What’s it all about?

Lappalainen Sauna is slow and relaxed

It’s a deeper, calmer and richer experience than just going to the sauna to heat up and clean yourself.  It is usually done with close friends/family or alone so you can fully relax and feel comfortable. The treatment features several sessions with the vihta and layers of steam, heat, scents, sounds, peeling, climate contrasts and massage. Sidestepping your brain, it’s a journey through your senses. It’s intimate and private, and can be a powerful tool if you wish to get back on track or enter a new path.

Designed to rock the boat

A man taking the elevator to his office knows he is no longer on the ground floor. But if he didn’t climb the stairs, does his body also know? Sauna can introduce a person to a mental state where body and mind unite. A double movement, closing in and opening up at the same time, turning off the internal monologue while connecting with an original “myself” deep inside. If that sounds mumbojumbo to you, then call it a manipulation of the sympathetic nervous system in order to flush it with hormones from the parasympathetic nervous system. Or the shorter version – bliss in body and mind.

An inward journey that starts outside

Historically, sauna is honored as a spiritual place for cleansing and healing, a space between this world and the other. Lappalainen Sauna is a place for transition, an interface between body and mind. The treatments are designed to help you unlock the fight, flight and freeze response, enabling you to process both physical and emotional issues. Not a detour from your career path, but Lappalainen Sauna leads you home.

Custom-made and off-grid

Set in nature, off-grid, no noise, no mobiles, and no cameras, the sauna is controlled, gentle and humid. Or when called for: massive and evolving. You decide. It’s a therapy session without words, custom-made to help you know what you know and feel what you feel. No two sauna sessions are identical.

Closely related to nature

The sauna is decorated with different plants. Besides their beauty, the heat makes the plants evaporate their scents. The use of vihtas (brooms of birch, oak, rowan, fir or spruce) has both a massage and an aromatic effect. We drink herbal teas, massage with natural oils, swim in nearby water, rest in a fire heated hot tub filled with herbs or flowers, use a cold-plunge barrel. We wash ourselves under an outdoor shower and do sauna in a timber log sauna or a Jurttasauna of felted wool. The water comes from the mountain, the fire from the trees I’ve felled. Food is cooked over open fire or in an iron oven or a tandoor. Between the sessions we rest on sunbeds / hammocks in the forest or in the tipi. We are in the backwoods. There are no neighbors.

Done by a professional

The Latvians use the word Pirtnieks for what in Finland is called Saunahoitaja (sauna nurse). The Ukrainians call the person in charge of the sauna rituals a Bansjik. Whatever he or she is called, a sauna attendant must be able to read each client and understand their issues in order to be of any use. I have built upon experience developed over generations, explored different massage techniques including peat treatment, and I graduated as Pirtnieks in Latvia 2022. Before beginning the sauna treatment, we start with getting to know one another and what to expect from the sauna. Lappalainen Sauna is an individual journey, done in close communication between the two of us.

Bitterness out, sweetness in…

Hoitava is a treatment providing relief, solace, and comfort. It repeatedly builds up tension only to break it down again. It’s a treatment which wrestles with you. A bath in darkness and steam where you zoom out and unwind. After a serious overhaul where we pass borders and fool your senses, you will ground your feet in a world that is sweet. A reward to yourself.

Voima treatment will recharge you, make you strong and hungry. It will step by step move you to your limit, then raise the bar and make you follow further, but never beyond. You will run up  the mountain but never over the top. You will end up full of power to roam all the green meadows in the world.

With a group of friends for fun and relaxation

Rauha sauna are open saunas where people come to chill out. Turvesauna is a pampering sauna with peat treatment for beauty, detox and regeneration. Sorrow-sauna is a thematic session encouraging you to let go and not hold back. People who want to tell their stories do so while others listen in a friendly and respectful atmosphere. Ryhmä is a group-sauna where everybody is using the vihta on everybody, to music, very fun.

Want to know more? Send me an email in English, Swedish or Norwegian.