I’ve been a Lifehacker fan since its beginning. While some of their topics are obscure geekdom, the occasional tip about a new piece of software or website that ends up saving me hours makes it a daily stop on my morning review of the news. I was really interested this morning when I saw their new post “How to Hack Your Bathroom into a Home Sauna.”
I had to check the calendar to make sure today isn’t April 1. It isn’t.
Holy sh*t Lifehacker. What will you stoop to for linkbait?
The post is chock full of lots of crazy ideas and very few concrete details, like:
If you plan to install a wood-burning stove, you’ll need to fire-proof the walls and roof around the stove. Particle board isn’t cheap, but this is one area you don’t want to skimp on.
If you don’t have an air vent in the bathroom, don’t make one: the gap under the bathroom door will work just fine.
Um, NO NO NO NO NO!
If you’re putting a wood burning stove anywhere enclosed, you need to make sure you have proper ventilation. If you don’t you’ll end up at best poisoning yourself and at worst asphyxiating yourself and your whole family in your project. Especially if you follow their instructions to build a sauna stove:
A wood burning stove can easily be made from a junk yard gas canister. Use a cheap angle grinder to lop off the top, then just find a metal bucket, cut a hatch and fit the flue.
Those are the instructions. All of them. Now go forth and build one of these and put it in your house!
Please don’t follow these instructions. We value you as a reader too much to have you kill yourself in a home-made deathtrap.
If you don’t want to shell out the dollars for a book, then visit Sauna Times or Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Pages. Both offer plenty of free advice and detailed plans for building your own saunas and sauna stoves.
And unless you really, really know what you’re doing, build your first DIY wood stove sauna in a shed, far away from your home and anything else flammable.
Meanwhile, watch for these exciting posts coming soon to Lifehacker: “Improve your mood: Hack your bathtub and a toaster into your own electro-convulsive therapy system” and “Hack your own Botox from cans you fish out of your grocer’s dumpster!”
Photo of the Kotiharju Public Sauna in Helsinki. Image by Sami Oinonen via Flickr
A reader wrote us this question:
Dear SaunaScape:
I’m going to a resort with some friends this weekend. In the spa area, they have a sauna. I’ve never used one before. There is one in my gym locker room and I don’t use it because it intimidates me. I don’t want to make a sauna faux-pas.
What is the etiquette for using a public sauna or a steam room like this?
Thank you,
Jordan
Jordan:
You shouldn’t get anxious about the sauna. It is a place to relax and do what is comfortable. Yes, it is a new experience for a lot of people, but as long as you remember the golden rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – you’ll be just fine.
If you are looking for some more specific rules, here is our top ten list of the most important etiquette rules consider when using a public sauna or steam bath:
10. Close the door.
Nothing upsets me more than when I am getting a good sweat on and someone else gets up to leave and does not close the door behind them. Nearly as bad is when someone is on their way in, and stops to chat with someone else while holding the door open.
When the sauna door is open, it does not take long for the heat to spill out of the sauna. It’s even worse in a steam room. If your gym or resort was stingy while sizing their sauna heater, it may take ten minutes or more for the sauna to recover from the door being open for just a minute.
If you are going in or out, please do it quickly, and make sure the door closes firmly behind you.
9. Sit on a towel.
Nothing is worse than walking into a sauna and having to find a spot to sit among the sweaty body prints others have left on the sauna bench. Saunas are not hot enough to kill germs, and in a high-use area like a public sauna, there may be a sealant or a protective barrier of gunk that neutralizes the disinfecting properties of wood.
Bring a towel in the sauna or steam room that is large enough to make a barrier between your body and the benches. If you’re sitting upright, a hand towel is big enough. If you’re going to lay down, you probably need a beach towel. It will protect you from what others have left behind, and keep you from leaving things behind.
Make sure you have a second towel that you leave outside the sauna to dry off with afterwards. You won’t want to use a sauna towel, and you can’t use a steam room towel to dry off after you’re done.
8. The sauna is not a clothes dryer.
There is a person at my gym who believes that the sauna is his personal clothes dryer. He does cardio, then goes for a swim. He brings in his sweaty clothes, wet bathing suit and towel and hangs them on the railing around the sauna stove to dry while he showers. Please, whatever you do, don’t do this.
7. Silence is golden.
I use the sauna as my place for relaxation and introspection. If you are going to talk, please do it quietly. Of course, if it is your own sauna, or you have the sauna to yourself, you can yak it up if you want. Just respect that in a public place, other people may want quiet.
