Let the spirit of the sauna touch your soul and the warmth of it pamper your body. With Sauna Ritual you can make your time in sauna even more luxurious.

Sauna Ritual has two important phases. Between the two phases you can relax (for example on a terrace), drink some water, have little fruits and have even more sauna. Essential part of Sauna Ritual is that you relax spiritually as well as physically and you forget time, at least to some extent. Grant your sauna moment with plenty of time, don’t hurry. Remember to drink plenty of water as you will sweat a lot during the ritual.

First phase of your sauna ritual:

Body scrub with sauna massage salt which has different scents depending on your mood.  

Start your sauna ritual by having a shower and wash your body and intimate parts.

At the beginning in sauna let your body have time to ”temper” to the heat. We usually use a sand timer for this so it will take about 15 minutes. When the timer is half way, your pores are ready for the salt scrub and its’ effects. Massage the lovely smelling sauna salt into your whole body but avoid facial area. The salt scrub granules gently exfoliate your skin, renewing and also nourishing it. A lovely skin-friendly fragrance oil leaves a soothing scent on your skin.

Leave the sauna salt into your skin to make its’ wonders and after your first 15 minutes session (please check the timer occasionally but do not stress) have a shower to rinse off the salt. Do not use at this point any washing chemicals, just pure water is enough.

The sauna salt scrub has lots of lovely benefits:

• Improves cell metabolism and increases the amount of oxygen
• Improves the function of the sweat glands and helps cleaning
• Regulates the production of sebum, which helps in the treatment of oily skin
• Removes dead skin cells, so the skin is firmer and lines are smoothed out
• Minerals help the skin to restore its mineral content and calcium alleviates itching

Second phase of your ritual:

Moisturizing with Finnish sauna honey

At the last time of your sauna sessions when you relax again on the benches of sauna it is time to cherish your body with Sauna Honey Cream. Let your skin absorb the heat of the sauna still a few moments so that your pores are again ready to receive the great benefits of the Finnish sauna honey. Gently massage the sauna honey into your whole body, even to your face if you want. Let the sauna honey to absorb into your skin about 10-15 minutes in the nice heat. At the end of your sauna session just rinse yourself with clean water. Again, do not use any washing chemicals because your skin has already gotten everything it needs.

After your sauna session, please rest and drink water. Relax and let the sauna make its’ wonders!

PS: Read from our previous post about the benefits of using sauna hat when going to sauna – it really works!

Click here for instructions for SaunaRitual in other languages.

Check below video for inspiration!

The post Sauna ritual – create your own! appeared first on I Love Sauna.

Childhood memories

First, let me tell you about my own sauna experiences and why I have ended up agreeing with the title of this blog post. To be honest, the sauna has always been a little strange to me, because I lived in an apartment building when I was a child and my family was not a sauna-crazy bunch. We didn’t have a summer cottage, so a cottage sauna is not a very familiar thing either. In my childhood, I spent many summers with my aunt in Jyväskylä (Central Finland), where they had a detached house and a separate sauna building by the lake. According to the story, I took my very first sauna there ???? When I was a child, the best thing about sauna trips was the yellow Jaffa (Finnish soft drink without any alcohol) after the sauna together with grilled sausages; those were in the foil above the stove and looked pretty blackened after the sauna session!

Getting friends with sauna

Even as an adult, I haven’t done sauna so much, even though I’ve lived in a detached house; before we happened to move to a house with its own separate sauna building in the yard. Oh, that it brought childhood summers to my mind so vividly. In that spacious and high sauna room, I already started to enjoy myself, but it couldn’t be hot – I enjoy better in a, shall we say, lukewarm bath – around 60-70 degrees.

When I was talking about my sauna behaviour with a sauna expert, he suggested that I should try a sauna hat. Of course, I laughed at it with a bit of a smile, and the idea remained dormant for a few years, until I ended up working in the sauna industry myself, under the supervision of that experienced sauna conker. The only thing to do was to humbly take the sauna hat and put it when going to the boards of the sauna. And you won’t believe what an ”aha” experience I had!

My preferred way

First of all, when you go to the sauna, you usually go from a completely different temperature to another – that is, you go from about 20 degrees directly to 70-100 degrees. Even common sense tells us that such a range of up to 100 degrees cannot be good. Secondly, the head is very sensitive and it heats up faster than the rest of the body, so that’s why many of us feel a little unwell in the sauna. Some people may get headaches, even migraines, from taking a sauna, so you should try a sauna hat. I’ve heard that a sauna hat has helped with that, it prevents the blood vessels of the head from expanding in the warm and contracting in the cold during cooling off!

And we, busy modern power packs usually don’t have time to get our bodies used to a warmer climate, instead we jump straight onto the top decks in sauna without any strings attached! Our body, and especially our scalp, can’t really keep up with such rapid changes. And what does our often dyed hair likes about all this?

It would be good to start your sauna session, even on the second lowest bench and get your body used to the warm air in peace. At the same time, you should wear a sauna hat, which protects your head from excessive heat and overheating. In this way, the body can more evenly adapt to large temperature fluctuations.

I personally like to soak my sauna hat in ice-cold water before going to the sauna, so wonderfully refreshing cold water splashes from the hat to cool and refresh my body. With this way, I have been able to extend my sauna enjoyment to 45 minutes, which of course for a real sauna person is still no time and nothing. In between, it’s been nice to go, for example, to cool off on the terrace in cold weather, and then again I’ve been able to enjoy the fact that the sauna hat protects against the cold!

Sauna hat is your best friend

So, all in all sauna hat works in many occasions. I have visited at a friend’s cottage, where there was an outdoor jacuzzi on the terrace, and there, on dark autumn night, you could enjoy the bubbles between the saunas, while your head stayed warm and you didn’t have to worry about the flu!

After starting to use the sauna hat when going into sauna I have noticed, that:

• Falling asleep has been easier and the quality of sleep has improved! I’m a really bad sleeper in general and this has been a wonderful help. It is said about sauna that the increase in the body’s internal temperature increases the metabolism of serotonin in the brain, which is a precursor to the dark hormone melatonin, which means it affects sleep. The amount of noradrenaline, which maintains alertness, also reportedly decreases. However, right before going to bed, you shouldn’t take a sauna or take hard löyly, because you can feel refreshed after the sauna. Sleepiness starts only when the body cools down.
• And the best thing about sauna hat! Your head stays cool and you can bare to sit in the sauna longer. It is more pleasant to soak in the heat of the sauna when you are feeling good and comfortable. When I stay longer in the sauna, it feels as if the body is thoroughly cleansed, as well as the mind. And yes, that heat, at least in my case, is good for muscles eg. strained by gardening. So here may be the keys to the solution – give it a try!
• You could probably test the effect of the sauna hat by putting hair conditioner under the hat for the last sauna session – I don’t have experience with this yet, but I should test this next time.

I wish all of you can create a sauna ritual that suites your needs, being it pampering and good for your body and mind. Time your sauna sessions with a traditional sand timer – it is fun!

PS: In sauna you are not expected to ”do” anything but enjoy. Feel good and enjoy relaxing your body and mind, breath in the spirit of sauna in the company of your loved ones, or alone.

With sauna regards
Nina/ I Love Sauna crew

The post Wise person uses sauna hat but does it in style! appeared first on I Love Sauna.