Who am I?

“It was in Odessa it happened…“

I grew up with sauna. My father had a very clear opinion what a good sauna was and taught me all about it. In 2018 when I was working in Ukraine, I went one day with a local colleague to a public sauna. The sauna was rather big but not very warm. Annoyed I started pouring water. What a storm of protests I evoked! The guys on the top shelves (wearing those silly sauna hats) wanted to beat me up. My colleague told them I was a stupid foreigner and pulled me out. He told me to open my eyes and pay attention. We went in again. Now I saw a guy waiving leafy branches over a naked body spread out on the top shelf. He was seldom actually touching it, and rather gently when he did. “What a sissy way of doing it”, I thought. Very, very far from how I was brought up, where the birch broom was more like a whip and left long red scratches on the skin. My friend smiled: “Why don’t you try it?”.

Well, well, what a fool I turned out to be. Their way of using the brooms (the vihtas) was a sophisticated massage with steam and heat, delicate, powerful, and soothing, The touch and the scents from the leaves was amazing. I experienced what the Ukrainians mean when they call the sauna their second mother. I believe this way of doing Sauna was once how everyone did it in Finland, the Baltic states, Sweden and Norway. Sauna used to be a pleasure one did together, hence there were procedures and traditions that could be learned. But with industrialization and a raise in living standards, people wanted to have their own private saunas. Many of the old ways were forgotten and fell out of use.

Modern saunas are not built for producing a lot of steam, but for high temperature. The air is dry. The steam is short-lived and scalding hot. With plenty of steam you can do wonders with the vihta, without steam not much. In a modern sauna, the ceiling is often too low for swinging the vihta. And the benches are for sitting, not laying down. These saunas are well insulated, and while insulation traps heat, it doesn’t breathe well. So, it’s not the ideal option if you’re working hard. And in a proper sauna, your body is working hard. While many modern saunas often are beautifully designed, a lot of them fail to create the sense of safety and intimacy that total relaxation also demands. Modern saunas are all about insulation, heat efficiency, cost efficiency, remote control, apps, panorama windows and time coefficients. Then one runs out and jump into cold water. That crave for sharp contrasts says something about how dull our senses have become, constantly rushing for sensations.

In Odesa I understood that a good sauna has more variations and nuances to offer than just heat versus cold. I went all over the place, studied and copied the bansjiks. Saw how they played with all our senses. I later found a teacher in Latvia, Janis Pavlovich, a two-meter-tall sauna master, a former bodyguard and karate champion. He patiently shared his experience and introduced me to the Latvian sauna traditions and how to handle the vihtas. When I asked Janis how to become a sauna master, he replied:

“Don’t be Hitchcock. In the sauna a surprise is a disaster. Treat your client as a guest. Never forget, he or she is your master”.

More than the sauna itself it’s how you do it that makes the difference. A good sauna session hones and spoils you. It is dynamic, whispers to you to let go, yells at you to come alive, only to embrace you.