6. If it’s in a locker room, it’s OK to got naked.
It seems like Tobias Fünke wrote most sauna etiquette guides. Most begin with a rant against seeing other people’s naked bodies in locker rooms. I’m going to rant the other way: It’s a locker room. You’re supposed to change clothes in there, which means you need to get naked in there. Until the early 1970′s, many high school and YMCA swimming pools throughout the US and Canada expected men to swim naked. Now, proper decorum says we aren’t supposed to show our bodies to anyone. This ad is indecent (but not this one).
They call it a sauna bath for a reason. You wouldn’t complain about people being naked in the shower, would you? So if the sauna is in an area where you can be naked, then go naked in the sauna! It’s more hygienic and better for you too.
By the way, a sweat suit or a sauna suit is never appropriate attire for the sauna. If you don’t want to get naked, see our post on what to wear in the sauna.
5. Keep your hands and eyes to yourself.
I may sauna naked, or with very little clothing. That does not mean that I amshowing off for anyone else. The Finns have a saying, “behave in a sauna like you would in church.” I’ve been in a number of saunas and seen some things that definitely aren’t church-like.
My attitude is, that if someone is coming on to someone else in the sauna, it isn’t hot enough. I go looking for the thermostat to turn up the heat. In a proper sauna, you can’t think about anything except “can I stay in here another minute?”
4. Leave your electronics outside.
The sauna isn’t good for your electronics, but electronics also aren’t good for the sauna. The heat and humidity (yes, even if it’s a dry sauna) in the sauna will damage your phone, iPod or other gizmo. The etiquette problem is nearly every device has a camera these days. I don’t know if you are just browsing through your music collection or if you’re taking photos of me. I’d rather not have to ask. The other problem is your music. Yes, you’re listening to it on earphones, but if it is quiet in the sauna, I’m probably going to hear most of it. And really, if that phone call is so important, why are you taking it in the sauna?
Use your gizmo while you’re working out, but leave it in your locker when you take a sauna.
3. No spitting on the rocks.
I’ve seen this happen before. I shouldn’t have to write it. Just don’t do it.
2. Shower before you sauna.
Reading through other sauna etiquette posts on the internet, it is amazing how many people see nudity as dirty, but don’t see dirt as dirty. I’ve seen it at my gym too: people remove their sweaty workout clothes to reveal a sweaty swimsuit underneath and head straight for the sauna. Or someone comes right out of the pool and heads straight into the sauna.
If you’ve been swimming, there is chlorine on your body that will volatilize in the sauna and can irritate everyone’s eyes and lungs who shares the sauna with you. If you have been out in public, your perfume or some other smell you picked up throughout your day will become stronger and more pungent in the sauna.
Be considerate to the others who use the sauna with you: Take a shower first. If you’re wearing a swimsuit or some other clothing in the sauna, take it off while you shower.
Don’t forget to take at least a quick rinse off after you sauna before you get into the pool.
1. Remember to ask first before you do anything that affects me.
This is a public sauna, and I’m going to share it with you. I may like what you want to do, like splashing water on the rocks, or using that secret trick that sends the heater into overdrive. I may not care about others, like if you prepare some secret skin rub that you’re going to use or if you’re going to exercise in the sauna. Or, I may not want to stay, and may ask you to wait until I leave before you start.
This is a public place. I have as much right to enjoy the sauna the way I want to as you do. If they conflict, let’s talk about it and find a way we both can live with. Everyone will be better off that way.
Keep in mind, these are the general rules for a public sauna. If you are lucky enough to have your own, you can make your own rules. If you are a guest in someone else’s sauna, then you should ask them what their rules are before making assumptions.
Good Luck!
What is your opinion of sauna etiquette in your gym’s locker room? Take our poll and let us know!
There is a sauna in the locker room in my gym. Just like you see on the workout floor, there is a huge variety of what people wear in the sauna. Many believe there are no wrong ways to use a sauna, but there are definitely some wrong things to wear into the sauna.
This list applies no matter what kind of sauna you are going in: infrared sauna, Finnish sauna, portable sauna, and even a steam room.
Here is our list of what to wear in the sauna from best to worst.
Best Sauna Attire: Nothing
We’ve said it here many times before. The sauna is a bath. It is a way to clean and exercise your skin. The best way to sauna is naked with all of your skin exposed to the heat. As you are in there, you don’t have to worry about any clothing getting soaked with sweat, and when you get out, you don’t need to worry about your clothes holding heat.
