WHO INVENTED THE SAUNA?

A Modern Sauna

A MAYA SAUNA--- CALLED A TEMAZCAL

The history of saunas is quite long, and no one really knows who invented them, though usually they are attributed to Finland, where they have been around it is thought for thousands of years. However, there are many other saunas in other parts of the world, such as the Japanese onsen, the Turkish hamam, the Native American inipi or sweat lodge, and the Russian banya. Finland though has the most sauna establishments, including in private homes, hotels, apartments, summer cottages, and public swimming pools. If you have a sauna in Finland, the accepted manner of doing so is to take a shower, dry off, enter the sauna with your towel and stay there for about 5-8 minutes. You then exit the sauna and cool off. In Finland, the preferred manner to do this is to roll around in the snow! Once you are cooled off, you re-enter the sauna and start over again. The reason why this is repeated a number of times is that the recurring heating then cooling supposedly pulls out the poisons out of the skin, along with many other impurities. It also theoretically enables the body to fight off colds and the flu, as it is believed that the hot and cold treatment makes the body ready to fight them by preventing chills when one is sickly. The Finns frequently take the matter further, and have been known to whip each other with dried birch twigs, which are supposed to make the poisons rise faster. There are countries where saunas are taken in the nude and some not. In Japan, Croatia, Sweden, Slovenia, Russia, Finland, NE Italy, Austria and Germany they take their saunas in the nude. However, in Africa, South America, Hungary, United States, United Kingdom and in France, a sauna is taken covered by a towel. Strangely enough sitting on a tower is absolutely required in NE Italy, Austria and in Germany.