Ah, outdoor shower: welcome back, and about a few weeks early to boot!  I laid out my garden hose in the spring sun, softening it up, then hooked it up to my backyard shower.  Happy to report that even in a cold climate like Minnesota, one can enjoy an outdoor shower 8 months of the year.  Here’s my post on the last outdoor shower of the year.

Everyone should have their own outdoor shower, and here’s a way to rig one up for $15.00.

• Time:  “The sauna was not built for saving time, but for spending it well.”
• Honesty:  “Perhaps the setting is conducive to honesty and getting at the bare facts of an issue: rank and status disappear with the clothing, and one must communicate simply as one imperfect individual who must accept another individual.”
• Sleep:  “After a sauna one does not worry about insomnia.  And one doesn’t need a prescription for a tranquilizer.”
• Scalp:  “Bathing… in sauna is, in fact, and excellent first step for good scalp care, which contributes to healthy hair.”
• Skin: “The sauna does give the skin an aura, and it is said that a woman looks her most beautiful an hour after sauna.  In the sauna… dead skin is removed, and live skin is rejuvenated.”
• “In this age of slick promotion, the concept of the sauna has at times been misunderstood and misrepresented.”
• “The acme of the sauna experience is achieved when the shower is replaced by a dip into a lake and when one can sit outside in the altogether, dried by unpolluted breezes.  Some brave souls enjoy a roll in the snow or a dip into a hole in an ice covered lake.  While contemplating such an experience can be a shock, the sensation itself is delightful.”
• “Many persons find it particularly enjoyable to combine exercise and sauna bathing.  A good workout in tennis, swimming, bowling, or jogging, followed by relaxing and cleansing heat, is a most satisfying  experience.”
• “In Finland it is very natural to ask friends or neighbors to come for sauna.  As more Americans build saunas, this custom will develop naturally.”
• “In the sauna a very unusual combination of processes develops: a person sits peacefully at rest while his blood vessels, nerves, and glands work hard.  After such an experience, the person may well feel that he has had a strenuous workout, even though he has been quite relaxed and at ease.  It is difficult to gain a greater senses of physical renewal than that which is provided by this unique combination of exertion  and rest.”

• “There is no rigidly prescribed procedure – one should use the style he enjoys most.”

This is an authentic wood burning Finnish sauna. Northern Europeans have been taking part in this ritual for centuries.

How is this sauna different?

Experience the wood burning sauna stove.  It was hand welded and crafted by a third generation Finnish stove maker, Lamppa Manufacturing, Tower, MN.  The stove weighs over 300 lbs. and has about 80 lbs. of special rocks that hold thermal mass.  This creates a different sort of heat, one that naturally radiates through the body and produces negative ions for a natural, therapeutic experience, offering many unparalleled benefits.

What are the benefits of an authentic Finnish sauna?

1.  Health and wellness: Sauna therapy is perhaps the best way to detoxify, ridding one’s body of slow metabolizing bad stuff.  Saunas rejuvenate, clear and promote healthy skin.  Alternating between the sauna room and outside, saunas help with respiration  Saunas are great for muscle relaxation, whether stiff from a cold winter day or exercise.

2.  Escape: beyond the physical benefits, sauna therapy is great for stress relief.  Imagine having your own cabin escape right in your backyard.  No driving, no big mortgage, just a “staycation” where you can turn a corner of your backyard into an enjoyable working asset, a place for social interaction with family and friends.

3.  Green: with a small solar panel, this entire unit can be ‘off the grid’.  It is efficiently wood heated with minimal smoke output.  Today I am heating using Minnesota red oak, harvested from private land.

How do I take a sauna?

The cool thing is that there are few rules to a sauna.  A few basic suggestions:

1. Drink a big glass of water before going into sauna.  Stay hydrated throughout.  This encourages sweat and wards off dehydration.
2. Wear as little as possible.  Whatever you are comfy getting wet.
3. Have a towel handy for drying off when you’re all done.
4. Enter the hot room.  Most people stick around for 10-15 minutes.  Toss a bit of water on the sauna rocks, if desired.
5. Getting too hot?  Try sitting on the lower bench and work up to:
6. Go outside and dump water over your body or jump in the lake.
7. Stay outside and cool off, let your body equalize for a few minutes.
8. Repeat 1-7.

Oh, and keep the sauna door closed!

Disclosure

By reading this, you are using this sauna at your own risk, if you feel faint leave the sauna immediately. The sauna stove is very hot and if you touch it you will get burned. Please look at but do NOT touch.

Considering whether to build a wood burning sauna or an electric sauna?  You may want to read below.. I’ll post all comments.

Estonia, Canada, Finland, even some guy named Apou from India, oh, wait, scratch that one, he was trying to sell me Viagara really cheap.  What is exciting is how a centuries old tradition from a relatively small country, Finland, has spread and blossomed to far reaches of the world.