Of course, don’t forget you still need a towel to sit or lay on while you are in the sauna. Unless it’s your own personal sauna, you don’t want to leave your sweaty butt prints on someone else’s sauna benches. (Worse still, you don’t want to pick something up from a sweaty butt print someone else left on the sauna bench). Even if it is your own sauna, protecting the wood from your body oils will help make your sauna benches last longer.
If you are modest, you can wrap yourself in a towel or sarong while in the sauna. Although we find that trying to keep a towel properly positioned, especially those too-small ones gyms like to give out, while you get in and out of the sauna is more embarrassing than just letting it all hang out.
Second Place: A Swimsuit
In many parts of the world, nudity is expected in the sauna. However, there are times, like at a hotel or club, where the sauna is poolside, in a mixed public area. At other times, the bath house or spa with your sauna is coed and they need coverage. This is especially true at saunas in the English-speaking parts of the world. Since you’ll be sweating profusely in the sauna, a swimsuit is a good compromise when you have to wear something.
An older bathing suit where the fabric has started to lose its elasticity is a good choice for the sauna. This way it’s a little loose, and you won’t mind getting it sweaty. Another advantage with old swimwear is that there is a pretty good chance you’ve proven it is colorfast and won’t lose its colors when you jump in the shower, pool or hot tub after your sauna.
If you are going to wear a swimsuit in the sauna, don’t wear it under your clothes. You want to change into it there, preferably just before you use the sauna. All of pollutants you’ve picked up from the environment can travel into your skin once you start sweating in the sauna.
Also, rinse off between the pool and the sauna. You don’t want to leave a sweat slick in the pool, and you don’t want to release chlorine vapors in the sauna! If you can, it is best if you take off your suit while you shower.
Don’t forget to sit on a towel when you are in the sauna. Your bare skin should not touch the wood of the sauna benches.
Men’s Swimsuits
For men, any pair of loose-fitting swim trunks is good to wear in the sauna. If you can find them, a swimsuit made from a natural fiber like bamboo or cotton are the best choices. If not, look for something made from a non-stretchy synthetic like nylon or microfiber. The heat from the sauna can damage elastic fibers.
Women’s Swimsuits
Finding a good women’s swimsuit for the sauna is a more difficult challenge. Most women’s suits are designed as form-fitting and are made with lots of Lycra or other stretchy synthetics. The heat from the sauna will damage these fibers and cause them to lose their elasticity, leaving you with a baggy suit. You also should be careful about the dyes used in women’s suits: There are stories of women who went in the sauna with a colored suit, then afterwards went for a swim and ended up with a white suit! The heat of the sauna caused the dye to release.
When wearing a swimsuit in the sauna, try to avoid suits that have slimming panels or racing suits. The compression of these are going to restrict your breathing and make your time in the sauna very uncomfortable. Definitely avoid any suit with an underwire. The metal in the underwire will heat up quickly in any sauna and can burn you. Yikes!
For women, a bikini top with a pair of men’s style bottoms is your best bet. This gives you the least amount skin of coverage, and the best chance of finding a suit with little stretch to it. Of course, not every woman feels comfortable in a bikini. If you feel you need more coverage, look for a suit that at least has a liner made from bamboo or another natural material.
Honorable Mention: Cotton Clothes
A cotton tee-shirt and shorts are the norm in the coed areas of a Korean sauna. Others prefer a cotton sarong or other body wrap. While it is not the best for getting wet, clean, cotton clothes will allow your skin to breathe easily while you are in the sauna, and will not get damaged or evolve toxic compounds in the heat of the sauna. For those concerned about modesty, a longer legged short or even a pair of yoga pants could be a good choice.
Any clothing you plan to wear in the sauna should be clean, so you shouldn’t have worn them all day. If you are using the sauna correctly, you are going to get sweaty and you won’t want to wear those clothes anyway when you are done. Bring them with you and change into them when you are ready to sauna. Don’t wear any underwear in the sauna: Underwear tends to be constricting, and you want to be able to breathe easily. Ladies, don’t wear your bra in the sauna: They are constricting, usually made from synthetic materials and trust us, you don’t want an underwire in the sauna.
