Archive: Henna & Mehndi

For many years I wrote the informational pamphlets at Community Pharmacy. I loved creating these tiny tri-fold tracts about self-care strategies and accessible herbalism. This text is modified from two of those pamphlets, originally self-published for CP's shelves in 2003 and 2011.

THE NATURE OF HENNA

Henna (Lawsonia inermis) is a flowering shrub originally found in Northern Africa, Asia, and Australia, where it is traditionally used for its anti-inflammatory and dye properties. Fresh henna leaves have cooling antiseptic qualities and are used in poultices to treat injury and inflammation. Henna leaves are also valued for their lawsone pigment content. Dried leaves are powdered and mixed into a paste which is applied to hair, or skin in intricate patterns on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet for cosmetic and ceremonial decoration (known as mehndi.)

Henna’s lawsone pigment binds to the keratin in hair and skin cells, leaving a red-brown stain. On your skin, mehndi designs last 3-6 weeks. On your hair, henna permanently dyes the keratin in hair strands, but may lose intensity and the protein shine after 3-12 weeks. Henna is a very forgiving dye, adding color and shine to your hair (it cannot lighten hair color) without damage. Henna is nontoxic and unlikely to cause allergic reactions. Since the pigments in the henna plant can only leave a red-brown stain, other ingredients are often added to henna hair dyes (even truly natural ones) to achieve lighter or darker tones. In dried henna products, henna powder is often mixed with other herbs (for example indigo for darker colors, cassia for lighter) to create a range of natural hair dyes. These blended herb powder dyes are also non-toxic and applied in the same manner as henna.

HOW TO APPLY HENNA TO HAIR

Begin with damp hair (no need to wash). Apply petroleum jelly or a similarly protective salve around your hairline and ears to avoid unintentional dyeing. Since henna can easily dye cloth, floors, and skin, wear latex/vinyl gloves to prevent extra staining. Work in small sections, spreading the henna paste evenly from the roots to the ends. Work the paste onto your hair thoroughly, pile or twist atop your head, and cover with any leftover henna at the end. Cover your hair with plastic wrap or a plastic bag, and wrap in a towel or cover with a knit cap to keep the henna warm. (Keep your head warm extra warm with a heating pad to intensify the dye.) Leave the henna paste on for 30 minutes (for gray or light hair) to 2 hours (for dark hair) to 8 hours or overnight (for very strong color). Rinse your head thoroughly with warm water, and let air dry. For best results, do not shampoo for 24 hours.

HOW MUCH HENNA TO USE

• EAR-LENGTH HAIR: 2-3 oz. henna
• SHOULDER-LENGTH HAIR: 4-5 oz. henna
• LONGER: Add 2 oz. henna for every 4 inches of hair

TIPS: The color of hennaed hair will change and mellow during the first few days, don’t worry if at first it seems brassy! It is always wise to do a patch test on a few strands of hair (especially if you have fair or gray hair) or on a small patch of skin for mehndi. If you have a commercial chemical dye or a perm in your hair, consider waiting at least three months before using henna; the henna may react unpredictably and cause inconsistent or unexpected coloring.

WATER AND HEAT METHOD (from RosemaryGladstar)

In a glass or ceramic bowl, using nonmetal utensils, mix henna powder with boiling water to make a paste the consistency of pancake batter. Let cool for ~20 minutes while the paste sets up and thickens to the consistency of thick yogurt. Apply the henna paste while it is still very warn. For extra conditioning use herbal infusions instead of water to mix your henna:

• BLONDE: calendula, chamomile, lemon peel
• RED: hibiscus, calendula, cinnamon
• BRUNETTE: clove, lavender, rosemary, sage

ACIDIC LIQUID METHOD (from CatherineCartwright-Jones)

The day before you want to dye your hair, mix the henna with enough lemon juice (bottled works as well as fresh) or red wine to make a paste the consistency of oatmeal. Cover with plastic and let sit in a warm room (70’) overnight. In the morning, stir in more lemon juice or wine to make the paste the consistency of thick yogurt. Apply the paste while cool.

TIPS: For bolder color, add essential oils (2-5 drops per ounce of henna, mixed into the paste before applying) that will act as a mordant (dye-absorption aid) and nourish your hair and scalp: rosemary, cedar, cypress, eucalyptus, or tea tree.

