Sauna is an interesting word. It is both the noun describing the little structures that I spend my days making and the action of how one uses that building. Mostly, I focus on the details of building and let the details of how one uses the Sauna fall to the individual taste of my clients. I don’t adhere to a dogmatic approach; everyone has his or her own experiences and memories to draw from. Different countries have subtle variations: wetter, drier, hotter, timed sessions, birch Vihta, etc. My memories stem from my time at Podunk, in the old Finnish Sauna. I remember the 5 gallon joint-compound buckets for gathering water from the creek, and the various cheap plastic wash tubs, brushes, loofa, and other bathing implements. There was some sort of ladle (which we always called a kipper in some mis-appropriation of Finnish-ness) for pouring water on the rocks. And there would be various soaps and shampoos–some common, some not so common, like the Finnish pine tar soap, which, despite its comparison to the sticky pine tar we would out on our skis, actually feels pretty good.
Once the sauna got good and hot we would strip down as unceremoniously as possible and go in. The first round would always be pretty talkative and end with a healthy ladle-full or two of water on the hot rocks until we had to bolt out the door and head to the creek. If someone were annoyingly loud sometimes a good löyly would be timed so as to quiet things down. In the second and third round we might take great pleasure in thrashing each other (gently) with a birch vihta if someone bothered to make one from the birch tree outside the Podunk sauna. The old Finns would make them in the spring out of the fresh soft leaves and keep them in the freezer. Now you can actually buy them from Finland—dried and vacuum packed for a reasonable sum. After softening them in water for twenty minutes they smell just like a fresh birch tree.
The last round in the sauna would be time to wash: after getting hot again we would take turns on the little washing bench scrubbing ourselves (or each other) with the loofa or stiff sauna brushes and some sauna soap. Finally a rinse with some warm water would wash off all of that dead skin and residue of a week’s hard work and we would leave the sauna all fresh sand natural smelling. None of us ever had to wear deodorant or poufy colognes.
pouring water on the rocks 
how to have a sauna “bath” 
simple beauty of an ice lantern
Sometimes I sauna with friends, sometimes alone. Always it is the same: get hot until sweat just pours out of me, cool off, repeat; scrub my skin, maybe switch my back with the Vihta, wash up, rinse down the sauna. It’s a ritual of sorts but not like the way a ritual in the church is dictated to you. As in church, there are ritual objects that create focus help and direct the actions, but instead of incense and gold, they are plastic and wood. And unlike church, there is no sin in doing it anyway you want to. The brushes, basins, ladle, soap, and vihta are there just to help establish the flow of the sauna experience. To the uninitiated it may seem all strange, but after a few times, it all makes sense. It is just a bath house, after all.
Lately, I have found that the top of my noggin does not have so much insulation from the heat of a good löyly so I have taken to wearing a felt sauna hat, which is sort of like a Shriner’s Fez, which is to say that it makes you feel just a little goofy. But, then again, I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking the sauna ritual too seriously!
