Sauna – the only existing Finnish word that can be found in the English dictionary. In Finnish the word “sauna” means “bath” or “bathhouse”. It’s actually a word that many countries all over the world borrowed to name one of the most delightful places to be. For the rest of the world, the sauna is a luxury spa experience, a place where we feel fancy and (let’s be honest) sexy, but for Finnish people the little hot room is part of their history and a core of their traditions.
In that little barely lit hot room filled with wooden panels, naked men are seated in silence. They’re sweating and enjoying the calmness that’s embracing them. One of them is gently hitting his body with a fresh branch of birch like a mantra, another one pours hot water on his legs and shoulders with a ladle. You can hear someone silently whispering. Everything is so quiet, so still and so peaceful. In a manner of seconds a warm wave touches their bodies from head to toes and covers them with millions of sweat drops. The water thrown on the warm rocks is called “loyly”. The more loyly there is, the better the sauna, or at least that’s what Finnish people say.
This bathing ritual is not a scene from an oriental novel, it’s a tradition that’s been repeated for thousands and thousands of years all over Finland. In the past, the sauna was used a lot by people who worked on the fields. After a long day at the field, people needed to clean their bodies and rest their muscles and the sauna was the best place to do that. In traditional saunas, women were normally giving birth because they were considered the cleanest rooms in the house. According to Finnish tradition, the sauna was not just the cleanest, but the most sacred place in the house as well. They say that “the sauna is the poor man’s pharmacy” because these hot steamed rooms really offer a lot of health benefits for the body and the mind.
Today, Finland is a nation of a bit over 5 million people and they have a sauna for almost every person, or more than 3 million saunas. You can find them in homes, offices, hotels, sport centers, ships and even underground in the mines. Even though it sounds crazy to us, a 99% of Finnish people visit saunas at least once a week. For them, the sauna is a place where you can relax your brain from the modern society that never stops, that’s always busy and very noisy. Once you enter in that meditative place you forget about talking and overthinking and let your muscles and your mind guide you into blissfulness.
And all of us are a step closer to have that blissfulness at home as well with the newest self-contained sauna that made all the sauna lovers around the world go nuts about it. The self-contained sauna is a friendly product for your home and for yourself because it’s practical, portable and will save you a lot of money and many trips to the spa. Although it’s not the traditional Finnish sauna, it’s a modern version of it, a product that’s adjusted to our 21st century needs and the best of all, you can purchase it from your home, your office or even from the train when you’re coming back from work. You can bring Finland in Australia with the dome-shaped sauna that will allow you to get inside, lie down and get lost. The sauna will warm you and it will clean you from inside and out, so do something good for yourself today and look for the closest self-contained sauna store and don’t regret the money at all. Allow “the sauna blissfulness” in your life and you’ll feel what a difference a day at the sauna will make.