HOW TO DYE SKIN WITH HENNA

MEHNDI PASTE RECIPE:

• 1 oz. mehndi-quality henna
• 2 cups strong DYE TEA (see below)
• 1 teaspoon tea tree essential oil

GLAZE RECIPE (PER HAND/FOOT):

• 1 lemon’s fresh juice
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 2 garlic cloves (pressed)

ALSO NEEDED:

• 100% cotton balls (unrolled) or gauze
• jacquard bottles or cake decorating tube with a tiny aperture tip
• olive oil

Begin with high-quality (“body quality”) all-henna powder (in most commercially available henna brands, all-henna powders will be the most basic “red” shade.) Most henna sold in stores is “hair quality” and will need to be thoroughly sifted (through a gold mesh coffee filter or yogurt strainer) before using to make a finely textured mehndi paste.

A day in advance, brew your DYE TEA. Into 4 cups of water, add 2 tablespoons loose black tea. Boil down this mixture until 2 cups remain. Let steep overnight. In the morning, add the juice of one lemon, strain thoroughly and reheat but do not boil.

Make the MEHNDI PASTE by adding 1 teaspoon tea tree essential oil to the sifted henna powder. Mix in enough hot DYE TEA to make a paste the consistency of cake icing. Make the MEHNDI PASTE and GLAZE fresh the day they are used. MEHNDI PASTE can be applied by squeezing from plastic cones or jacquard bottles fitted with fine metal tips. As your mehndi progresses, keep it moist by sponging the GLAZE onto the completed portions with a cotton ball. When your design is complete, wrap it carefully in unrolled cotton balls or gauze, then in plastic wrap and a warm sock or mitten, and leave on overnight. In the morning, scrape off the dried paste with a butter knife. Moisturize your skin with olive oil. For best results, do not wash your hands with soap for 12 hours.

TIPS: A full hand or foot mehndi design may take over an hour to complete, so make sure you are in a comfortable place and position! Heat activates the henna dye as well as acidity, so apply your mehndi in a warm room for the deepest stain.

A NOTE ABOUT “BLACK HENNA” & SYNTHETIC DYES

Henna and mehndi go through waves of popularity in American consumer culture. Conventional hair dye manufacturers have started including henna in their liquid dye lines, and “henna tattoo” booths have been springing up street fairs, and tourist sites which sport body dyes in black, blue, green, and purple. If you are looking for a truly natural hair dye skin decoration, be sure to read the ingredients label carefully for synthetic ingredients before buying a pre-made “henna” dye. The two issues to consider critically are the specific colors of lawsone pigment, and the impermanence of plant dyes.

In commercial pre-made hair and skin dyes, even if the product packaging references henna, the colorant is almost always a synthetic dye ingredient. One particularly worrisome common synthetic dye is p-Phenylenediamine (PPD), a petrochemical that leaves a deep black stain on skin and hair. PPD is readily absorbed into the bloodstream, and can damage the liver and kidneys. Exposure to PPD can lead to cancer of these organs. PPD can also cause severe skin irritation and allergic reaction, resulting in chemical burns and scarring.

Like all truly natural body and hair care treatments, henna is meant to be used fresh, not kept on a shelf for months. Once activated by liquid, henna lawsone maintains its dye potency for only a few days, guaranteeing that liquid products rely on other/synthetic colorants. Beware buying pre-mixed henna paste unless you know it is freshly made; imported and sealed paste tubes are sure to contain chemical dyes. (Freshly mixed henna paste for hair dye and mehndi can be frozen, however, and will still give a good stain if used within 6 months.)

Most salons or fair booths offering henna hair dye or mehndi are staffed by skilled henna artists. But keep yourself safe: If the decoration or dye promised is any other color than red-brown, if it takes just an hour to stain or lasts only a week; the main dye ingredient is NOT henna! Before receiving a mehndi design or henna treatment, ask artists about the henna they use. Good henna artists will likely be very willing to talk about their ingredients, their designs and techniques, and how they learned the art of henna!

Thermae #2: Friedrichsbad

As soon as I began planning this adventure, Friedrichsbad stood out as the pinnacle of my pilgrimage. Actually, it inspired the notion of this being a pilgrimage, rather than 'just' a theme-vacation or business-plan-inspiring-research. Someone out there still calling their bathhouse a Bathing Temple. I have visited many lovely bathhouses, and sat in many powerful places of worship. I didn't know if anywhere in our modern world would truly be able to merge the two, but I knew I needed to be there.