Unacceptable
There are a lot of things that we have seen people wear in the sauna that are not acceptable for sauna use. We’ve seen and heard of some strange ones over the years, so it’s going to be hard to list them all, but we’ll try to at least cover some of the most common ones.
Shoes: This is probably one of the worst offenses. There is all kinds of junk you pick up walking around all day. Bringing that into the sauna is a bad thing, plus the heat of the sauna when it lingers in your shoe is just going to make you susceptible to athlete’s foot. If you wear shower sandals when walking through the gym, make sure you leave them on the floor when you step on the benches.
Sauna Suits: It is our opinion that sauna suits should not be worn by anyone, ever. Especially in a sauna. Covering your whole body with plastic insulates your body from the heat of the sauna, eliminating most of the effects. Most sauna suits are made of PVC, which has a melting point lower than many saunas. PVC sauna suits give off toxic fumes and leaches toxic liquids for years after it was manufactured. You don’t want those compounds touching your skin, and you really don’t want to be breathing them in while you are in the sauna.
Sweat Suits: During wrestling season, we see a lot of young people going in the sauna wearing a full sweat suit with the hood pulled up. My guess is they are trying to cut weight before their next match. It does not do them any good. In the sauna, that sweat suit is going to act as an insulator from the heat of the sauna. It slows the progress of heat, so it’s going to take a lot longer in the sauna before they start to sweat, which is what they really want. If you’re going to cut weight in the sauna, go in naked, then put on your sweat suit when you can’t stand it anymore to slow your cool down.
Workout Clothes: You got all sweaty on the treadmill, and now you’re coming into the sauna with those same clothes on? Please.
Street Clothes: This is probably the worst offense. The fabric of your clothing picks up all sorts of chemical and biological compounds during the day. When you come into the sauna wearing these, you releasing them to everyone who is in there with you. Your modesty is not that sacred. Please get changed.
Sauna Laundry
This article would not be complete without a discussion of how to clean what you wore into the sauna. Many commercial laundry detergents are loaded with things like optical brighteners, foaming agents, perfumes and fabric sizing chemicals that you don’t want touching your body when you are in a sauna. Your best bet is to use an ultra gentle detergent meant for baby clothes, or even no detergent, just plain vinegar. Give everything an extra rinse to make sure as much soap is out as possible, and then dry everything normally.
However, if you’re going with the quick rinse in the sink method, don’t use the sauna as your dryer!
Even if you don’t use the sauna, if you wash your swimsuits this way, you will find that they last longer.
What do you prefer to wear in the sauna? Let us know in our poll.
She is sitting on the top bench, to get the best effect from the sauna,
She makes the sauna feel hotter by sprinkling a ladle of water onto the rocks,
The stove has plenty of rocks,
The temperature is shown at 90°F, but we’ll assume that the thermometer is labeled wrong, and it’s really 90°C (194°F), which is a very respectable temperature for a sauna, and
A pig is singing relaxing sounds to the woman.
Wait, what is that pig doing in the sauna?
This is a public service campaign by the USDA, but its goal is not to encourage sauna use with your livestock, but to help eliminate food poisoning by reminding US home cooks to check the temperature of their foods with a thermometer before serving them.
It is also interesting since the displayed temperature in the sauna, while much too low for a real sauna, is right in the middle of the “danger zone” for safely storing foods.
Here it is, the second day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, which is a good time to make your vihta, venik, sauna broom or sauna whisk. According to conventional wisdom, the best time to make one is just after the leaves on a tree have reached their full size.
To get started, you want to first find a suitable tree:
Birch vihta are said to help with muscle and joint pains, heal wounds, and help clean phlegm out of your lungs.
Oak vihta are said to make the skin smooth, it has anti-inflammatory properties, and acts as a mild sedative that removes stress. Some sites caution that an oak vihta is appropriate for people with oily skin.
Eucalyptus vihta are great for people with colds or other respiratory problems, and using the vihta transfers its essential oils onto your skin.
You can experiment with other types of leaves. Others report that in some areas lime and even nettle are good choices.
When you have selected your tree, you want to gather a full handful of young, thin flexible branches each about 2 feet (60 cm) long from your chosen tree. Remove enough leaves from the tree-side of each branch so you have a comfortable handle. Gather the leaves together into a flower-bouquet style bunch and bind them together at the handle using rope, tape, or even thin twigs or vines. If my directions are confusing, the video below shows an attractive finn performing all the steps.
