So What To Choose - A Bath Or A Sauna

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

It is impossible to imagine life in a village or in a country estate without a bath. After all, a bath is by no means just a simple washing, but also, as it is written in one of the ancient treatises, ablution, which gives ten pleasures: mental clarity, freshness, vigor, health, strength, beauty, youth, purity, pleasant skin color and attention beautiful women

About the benefits of the bath

Even our distant ancestors knew a lot about the bathing business, which was reflected, for example, in such proverbs: “On which day you bathe, on that day you will not grow old”, “Bath drives any disease from the body”, “B Anya is the second mother, the bones will steam, will correct the whole body. " The bath is mentioned in the literary monument of Kievan Rus - "The Tale of Bygone Years". It cites the statement of a foreigner who visited a Russian bath: “… I saw something amazing in the Slavic land … I saw wooden baths and they will light them up red and undress and be naked … And the flexible rods will lift themselves up and beat themselves. And by this they wash themselves, and not torture."

Historical chronicles report that Princess Olga, who received the ambassadors who arrived in Russia, immediately invited them to take a steam bath. Peter the Great, a great lover of the Russian steam room, also took overseas guests to the bathhouse. The bath procedures were also appreciated by our other famous compatriots: A. V. Suvorov, L. N. Tolstoy, F. I. Shalyapin, A. S. Pushkin.

This is how the great poet describes his feelings in the bathhouse: “… The attendant began by spreading me out on a warm stone floor; after which he began to break my limbs, stretch my joints, beat me hard with his fist: I did not feel the slightest pain, but an amazing relief … After that, he rubbed me for a long time with a woolen mitt and, splashing heavily with warm water, began to wash with a soapy linen bubble. The feeling is inexplicable."

And it is very easy to understand the poet. After all, bath procedures are a whole range of health-improving measures that have a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular, respiratory, thermoregulatory and endocrine systems. The bath removes toxins from the body, calms the nervous system, restores vigor, increases mental abilities, and activates metabolism. The influence of the steam room is especially favorable, where the most profuse sweating occurs, due to which the body is very much healed. Coming out of the steam room, a person often exclaims: "As if born again." Thus, he seems to lose years (and weight too), leaving behind the threshold of oppression, overwork, negative emotions.

At all times, different peoples had their own, one might say, national baths. However, no matter how the appearance of the bath and its internal structure changed, the method of influencing the human body has always remained unchanged: first warm up, then cool down well, warm up again, and even do it with a broom. True, in modern times, a broom is often replaced by massage. And one more thing: recently it has become fashionable, one might even say prestigious, to visit not a Russian steam bath, but a Finnish sauna. Thus, they seem to be opposed to each other, arguing that, they say, in the Russian bath there is wet steam, and in the Finnish sauna - dry. But is it really so?

In commercials, brochures, it is argued that the human body should be exposed to air, heated as much as possible. Dry air, which has a lower thermal conductivity, allows you to raise the temperature in the sauna up to 100-120 degrees Celsius. Hence, it is concluded that as a result, the coverage of heat in such a sauna is greater, and this is its advantage. However, both the Russian steam bath and the modern modernized sauna can be equally tuned to any desired temperature and humidity regime. Because the different humidity of the steam depends on how often and abundantly the stones are wetted with water. That is, the steam in a Russian steam bath, prepared according to all the rules, must also be dry.

Therefore, a true folk Finnish sauna is no different from a Russian steam bath. Perhaps the Finns were able to better preserve (and even enhance!) The ancient tradition and more flexibly adapt it to modern conditions. Since ancient times, both in the Russian steam bath and in the Finnish sauna they received steam by pouring water over the stones hot on the fire. Both Russians and Finns used brooms in the process of bathing procedures. So the sauna is the sister of the Russian steam bath (by the way: “sauna” in Finnish means “bathhouse”). The progenitor of the Russian bath and sauna is the same smoky log hut, which was heated in black. The poet R. Vikonen said well about this relationship: “Is it a Finnish bathhouse, or a Russian one? A smoky log is filled with boiling water”.

It should be noted that the rapid spread of Finnish saunas is largely facilitated not only by effective advertising, but also by the industrial production of prefabricated saunas with all the necessary equipment. Since in everyday life almost most of the baths of any design are for some reason usually called saunas, it is very curious to find out: what real Finnish saunas look like. There are a great many of them in the country of Suomi … Saunas vary in size - loma saunas, sala saunas, kurosaunas, erosaunas, accommodating from one to several people. In Finland, sauna is not only an ancient tradition, it is a vital necessity - a need for body and soul. It is not for nothing that there is a proverb in this country: "If the mood is bad, and the sauna did not help, there are no other means."