Saunas in Minnesota are a logical thing:

• Minnesota has a big Finnish population. Daryl Lamppa is a third generation Finnish sauna stove maker.  He personally welds and inspects EVERY sauna he makes in his Northern Minnesota factory.  His craftsmanship is a jewel to Minnesota, and the sauna tradition.  Here’s his website.
• Minnesota shares a climate ideal for saunas. Saunas evolved out of necessity.  In a climate below freezing 5 months of the year, with no running water, inventive Finns learned how to bathe and recreate, creating the sauna experience.  Here in Minnesota, some think we have two seasons: winter and July 4th.
• Minnesota has over 10,000 lakes to jump into after a sauna round. In the movie “Bucket List”, Jack Nicholson convinces Morgan Freeman to skydive.  If Nicholson’s last name was Hankkennnen or similar, I think he’d have jumping through a hole in the ice on his bucket list.

If you live in Minnesota, a Finnish sauna is probably not too far away.  This winter, 2009-10,  click here for an up to date schedule of where you can experience my first mobile Finnish sauna at an event near you!

If you don’t live in Minnesota and want to experience an authentic Finnish sauna, I have a great idea for you: click here for how to build your own Finnish sauna.

“The perfect sauna temperature is one that gives you 10-15 minutes of comfortable relaxation.”

That about sums it up.  I find that a 10-15 minute round is ideal.  It gets your body temperature up, you start sweating, can feel the release of toxins, your muscles relaxing, and your pours opening up.

There is this machoness to sauna temperatures, where some try to drive others out with overwhelming heat.  But a sauna is all about what makes you comfy, not Sven with a silly grin tossing water on the rocks to try to drive you out.  However, sometimes Sven gets it right, a nice blast of water on the rocks and riding it out is as exhilarating as that jump into a cold lake.

Above is my favorite sauna thermometer.

• It looks nice and is easy to read in the dim light of a sauna.
• It has a hydrometer: fun sometimes to know where you’re at humidity wise.
• It shows temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius, good for both you and Sven.

1. Locate a tree or overhang where you want the shower.

2. Measure hose length needed from shower head to shut off valve (about waist high) along the length of the tree:

3. Find a hose from the garbage or scrap piece somewhere.  Or if necessary, buy a 15′ hose at Home Depot for about $12.00.  I used a grey hose and it blends in nicely with the tree trunk.

4. Cut one end of your hose to size.

5.  Go to hardware store and have them attach a fitting to the cut end ($3.00).

6. Attach a hose nozzle, set on “shower” or “center” mode (do not use “jet” mode unless your body is thick with rust).

7. Secure your hose along the tree branch with a few twist o ties.

8. Attach other end of hose along the base of the tree to this shut off valve, from any hardware store ($5.00).

9. Connect the other end of this shut off valve your garden hose, et voila!

I accept the fact that an increased body temperature burns fat. I take issue with Infrared and the mechanisms by which infrared technology raises one’s body temperature. A wood sauna is a sauna. An infrared is a microwave.  Wood heat is a much more natural way to heat a sauna room.  Loyly (steam vapor from water tossed on hot sauna rocks) is a key component to any authentic Finnish sauna experience.  With infrared, you can’t toss water on light bulbs.

Go to Scandinavia, where folks have been taking saunas dating back a couple thousand years. Ask any Finlander (or this guy singing in the video) what he thinks of infrared ’saunas’ and he will confirm: infrared is NOT a sauna. Infrared is merely an easy way to market and exploit a great health and wellness tradition:

• Infrared light bulbs are cheap.
• Infrared ‘heaters’ plug into 110v, requiring no chimney’s or special wiring.
• Infrared companies can ship product to any sucker anywhere via flashy websites and trade shows.

Please read my page on free sauna information and become better informed.

Before you buy an infrared, take an authentic Finnish sauna.

I love this product.  These fire starters are environmentally sound, inexpensive (27 cents each), and they work fantastic.  They are simply candle wax and sawdust, wrapped in paper.  I put Lifeworks Fire Starters to the test one day this winter:  it was 10 below zero.  The water in my sauna bucket was frozen brick solid.  My wood was ice cold, my sauna stove as cold as the air outside.  I lit a fire starter with a match, put it in my sauna stove, added a couple logs, then ran in the house for 1/2 an hour or so (stationary bike).  Upon my return,  the sauna was 130 degrees and hungry for more wood.  I shuffled the coals, threw on another log, then a Rhapsody music play list, and my sauna was 145 and climbing.  I don’t know why folks think wood sauna stoves are a lot of work.  Fire starters take the effort out of starting a wood burning sauna stove.

They sell versions of these at Home Depots and hardware stores, where you’d find charcoal and grills and such.  I’m not sure if they are as natural and environmentally sound as the ones I use, but i’ve ordered these ‘organic’ ones online here. I don’t use them at my lake cabin sauna, as birch bark is known as nature’s gasoline.  At the cabin, with a quick light, I get some birch bark going then add a bit more/thicker birch bark, throw in a couple logs and the Kuuma stove is barking within a couple minutes.  In Minneapolis though, in winter especially,

usually, I’ll start my sauna with a couple pieces of newspaper and some kindling, but damn, when you’re in a hurry or it’s friggin’ cold outside, or you’re getting ready for a sauna party, these fire starters are hard to beat!