If you don’t live near trees, many Russians offer veniks (their word for vihta) for sale on eBay, Etsy, even Sears.
Once you have your vihta, now you need to prepare it for use. Soak it in a bucket of warm water and bring it into the sauna with you to soften it up. If it’s fresh, it should be ready to use quickly. If it is dry or frozen, you may have to wait until your second round in the sauna until it is ready to use.
Once you have a good sweat going you or a friend can use the vihta as a massage tool. The techniques are hard to describe, but the video below does a good job of showing the techniques used in a Russian Platza, their version of this massage.
When you are done in the sauna, hang up your vihta to dry — If you’ve made it from good leaves, it should last you several sauna visits. Take your soaking bucket of water it into the shower with you. The water, now infused with many of the tree’s essential oils can be used as a shampoo and body wash.
It’s time to open the reader mailbag, for this question from A:
The locker room at my gym has a sauna, a steam room, cold plunge and a hot tub. I want to use them, but this will be my first time. What order should I use them? Do I need to be naked or can I wear my sports bra & panties and wrap myself up with a towel? Can I wear slippers inside the sauna or steam room? Can I take a bottle of water with me inside the sauna or steam room?
Don’t stress A. These are a common question that many new sauna users have. The sauna, steam room and tubs are all tools to help you relax. The thing you want to remember is the basic cycle: Heat, Cool, Rest, Repeat.
If you are at the gym to work out, do that first, then use these features. The heat of the baths will help ease your muscles after your workout, and your sweat will help rid your body of metabolic wastes that could otherwise accumulate in your joints.
What to wear
Before you get started on your heat bath regimen, you should to take a few steps to prepare.
The sauna is a place of relaxation and introspection, so you want to change out of your other “uniforms,” like your workout clothes or street clothes, even your underwear into something that is a dedicated sauna “uniform.” Having your own uniform should put you into the right mindset, and allow your body to sweat freely.
We believe that enjoying a the baths naked is best, but you can also wear a towel, swimsuit or loose-fitting shorts and t-shirt depending on your personal preferences (and the policy of your sauna facility). One thing to keep in mind is that high temperatures and body oils can combine to take the color and stretchiness out of elastic fibers. If you are going to wear a swimsuit, wear an older one.
Shower
Before you enter a sauna, steam room or hot tub, you need to take a shower to clean your skin of any chemicals, dirt, oils, antiperspirants, perfumes and makeup that are on your skin or trapped in your hair. In a pool, you’ll be leaving everything on your skin in the water as what the hot tub industry refers to as “body film.” Yuck. In the heat of the sauna, scents on your skin can negatively affect other people’s’ experiences and contaminants on your skin can travel into your bloodstream via your sweat. Double yuck.
In Asia, the cleansing of your body before you sauna or soak in a tub is a ritual that cleanses your mind of stresses before you enter the hot bath. Keep this in mind as you shower. Don’t forget if you are wearing a swimsuit or other outfit to take it off while you shower.
Towel Dry
This is most important if you are going to use the sauna or steam room. Water acts as a very good insulator. If you leave a film of water on your body, it is going to slow down how quickly you heat up and really start to sweat.
Heat
Now is the time to apply heat: This the purpose of the saunas, steam rooms, and hot tubs. Which one you choose first is up to you. We like to start with the dry sauna on our first round, and move to the more humid baths as we spend our time there. You may like it better the other way around.
Choose your first bath and get comfortable. In the sauna or steam room, the upper benches are hotter than the lower benches. Many people find that lying down on the bench heats their body more evenly than sitting on the bench. However, for yourself and others, sit or lie on a towel. If you wore slippers or sandals into the sauna, you should leave them on the floor. This will keep them cool, and prevent you from transferring anything that was on the floor to the benches.
You can definitely bring in a water bottle with you into the steam room or even place it next to the hot tub. If the temperature is mild, you might want to stay in for a long time, and in the sauna you can always splash some of the water onto the rocks to make what the Finns call löyly to enhance the experience.
As you sit in the heat, you will feel the heat of your body rising, then you should break out into a full body sweat. Try to stay in the room until this happens. Most people find it takes about 5-20 minutes before this happens, but there are far too many things that can influence this to make any hard and fast rules.
When you have had enough or if you aren’t comfortable, listen to your body and leave. If you have lain down, allow a minute or so for your blood pressure to equalize before you stand up.
