In the Winter a middle aged lady’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of saunas.
One of the neurosurgeons I work with has been extolling the virtues of his new sauna (I mean bragging but I’m trying to be polite). I assumed a home sauna would be expensive but then out of nowhere (funny how that happens) I got an email about a sauna place that was having a sale, and it’s the same place he bought his from.
As with just about any subject, the more you look into it, the more there is to know. It turns out the traditional Finnish sauna is just one of the options available. The classic sauna is heated with a wood burning stove. This can be roughly and more conveniently approximated with an electric heater, although with a fairly fearsome power input required. It’s essentially a room sized oven, after all. The third option, growing in popularity, although not with purists, is the infrared sauna. It doesn’t seem to be any cheaper to buy, but it’s cheaper and simpler to run. Less power; no stove, just panels that emit the appropriate radiation; it’s a dry heat, there’s no steam so no need for drainage or ventilation. Traditional sauna enthusiasts sneer that proper saunas are like an oven, and infrared ones are like a microwave. Not a pleasant image. They run at a lower heat, hence the lower power requirement and less time needed for heating up. The idea is that they just heat the person, not the room. Allegedly it feels like the sun on your skin, but without the damaging UV rays.
But, you can read so much about it but the proof is in the pudding (or more precisely, the eating of the pudding, surely?). It’s an individual thing. I’ve enjoyed traditional saunas in the past, with putting water on the hot rocks to make steam (a practice called loyley, with an umlaut), and the smell of hot wood. On the other hand, I suffered horribly with the heat in Egypt a couple of years ago, so maybe my tolerance isn’t what it was? Anyway, it was easier to organise a try out than I thought. I’ve booked an infrared sauna tomorrow, and managed to get into a traditional sauna this evening.
There is a movement called The Sauna Project which I only discovered yesterday. They have a number of traditional saunas around the country, many being portable, which you can try out, and there’s one just a few kilometres from here. So, just before 5pm, I found myself waiting outside a sauna cabin in a car park next to the ocean.
It was chilly, at around ten degrees C, with seven of us, four women and three men, waiting for our session to begin. When the manager asked if any of us wanted a quick dip in the sea before we started, it triggered nervous laughter. Finally it turned 5pm, the previous clients exited, red and sweaty, and the seven of us piled in. It was hot hot hot. I was dismayed to start with, thinking I might have to get out straight away, but then a nice lady offered me a felt hat which I hadn’t noticed lying next to me. I’d been wondering why she and her friend had been wearing them, assuming (as I told her) that they belonged to some sort of cult. As it turns out, it’s a traditional way to protect your head from the excessive heat, which is counterintuitive but was right on the mark. I immediately felt better.
It was a snug space but fortunately there was a huge picture window that gave us a gorgeous view of the sun setting over Kapiti Island and the sea, which I stared at for the whole session. It was too hot for electronic devices or even a book but it would have been impossible to concentrate in the heat anyway.
The manager then came in with a rug and a bottle of some sort of essence. The kind lady and her friend then covered their faces with their hands and gestured for me to do the same. Apparently this protects your face and eyes from the burning steam. The manager splashed the essence onto the hot rocks, and then flapped her rug at us to waft the steam in our direction. The smell was lovely but the heat was palpable. By now I was leaning very much towards an infrared sauna. This was really almost unbearable. After 15 minutes, the (quarter)hourglass had emptied, a signal for us to all step out for a breather and a cool down. All the men and myself went for a swim in the icy sea which was very refreshing. The next 15 minutes was much more tolerable. When the manager came in for another round of smelly steam and rug flapping, I asked how the rugby was going. There was a pause before someone asked “Who’s playing?” It was the All Blacks v Italy, which I would have watched if I’d had access to the live broadcast. No one knew the All Blacks were even playing. I said they were playing Italy but they ignored me until one of the men eventually said “Oh yes, they’re playing Italy! Someone invited me to watch but I’d booked the sauna already”, and everyone nodded. The manager excused herself by saying she was Irish so had no interest in rugby, but she’d check the score for me. At least I knew no one would care about spoilers. (Italy up by three! A turn up for the books). There followed a desultory conversation about the football World Cup, which at least some of them knew was on.
Everyone else were sauna regulars, and there was general discussions about various locations and prices available in the Wellington region, and also some gossip about various examples of poor behaviour amongst mutual acquaintances in the sauna crowd. One sauna now banned water bottles after someone kept breaking the thermometer by pouring water in it, attempting to trick it into running hotter than it was programmed for; while another patron had sprayed water at someone who annoyed him. His excuse was stress due to being in the midst of an ugly divorce, but this was generally felt to not be an acceptable reason.
The young woman sitting behind me was some sort of alternative health practitioner. I missed her explanation when I was late back after my second swim. She was talking about setting up shop in a brand new wellness centre that is going into the top floor of the local shopping centre. Other practitioners included a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a naturopath, and a colour therapist. Good luck to them.
She asked towards the end of our session what everyone had planned for dinner. Fish and chips was one reply, and someone else was doing a kind of my food bag knock off called Primal Foods (or was it Primitive? You get the idea, anyway.) Despite being a subscriber, he wasn’t that impressed with the meals. The woman behind me said she’d tried them but didn’t rate them either. Not enough meat, apparently. This really surprised me, as I’d just assumed she was at least a vegetarian, if not a vegan.
By the time the manager came in for our last dose of perfumed steam, (14:10 to the All Blacks), I was feeling much more at ease. My second swim had been several minutes long, so I was really enjoying the heat now. In fact, when she finally knocked on the door to say our hour was up, I was a little sad. Another five minutes would have been good.
So, doable if interspersed with icy sea swims. I can’t see myself buying an ice bath to come with a sauna, but there is a hose nearby. Would a quick spray wth a hose serve the same function?
I’ll be interested to see how I find the infrared sauna tomorrow.