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Try the Finnish "way of thinking" while taking a Finnish sauna.

The Finnish Sauna practice in Finland is deeply connected to the Finnish culture, it takes a "Way Of Thinking" to help you get your best sauna experience.

Finnish sauna, the Finnish way, is an expression of physical health, getting together with friends, and a place to get clean, rather than just a room to sweat in.

Before entering a Finnish sauna...

Hang your clothes up on the wall before having Finnish sauna

...there is a seperate room to change in. It could be large or small. Hang your clothes up so they don't get wet.
Finnish sauna with a shower on the right

...there is a seperate room to for washing up. At a public sauna that may be a shower cubicle, at a home sauna an 'open shower' with a door to the hot room.

The hot-room shown (Center). Showers are on the left of the hot-room.

Adjust your thinking

Think relaxing thoughts to yourself like: "All my cares and worries are left outside that sauna door." Picture all your bodies muscles relaxing and loosening up. In Finland, being in the sauna room means everyone has equal value. Wheather you are a child or adult, highly educated or an ex-convict. Everone has the same status in the sauna.

Accept an unhurried and sociable attitude. Remember that it takes hours for skilled people to heat up a Finnish smoke sauna. As does, making birch twig whisks along with that special touch.

The key is to keep a slow and relaxed attitude while taking a real Finnish sauna and when the sauna routine is over until the day ends. When you wake up in after a good nights sleep, you feel like a new person.

Finnish sauna health benefits

Brings inflammation down. After surgery, a wound on my body was inflamed. With the combination of ice-swimming and sauna visits, it shrunk back to normal size.
Helps with breathing problems like asthma. The extreme hot and cold, gives lungs a good work out.
!!--Reduces Stress-!! --Yep! A friends blood pressured temporarily lowered after sauna and ice-swimming.
Relieves muscles tension and soreness due to hard physical work. Try a hot sauna after chopping wood all day.
Cleanses and softens the skin.
The hot room is therapy for depression or anxiety. Quite often I have arrived for sauna and ice-swimming "In-the-Pits" After a good 3 hours of doing sauna with ice-swimming...the car drive home...Bliss! And the great sauna after effects last for hours to follow.
Smell therapy? The smell combination of wood and smoke tends to be relaxing, such is how a smoke sauna smells. Birch branches of the vihta give off a therapeutic smell, which helps you relax. Make your sauna even nore scented...try some sauna spiced oils, for a refreshing smelly sauna experience.
After sauna, your appendages feel lighter, and your whole body is relaxed, allowing your mind to be more focused on "Where You Are." This in turn helps motivate you.
Increases the testosterone level in Men.

The lakeside Finnish Sauna

Finnish Sauna by a lake in Lempäälä Finland

Go from the sauna room's hot steam and back to the lake, again and again, until you get a head rush. Dipping in the lake for a swim is part of the finnish sauna routine. For security, if the lake is frozen, take a friend with you and remember to keep your head above the water.

Sauna by a Lake

Layout of an old farmhouse with a lakeside sauna during the early 20th century. The sauna was built within the premices of farm buildings. The wooden decking and lounge areas with outside furniture are a modern addition.

Finnish Sauna building at Hotel Lepolampi Espoo

Finnish Sauna building at Hotel Lepolampi Espoo

A common scene. Finnish sauna at a hotel near a lake. Hotel Fontana Lepolampi's smaller sauna building with an outdoor lounge area seats up to 10 people. The lake edge is within meters of this building.

At cheap hotels, during warmer months, you will find bustling busy with locals trying to get good deals.

Tip! We recommend less popular accommodations like this smoke sauna near Vammala, Finland. You get more peace and quiet. Plus...you get to see Finnish nature up close.

Finnish smoke Sauna in Vammala Finland

Walking closer toward the smoke sauna, up ahead is a lake. A very nice smoke sauna with special fishing trips for your group in Sastamala near Vammala.

Table with chairs at a smoke sauna in Vammala, Finland

Table with chairs at a smoke sauna in Vammala, Finland

Lounge outside the Vammala smoke sauna building. Finnish sauna essentials include...outdoor weatherproof tables and chairs. Sit in the sun before or after a dip in the lake.

Food and Sauna

About 30 meters from our exemplary Sastamala smoke sauna is this...

...sharp looking cottage for changing and eating.

Let's go in...

Inside the eating and changing room cottage near the Vammala smoke sauna.

Inside the eating and changing room cottage near the Vammala smoke sauna.

Perfect for roasting up some wild boar, game, pancakes...They will even custom order for your group. Just let them know what you want to eat.

Insider Tip(s)! Eat full meals after having sauna, so you don't get a bloated feeling If you are hungry during the sauna routine...Snack!

Replace Lost Salts due to sweating by eating Dill pickles. Whole dill pickles taste good, or try them in a salad.

Snack Food Ideas

Cucumber, Tomatoes, Sliced Turkey on top of Rye Crispbread.-- A Super Simple Cheap and Healthy Recipe!
Hard thin rye bread with a slice of turkey, tomatoes and cucumber on top

Veggies from a local market. -The Freshest!
Assortment of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and lettuce
Serve them just like this.