Cool Down
When you leave the heat, you should feel that warmth throughout your body, your heart pounding like you just sprinted a mile and have sweat pouring out of your skin. Now you need to cool down to get that excess heat out of your body.
You can cool down rapidly by jumping into a cold pool, taking a cold shower, rolling in the snow, or even jumping through a hole in the ice. This has the effect on your body like a blacksmith dunking a hot horseshoe into water: It hardens you sending your circulatory system into overdrive.
If that sounds too harsh or you have any health risks, you can also cool down more gently by taking a warm shower, going for a dip in the pool or even wrapping yourself in a blanket, towel or robe and letting the heat slowly come out of you.
You can cool down the same way every time, or mix it up. It is your choice.
Rest
After you cool down, your body needs some time for its temperature to equalize and for your pulse rate and blood pressure to come back to normal, especially if you used one of the more extreme methods to cool down. Use this time to drink some water, get a massage or body scrub, or just sit and think happy thoughts. Hopefully, your gym has a lounge area where you can sit.
Repeat
One trip through the heat baths is never enough. Most people recommend two to three rounds. The cycling of your body through the heat and cold is an exercise for your skin and circulatory system. Just remember to cool down and rest and stay hydrated before you start your next round.
Finnish and Russians folklore both say that if you take more than three rounds, the spirits of the sauna will become upset with you. If you are superstitious, keep this in mind.
Finishing up
When you have had your fill, you should leave at the end of the rest phase. Let your body finish cooling down and let your sweating stop. Some people like to take a full shower with soap and shampoo to help them finish cooling down and get ready to return to society. Others believe in just a quick rinse as the oils your body releases into your skin and hair are better than any lotion or conditioner.
If you were wearing a swimsuit or clothing any, you should give it a good rinse at this point and wring the water out of it before putting it away. When you get home, hang it up and let it air dry. This is enough to keep it clean. If you feel you need to wash it, use some vinegar or a baby detergent, as the foaming agents, scents and fabric conditioners in most detergents will come out the next time you bathe.
As you get dressed again, you’ll feel the pressures of everyday life returning to you. Hopefully, the time you spent will help you better face what remains of the day, or help you get a good night’s sleep that night.
How long and how often can I safely sit in the Sauna? Image via Wikipedia
Reader Alex writes:
Dear Saunascape:
I’ve heard a lot about the benefits of using a sauna. When I take a sauna bath, is there a recommended amount of time I should spend in the sauna? How many days a week can I safely go in the sauna?
Thanks
Alex, we’ll start with the easy one first.
The sauna is safe to use every day.
Many people in Finland and Korea use the sauna every day. The safety of the sauna is backed up by numerous medical studies that have tested different populations, both healthy and ailing. All these studies have found that daily sauna users are at least as healthy as the control group who did not use the sauna. In many cases, the daily sauna users had measurable benefits over the non-sauna using group. These ranged from improved feelings of well being, to better sleep, to lower chances of catching a cold, even to lower blood pressure and weight loss and lowered blood insulin levels.
These tests have been made in many different types of sauna: From traditional Finnish-style saunas to gently-heated steam saunas and even in infrared saunas. All showed a benefit.
There are a few risks in the sauna: If you have heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or are on any type of medicine, you should talk to your doctor first. The sauna can put a strain on your system and can make your body react differently to any medicine. There are reports of lowered sperm counts after a sauna. However, the Finns and Koreans have not gone extinct yet, so this should not be a huge concern for you or your partner. There is also some evidence that recovering from a strength-building workout in a warm environment can inhibit muscle growth.
Now for your second question, which is more difficult to answer:
How long can I stay in the sauna?
There are many different types of saunas out there, and all feel different. You want to stay in long enough that your body starts to really sweat, but not long enough that you begin to feel lightheaded or uncomfortable.
In my experience, this is about 5-20 minutes per round. It depends on the temperature of the sauna, the air movement inside the sauna, the humidity of the sauna, and even how you are feeling that day. Some people keep their saunas cool, and as long as you stay hydrated, you could spend the whole day in there. Others are blazing hot and spending five minutes inside feels like a lifetime.
A sauna should best be enjoyed in rounds, so you don’t want to just go in the sauna once. You will not get as much benefit from a single sauna session as you will from multiple rounds.
When you leave the sauna, you want to cool down. If your heart is healthy, the best way is to jump into cold water or stand under a cold shower. This contrast from hot to cold really sends your body into overdrive.