As you've probably heard me enthuse, a supplicant to the Bathing Temple follows 17 steps of ablution and relaxation, for a total of 4 ritual hours, including the attentions of 3 varieties of masseuse. Upon leaving, one is guaranteed not only to win any contest of cleanliness, but also to be at least 1 fathom closer to enlightenment. According to autogenic legend, one's skin will take on a pearlescent sheen, one's gaze will remain clear and softly focused for 72 hours, and one's feet will not actually touch firmament for at least 24. All of this is true.

The ceremony unfolds thusly:

Step 1. Shower. (3min) (And right from the get-go, allow me to assure you that ALL the water, beginning with the showers and including the bubblers, flows from the famed local healing mineral springs.)

Step 2. Warm-air Bath. (54 ° C, 15min) Every surface in this room glows with gentle convection warmth, from the floors to the wooden lounge chairs.

Step 3. Hot-air Bath. (68 °, 5min) From a glow to a steady toast in a smaller oven.

Step 4. Shower. (1min)

Step 5. Soap and Brush Massages. (8min) Taken in turn, the vigorous soft bristles and creamy soap bubbles shed the last bits of whatever you were doing before you entered Friedrichsbad.

Step 6. Shower. (1min)

Step 7. Thermal Steam Bath. (45 °, 10 min) In a marble filled with clouds of soft mineral-scented steam, a square pyramid of steps faces two golden hives of calcinated fountains rolling with raw hotspring.

Step 8. Thermal Steam Bath. (69 °, 5 min) On the top step of the marble pyramid, closer to the sweet heat.

Step 9. Thermal Full Bath. (36 °, 10min) A long cool pool to stretch warmed muscles and open skin.

Step 10. Thermal Whirlpool Bath. (34 °, 15min) Smaller, bubblier, cooler, a massage by tiny naiads.

Step 11. Thermal Kinotherapeutic Bath. (28 °, 5min) At the center of the bath, like a crown glowing 17 meters above the pool, is a golden frescoed dome that draws your eyes up marble columns and gilded alcoves, tucking the last of your words away, while you float in mineral broth.

Step 12. Shower. (3min)

Step 13. Cold-water Bath. (18 °) A quick (breath-stealingly quick) submersion in cold (breath-stealingly cold) water. Toes numb and skin very awake after.

(Clever mathematicians will have noticed that this does not yet fill the quota of devotional hours. At this point, the supplicant is allowed, in a near-sleeping-kitten-like quiecience, to roam freely through the Temple revisiting her favorite rooms at leisure for several REM cycles.)

Step 14. Drying Off. (with warm towels). (4min) Bed-sheet-sized warmed towels.

Step 15. Application of Moisturizing Cream. (8min) Expertly applied in handfuls til you are evenly frosted with a dense fragrant cream; it's not meant to soak in yet.

Step 16. Resting Room. (30min) In which you are rolled into warm blankets and tucked into one of maybe 3 dozen beds filling a huge, dim, rose-colored dome of a room, to nap.

Step 17. Reading Room (30min) In which the lounging continues in a more sentient vein, with time to more fully comprehend the miles one's life has just traveled towards true happiness, and have tea.

I will admit; I remember the practicals, but after step 5, my sense of analytical self, and a goodly portion of my vocabulary, washed down the drain with the suds. (They were good practicals, though: soft cotton sheets to wind in while lounging and traversing, traded for clean sitting pads before the steam room; a dozen pairs of bath sandals in different sizes, and disinfectant-dunk, before the hot rooms; clocks without numbers to help you keep the time without worrying you about time...) The further I wandered into the bathing temple, the deeper I sank into pure corporeal awareness, and solid visceral bliss. The light was always muted and murmuring, the air a burned-velvet pattern of steam and refraction. Every room was decorated with unique painted tiles and mosaics of art nouveau flora, aquatic fauna, or abstract color. The giggle of falling, splashing, running water echoed everywhere. The air never warm and never still, the other bathers never close or stiff, and the staff singularly kind and cognizant of the beautiful healing collapse prompted by the place.