Get fresh Finnish produced kotimaiset tomatoes. They taste best! Make up a greek salad with green olives. Another natural way to get salt back into your body after saunaing. New potatoes come into season in late June and go well with french bread with real butter and salami slices on top.

Grilling with your sauna gives you that extra summery feeling/smell of being out in nature.

A plate of food containing rice with corn. Salmon, Broccoli, Couliflower, Cabbage and peeled boiled potatoes

A plate of food containing rice with corn. Salmon, Broccoli, Couliflower, Cabbage and peeled boiled potatoes

A complete meal idea. Cooked/steamed Fresh vegetables, Cooked Salmon using low temperature and no cooking oils.

My first year in Finland, we ate traditional christmas food with a christmas sauna. First we did sauna, then we ate our food. What a delight!

My favorite foods with a Finnish sauna are: Pizza with bacon and pineapple toppings. Hot-dog (Makkara), Tikku leipää?. And I must admit that a very low alcohol beer relieves thirst.

An evening food snack idea after sauna

French toast with prune jam.
French toast on a plate -A fast dinner

Pancakes with plum jam!

After Sauna Chills in Finland

Avoid after sauna chills. In the Finnish winter time as you get ready to end your ice-swimming/sauna routine. Do a final warm-up in the sauna rather than cooling off in the lake. Since...after sauna chill's leave you with a cold feeling lasting for hours. No Fun!

In the summer...

A swim in a lake is a great way to cool off after your real finnish sauna routine. Get clean with some environmentally friendly soap and shampoo washing off with lake water. Then dry off. If you sense you are getting cold while swimming, come out and get back into the sauna briefly and wash off there instead. Or, soak up some sun while laying on a rock. Beware!...You can get an after sauna chills in the summer too. If in doubt, just warm down by washing off inside the sauna!

Finnish smoke sauna

The original Finnish sauna was a hot room inside a wooden hut. That's all. The modern Finnish sauna is a derivative of the smoke sauna.

The Finnish smoke sauna is a chimney free sauna room. Smoke escapes the room after the sauna stove has been burning for hours. Then, prior to using the sauna, smoke is released out of the sauna room chamber through ventilation or sauna door.

Some modern smoke saunas in Finland have a dome-shaped rock stoves.

The smoke sauna offers you a gentle steam and steady burst of heat compared to wood burning or electric saunas.

The inside walls of smoke sauna's are black since hot smoke chars them over time. When you are in a new smoke sauna the walls appear lighter.

Remember, there are no chimneys in the smoke sauna, so smoke just hangs around in the chamber soaking into the walls, chairs, and ceiling.

Take a look at yourself in the mirror after you have been in the smoke sauna. You may be left with some black marks.

To get a taste of what a Finnish smoke sauna is like, here is an award winning smoke sauna in Vesilahti Finland

Finnish home sauna

A small wooden-hut style room, wooden benches to sit on and a bucket of water for ladling over the hot rocks to create steam.
Pasi Finnish Home Sauna in Kyröskoski

This is our friend Pasi's home made Sauna.

The most common Finnish sauna is a Finnish home sauna.

Turn the electric stove's knobs(or push button) the electric resistors heats up the stones.

The electric stove requires no smoke flue, hence the finnish home sauna is found inside other buildings structures.

All you need is a vented room with a chimney for smoke ventilation to the outside of the room.

You find these kinds of saunas in hotels, homes, public swimming halls and comes with an electric or wood sauna stove in the sauna room, with rocks on top of the stove's top surface.

Feeling the heat in a modern Finnish sauna.

A thermometer behind your seat indicates 80 celcius (176 Fahrenheit).

You are sitting on wooden bench in a wood paneled 20 square meter(215 cubit feet) room.

To your left is a 18 x 18 inch window leading to the crisp freezing outside.

Your dying to open that window up and let the air in to cool you off.

Gasp!!

Below, a blazing fire roars inside the sauna stove.

The stove top rocks store loads of heat on top of the stove heater.

You reach for a bucket of pre-heated water, scooping out the water you pour two ladles onto the stones sloooowly. The steam hits you gently and over a longer period of time, instead of as a sudden 'heat wave' crash.

Steam rises, filling the air.

The dry hot room fills with moisture.

The air thickens, and it feels much hotter.

Your breath shortens.

After a minute the humidity and intense heat dies down.

Beyond this brief feeling of penetrating hot discomfort, around the corner you await...an endorphic induced high.

That is the kind of heat in a real Finnish sauna.

Finnish Public Saunas

Today you can reserve a sauna for your family at indoor swimming halls, where there are also public saunas to use. These Finnish public saunas have separate sections for men and women, and there are seperate sauna structures built for 20 to 50 people. If you need a great Finnish sauna experience for more people let us know.

Wash up, get a massage, or chiropractic adjustment while doing sauna at a public Finnish sauna in Tampere. Or Like at the Rauhaniemi sauna, you will find the same people go there every week/day to do sauna/avanto(ice-swim). A great place to relax...and see...who can stand the heat the longest.

In Finland, just before the turn of the 19th center, when there was no electricity and modern sewage, the more highly populated areas had public saunas, and they exist today. These are worth trying out.

Other unique and crazy Finnish sauna types.

Dugout Sauna Corsu sauna
Ice-sauna
Herbal Sauna Yrttisauna
Tent sauna

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