If the cold isn’t your thing, you can cool down in a warm shower, take a swim in a pool, or even just sit, relax and drink a cool beverage.
Once your body has stopped sweating, it is time to head back into the sauna or steam room. If you are using a Finnish sauna, the second round is a good time to sprinkle some water on the rocks to generate some steam in the sauna. This increases your feeling of the heat.
Conventional wisdom for many cultures says that you should take no more than three sauna rounds in a day. Any more and the sauna spirits who live behind the stove will think you are greedy. We have not seen any medical studies that explain this. However, like a lot of folktales, we can only assume that there was some basis in fact for these. Three sauna rounds feels better than two or four to us.
If you are planning a visit to the saunas and thermal baths in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and many other eastern European countries, the bath areas are shared, and textilfrei: No clothing is allowed in the bath area. For English-speakers, the idea that you need to shed all of your clothes and walk around naked among strangers, friends and co-workers can be a bit disconcerting — We have been programmed to equate our bodies with shame and nudity with sexuality.
In Europe, the sauna is a place to relax and socialize where everyone is equal. Part of that equality comes from being naked: everyone knows that you have nothing to hide.
To help show this, the Dutch production company Cake TV made the short film Naakt (Naked) in 2006 about a young boy’s first visit to the sauna with his mother. From personal experience, it is an accurate depiction of a visit to a textilfrei sauna.
This movie was originally shown at the 2006 Utrecht Film Festival and later broadcast on Dutch television. Were this to be broadcast in the USA, after the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” hoopla, this just might cause the entire FCC to explode. If you are reading this at work, it might be a very good idea to wait until you get home to watch it.
We are encouraged that SaunaScape readers are a fairly tolerant group. In our poll started two years ago, 86% of you would bare it all and head right in like a native if you encountered a nudist sauna at your hotel.
Place your slow cooker in the corner of your bathroom, or any other room you wish to turn into a sauna (remembering that bathrooms normally work best as they are the most waterproof).
Fill the slow cooker with water and place on the lid. Keep the bathroom door closed and remove the lid from the slow cooker. As you are in the comfort of your own home, feel free to remove any clothes that you fell comfortable removing.
After several hours you should start to notice the room turning into a top-notch budget sauna. There is, however, no need to throw any additional water onto your slow sauna, unless you want that ‘super-slow’ experience.
You do, however, need to plan ahead for this as you need to keep your eye on the long range weather forecast and turn the slow cooker on sometime in June in order to reach the optimium temperature in November.
We know this has nothing to do with saunas, but its occupied much of our time for the last few weeks, and has caused a few days of downtime here. You may be experiencing similar problems, so we’d thought we’d share this.
This site is powered by WordPress. Since upgrading to the current version (3.0.1) we’ve had issues with memory. Specifically, we’ve been getting errors “Allowed memory size of 33554433 bytes exhausted.” We first started seeing them on the admin dashboard, then on some of the other admin pages, then on a few of the public pages. Then it took down the whole site one weekend.
Anyway, we’ve spent a lot of time digging through the WordPress support forums, enabling and disabling plugins, and generally banging our heads against the wall. We finally found it.
Here is our solution:
Upgrade WordPress and all your plugins to the current version first. Disable any you can’t live without. To get this site back online, we had to ftp in and delete a few non-critical plugins that were way out of date.
On the Memory Usage Overview that TPC puts at the bottom of your admin dashboard, look at the WP Memory Limit and the PHP Memory Limit. Both of these were set to “32M” on this site. Since version 2.8, WordPress really wants 64M. Memory usage was at more than 90% (WordPress wanted to use more, but couldn’t. This was the cause of the errors.)
To increase the WP Memory Limit, edit your wp-config.php file and search for a line like this and make sure the number before the last ‘M’ is 64 (or 128): define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);
If you can’t find it, add it up near the other define statements towards the top of the file.
To increase your PHP Memory limit (you have to do both), you need to edit or add a php.ini file. On our host (PolurNet), we had to create it in the wp-admin directory. We tried other locations first, and it didn’t work. Ours has only this line: memory_limit = 64M
Where this php.ini file has to reside and if you can edit it varies from host to host. You’ll need to speak with your hosing company’s tech support for exact instructions.
Go back and re-install or re-enable your plugins. Watch to see if any of them are especially large memory hogs as you do so.
All right. Time to take off the propeller beanie and get back to the sauna.
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If you are planning a visit to the saunas and thermal baths in 
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