All My Saunas

Saunas have become ritualized spaces for the past couple of years of my life. I’ve experienced good saunas and bad saunas, but I feel like it has become a part of my routine to the point that I feel an absence if it is not there. This post will detail all the saunas in my life and generally explain what enjoyed about them and some memories attached to the routines. Just as a note, all the saunas I have frequented have been attached to a gym - so for the most part, the saunas that I’ve been to were post-lifting exercises…do with that as you will. Anyway, I will rank them from worst to best:

The Edge

By far the worst sauna I have ever had as a part of my day-to-day ritual is the Edge sauna. The Edge is a gym chain in Connecticut, and while the gym experience is okay, the sauna is absolutely not. By its very nature, one is forced to break all of the essential sauna rules. First off the sauna is barely hot at all. One could easily stay in the edge sauna for 30 minutes - and the sweat barely occurs. Secondly, and maybe because of the lack of heat, everyone is fully in their gym clothes during the sauna session, making the whole environment even smellier than usual. The Sauna is more the idea of the sauna than an actual sauna - there is the heat and the wood and the emphasis of just sitting, but it lacks so much more.

The most egregious part of the edge sauna is this: there is a TV. I don't know a lot about the actual design elements of saunas, but it seems so unnatural, so excessive, and so distinctly American. There is a hole cut into the wall of the sauna and the screen is placed in a separate room, with only a plastic barrier separating the sauna space from the tv (’m sure heat escapes through the panel as well, only adding to the lack of heat). But it makes the sauna, not a relaxing space, but rather just another screened space. What I value about the Sauna as a “place’ is that it is one place where you can shut off your brain from distractions and simply think: it is one of the few spaces without screens - no phones, no laptops, none of that, just pure hot space. And the edge fails this essential element of the sauna. The TV is always set to ESPN, so when you are in these saunas you are given two options: pay attention to basketball highlights or use your phone with headphones to avoid the screen's omnipresence. It is anti-meditative. To make this whole situation even once, I once asked a girl what channel is on the TV in the woman’s sauna, and almost like a bad joke, she said, “HGTV”.

University of Glasgow

The Edge is by far the lowest sauna, but the middle three Saunas are all around the same level of sauna, in terms of my enjoyment. The Glasgow Sauna was indiscriminately linked to the swimming pool. In order to access the sauna, one needed to go to the pool locker room, walk through the pool deck, and then set up in the sauna. Ultimately, this meant that the sauna was often occupied by swimmers and that you were required to wear swim trunks in the sauna.

I found this sauna fun because most of the people who saun’ed were students and I generally had/overheard fun conversations (this was the sauna I used when writing “Sauna talks” so read that if you are interested). This Sauna was also enjoyable because it’s what got me into swimming. I’m a very uncoordinated person, so I always avoided the pool for exercise. But because of the sauna’s proximity and the need to wear a bathing suit, I thought - why not? I still remember the feeling of being really sore after a long swim, with my heart pumping due to the exercise, and then unwinding in the sauna: truly an embodied memory

City Fitness

When conceptualizing what I like in a sauna I came up with 3 main criteria. How meditative the space is, what the “clothing” expectation is, and the vibe of the other people in the sauna. My current Sauna is right in the middle of all these metrics. Like The Edge, it is attached to a large chain gym, but the environment is definitely nicer. The sauna is small (can fit 8 people max), but I have rarely experienced overcrowding (unlike the Glasgow Sauna). There really isn’t anything notable about his sauna, but this could perhaps be because it is my current reality, and my memory of the sauna will be different long after I have left the city.

JCC

The Jewish Community Center Sauna is perhaps the most comical of all my saunas. This was a brief two-month period between the Glasgow and City Fitness Saunas. I was in between jobs, so often found myself in mid-day hanging out at the JCC. There were a lot of characters that frequented this sauna and the conversations that took place slanted way more political than I would ideally want, but that’s what made it so silly. I was often the youngest person in this sauna by a minimum of 25 years. And it was big, 15 people could have fit in it, which is quite a lot, all things considered.

This sauna had a water bucket in which you could dump water on the hot rocks, and I loved this inclusion. Unlike the other saunas already listed, this sauna felt like it was intentionally a sauna, not just an afterthought to include in the gym. I found this space extremely meditative, and it was a great way to spend some time away from the cold of the winter, it was pure hibernation.

Forgotten Name Berlin Sauna

My first experience using a sauna has set the standard for what a sauna should and could be; I feel as if it’s almost a mythical space now. Berlin is a cold and grey city, a flood of sensory input. But the sauna culture at the gym with a now forgotten name has been imprinted into my soul as the most meditative space of my life.

The sauna itself was small, but it was extremely hot. All the saunas listed below I could easily last 25 minutes without needing to get out. But the heat in this sauna was unparalleled, getting to 15 minutes would be a challenge. It was so hot I could feel my blood boil and all my senses heightened - when I stepped out of the sauna there was a real adjustment back to “normal” space. Tt wasn’t just sitting in a hot room but a shock to the system, a challenge to overcome. I would get out, and jump into the coldest shower, and the sensation was near spiritual.

But the environment in which the sauna was located was what mattered more than the sauna itself, or perhaps it heightened the sauna experience. The sauna was placed in a room in which the ethos could only be adequately described with “mindfulness”. Books on mindfulness, plants, the head of a Buddha, and overall dim lighting. There were these lawnchair-like meditation beds with red blankets scattered throughout the room. On my truest sauna nights, I would feel my body get heated and then sit in these chairs relax, and embrace mindfulness and meditation. I don't think there is any other location in the world where I have felt such embodied bliss.

The sauna environment also made me re-frame my understanding of bodies. Unlike all the other sauna’s - this sauna was not separated by gender and it did not require clothes (in fact the heat actively discouraged clothing). So I would be in this sauna with (at times) 3 or 4 other people, none of them wearing clothes. At first, I was uncomfortable, with the experience of “culture shock”, but once I felt comfortable in this position, I embraced it, and I think it truly did change the way how I viewed relaxation, my body, and other bodies. It was revelatory having conversations in this sauna (which were few because of the Berliner mentality, but still) because talking to someone when both parties are naked for the first time was just something I was so unused to.

This might have been the period of my life where I was the most mindful. I don’t know. Maybe the space just permitted it, but it’s funny how certain spaces and routines are so drilled into our brains, to the point that I can remember the locker room, the getting into the sauna, the heat and the intensity, the cold shower, meditating under the red blanket in the calm room, and then getting on my bike in the dark Berlin nights, biking under the city street lights, excited about all the beauty the world has to offer.