Taking A Sauna

Though the American sauna usually is simpler, is its most complete form the sauna process has the following stages. First you sit or lie down on the lower platform until perspiration begins. Then you move up, lie down, and raise your feet if you like.

After perhaps 10 to 15 minutes, you throw a dipper of water on the heated rocks (special rocks should be used, for rocks gathered at random may contain water and explode when heated). This produces an immediate superheated (invisible) steam that makes the skin tingle and causes moisture to condense on the skin. The heat is momentarily oppressive, but the moisture is soon absorbed into the wood walls and then is replaced by the dry air through the vents.

A Finn will now use the birch whisk, a 2 to 3-foot bundle of leafy birch twigs. Switching the body with birch, aromatic with oil, helps cleanse the skin and stimulate the circulation.

After a cooling plunge in a pool, a shower, or a rest on the open air, you re-enter the sauna and wash yourself at the relatively cool temperature near the floor. Then you return to the upper platform for another period of sitting or lying in the hottest air and perhaps another round with the birch whisk. Then you cool down again and if possible spend a half hour in complete relaxation. It is important to cool completely before dressing to avoid the risk of chilling and catching cold.

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In America the sauna is not used for washing, and there has been little experience with the birch whisk. Some transplanted Finns have tried aromatic eucalyptus, and some keep eucalyptus leaves in a bucket of water in the sauna just for the aroma. Others use a stiff bath brush in the shower afterward to approximate the skin-tingling effect, loosening of dead skin, and cleansing of switching. The kind of sauna routine you work out yourself will depend on the kind of sauna and heater that you select.

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