There is a Mark Twain quote cited in every single description anywhere of Baden-Baden's historic Irish-Roman Bathing Temple, and I would probably have my travelog licence revoked if I didn't repeat it for you here, “At Friedrichsbad, you lose track of time within 10 minutes and track of the world within 20…” And as much as I hate to ride even the wittiest of coattails, I agree – if you are someone who pays a lot of attention to your watch, I expect Friedrichsbad is very much like that. For me, though, I'll say Friedrichsbad glows at the sunny crossroads between the Brigadoon of my bones and the Oz of my bliss, and leave it at that.

Friedrichsbad: Historic Bathing Temple 

So Bath They Named It Twice

Baden-Baden is built on magic, has celebrated several millenia of birthdays spinning, winding and handing out this magic, and is completely conscious of it. You can be sure, though I have found no mention in our post-Imperial literature, that people of all fur, feathers, and feet have been bathing in the springs of this valley since the beginning of the world. It's too beautiful, too protected, altogether too perfect to have not threaded its magic into all organic history. The Romans made it official with stone, however, and Baden-Baden has been in the business of bathing ever since. I wandered over some of its 54 sq. miles of Black Forest river valley, through falling snows and along the river Oos, in a kind of steamy trance. An Entire City Devoted to Bathing.  

And casinos. 

But who cares about casinos?

I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but I'm a sucker for bathhouse t-shirts. I don't really understand it either, and it's not like most bathhouses sell t-shirts (but the ones that do are awesome!) It might be some bath-geek equivalent of sport team support. Or maybe it's just poorly translated enthusiasm. I don't usually wear clothes with logos, or words. I don't often wear band t-shirts. They make me feel shy and unprepared for coolness. But somehow I'm totally charmed by the thought of someone designing a t-shirt to talk up a place filled with hot water and naked people. I think it's fabulous. And wearing them makes me feel like an underground superhero.

So I keep my eye out for bathhouse paraphernalia. And on my last day in Baden-Baden I found myself in a situation I had never encountered before – desirous of a "I ♥ Baden-Baden" t-shirt. You know exactly the one I'm thinking of, it's the same shirt hanging in every eye-rollingly touristy souvenir shop on the planet. (My only defense is that I do have an awful lot of enthusiasm, even if it is poorly translated.) I looked high and low, everywhere from the shops where they sell postcards to the train station newsstand to the Christmas market to the supermarket. I found silver-plated Baden-Baden spoons, and enamel-painted Baden-Baden plates, and even swarovski-crystal-bedazzled Baden-Baden totebags. After going through a dozen bewildered shopkeepers in a dozen different shops, I am forced to concede that Baden-Baden, city of historically relevant baths and big old money, is simply not mundane enough to make tacky tourist t-shirts. 

And, for the life of me, I don't know whether to be annoyed or relieved.

Some Baths That Aren't Yet

Most of the baths I've visited have had historic precident, gracing their cities as original facilities if they were not actual founding reasons for putting a bit of civilization a particular where. When new baths come along, they are made from equal parts inspiration and obsession. Some borrow from history and culture, some forge ahead, but all are intentionally reinvesting in bathing.

Berlin's once-and-future Stadtbad Oderberger  thrives during renovation as a venue for concerts, conferences and locally-made craft markets.

Kultuurisauna is being built as part of Helsinki's year of recognition as a World Design Capitol, with goals of sustainable design and materials-use, and intentional revitalization of sauna culture.

Some Baths That Aren't Anymore

Searching out venerable thermae, traditional neighbohood saunas, and the brand-new soaking spots, the word for Bath is the first I'm learning when I enter a new country. My eyes and ears are constantly casually scanning for signs of bathing. Probably I imagine baths more often than they exist (though honestly, what else is going on in a backyard shed with a chimney?), but I've been impressed that almost every Scandinavian town has a Sauna-something Street, and at how many Germanic placenames end with -Bad.

So there are many places I come across where I don't bathe, where nobody bathes anymore; but maybe there's a commemorative plaque, or an epithet in stone, or a bit of historical mention in a travel book.

The People's Bathhouse on Oderberger Strasse, in Berlin. A once-and-future-bathhouse, long neglected but being restored...

In Tallinn's Old Town there is still a Sauna St, and a historical stop in their self-guided walking tour.

One of the original spring sites in a cliff embedded in Baden-Baden.

Under the Friedrichsbad Bathing Temple in Baden-Baden is the ruins of a Roman soldier's bathhouse, locked safely away all winter long.

