

It’s not your skin, it’s your clothes that are dirty. Fabric of any kind is a very good filter. It captures and holds some of everything it comes into contact with. It starts with the fibers themselves, especially synthetic fibers, dyes, detergent, bleach, fabric softeners, chlorine from the pool, airborne pollutants, perfumes plus any microorganisms that the fibers come into contact with all stay trapped in your clothes. Now, as you start to sweat, the fabric against your body traps that sweat preventing it from migrating away. All that other junk trapped in your fabic becomes mobile in the water and trapped against your skin. Your skin can act as a two-way street for that junk in the same way it can for “patch” medicines.

If you’ve ever had to maintain a hot tub, you know what I’m talking about… Body film clearing enzymes, anti-foaming agents, scum removers… all of these are to deal with the contaminants mostly trapped in our swimsuits.

Chlorine and Bromine vapors are irritants to your eyes, mucous membranes, and respiratory tract. Chlorine and Bromine are commonly dissolved in water as a disinfectants to keep public pools clean. However, when you heat water, these compounds want to become vapors. The amount of Chlorine that water will hold decreases by a factor of 7 from swimming pool temperatures of 75°F / 24°C to sauna temperatures of 200°F / 93°C while the tendency for Chlorine to vaporize increases by a factor of 6! Exposure to low levels of Chlorine or Bromine gas can cause irritation to your eyes, and the mucous membranes in your throat and lungs. You may not be susceptible to these irritants, but the stuff coming off your swimsuit may be a hazard to your fellow sauna-goers’ health. (If you miss P-Chem, there are some charts here.)

Heat is transferred to your body more efficiently. Much of the heat that you feel in the sauna comes from IR radiation. IR is light. The more of your body it can see, the more heat that you feel transferred to your body. Something thin like a swimsuit gets in the way of the light and cuts down on the heat that reaches you. Something thicker like a towel or robe cuts down on the heat you receive more dramatically.

Of course, there are some rules of etiquette to be followed:

This doesn’t mean you sit bare-assed on the benches! Unless they are your benches. Sit on a towel, please. If you’re going to lay down, bring a big enough towel for you. If you’re going to sit on the upper benches, put a towel under your feet too. Look at the photo with this post, and you will see that these two sauna goers have their benches completely covered. I don’t want to sit on your sweat stain when I get into the sauna, and I’d bet you don’t want to sit on mine either. This goes for any other places you might sit while naked, save one.

Leave your cell phone in your locker! Most cell phones have cameras on them these days. I don’t care how important your e-mail, text message, or friend request on Facebook is, but it can wait until you’re in a place where people are fully dressed. Most cell phones have cameras on them these days. When you start playing with a cell phone somewhere where I’m naked, I assume you’re taking a picture of my junk. I don’t like that.

The sauna is a place to relax and cleanse yourself. Why are you polluting your (and my) experience by pulling out your crackberry.

So, the next time you’re at a sauna, steam room or hot tub where you can let it out, do it. You’ll feel better and it’s better for your body too.