Thermae #1: Liquidrom

Liquidrom is a rare bathhouse; newly arrived but singing with quality, totally modern with a great deal of soul. It definitely caters to a contemporary crowd – multigenerational but skewed towards the professional – the folks you'd see at a swank club or an artsy cirques review. (That crown topping the building in the photo? That's the Tempodrom on the other side of the building, a swanky big venue.) Liquidrom is outfitted in concrete walls and raw slate floors, but it doesn't ever feel cold or Bloc. The stone lines are graceful, often curved, proportions generous. Iron-caged mysig candles and sculptural flora line the halls, on the walls hang the kind of modern pop art inspired by the circles that inspired mandala-makers. There's soft electronica piped through invisible speakers, vaguely new-age-holiday. Liquidrom knows what it's doing. Liquidrom wants to be cool, and it is cool.

The changing rooms are large and gym-like, if your neighborhood gym goes in for mahogany paneling and shiny black tile. Lockers are secured with a rather complicated key-chip-bracelet, and because this is Germany (home of the Free Body Culture dreaded by Scandinavians) the locker rooms are coed, the bathhouse is coed and largely clothing-discouraged, except for at the bar and in the big pool. Yeah, there's a bar, and a free glass of prosecco the night I visited, and nightly live music, which ranges from jazz to bossa nova to cinematic downbeat. In between sweating and soaking, there are generous resting rooms (indoor and out – where in December you can watch steam curl off your skin) filled with comfortable lounge chairs to cool off and sip whatever.

Lining the minimalist half-wall corridors are nearly a dozen different rooms in which to sweat or soak. 4 different saunas, each a different temperature (from 65 to 90), some featuring aromatic steams or walls of pink Himalayan salt. Each is labeled with bathing information and expectations (wash your seat in the steam room, in the saunas you must have a towel under your butt and feet, etc.) Besides the large pool, there are several soaking pools, each filled with salty thermal water. None reach jacuzzi-heat, but the outdoor pool is warm under the snowflakes, and one pool is so salinated your body floats effortlessly. In between these are cold plunges and huge-headed showers, and passing trays of cold fruit juice and warmed honey for self-massage carried by beautiful waitrons.

The largest pool in Liquidrom is a centerpiece of atmospheric modulation. The ceilings are domed in wide, loomingly post-deco arches; the kind of pool where city elite might swim, deep under Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The salty warm water glows with colored light, refraction patterns ripple over everything. The electronica is piped here too, echoing weirdly off so many curves, but is even more impressively heard Underwater, where the music hollows and billows like whalesong from submarine speakers. So after a hour perusing a plethora of little steams and sweats and soaks, after your senses are relaxed by the wandering of sensorial slowness in a realm of remarkably quiet architecture, imagine lying just covered with warm water somehow holding you afloat, while colored light wafts across your eyelids and shadowy rhythms nod in your ears. When the night's visiting 12-string guitar began picking its silvery way through the waves, my mind joined my muscles in relaxation and I drifted, balanced in a luminous place.

LIQUIDROM: Urban Bathing-Culture

Hammam #1: Hamam

In Berlin, I met my first modern bathhouses, places created intentionally for this generation, the daughters of those cultural edifices reaching out to us from Tradition. Intercultural lovestories and our modern access to everything actually can, I'm grateful to say, create spaces of beauty and healing. Berlin shines in my mind as a hopeful answer from many directions.

Hamam is a women's bathhouse, embedded in a larger women's community center, all of which is housed in what used to be a chocolate factory just to the east of the Wall. The neighborhood is lively and human-scale, though the architecture is made of bland Bloc blocks. As I walked from the train station, the temperature dropped by degrees, and powdery snow fell. Down a alley into a courtyard used in the warm months for sunning and sipping, Hamam already feels tucked away and special. I rang a blue doorbell and was welcomed into a jeweled oasis, and by far the sweetest bathhouse I have ever relaxed in.

It's beautiful inside, warm light, white plaster arches and the scent of honey and tea. A theme of couches and pillows begins in the welcome room and is repeated in every part of the hamam that isn't actively wet. The walls are studded with colored glass lamps, reproductions of romantic-era hamam paintings and photographs of modern hamams in action. In the upper lounge, there is a large bookshelf for browsing, and a counter with astringent tea and oranges to buy and massages to schedule. The changing room is a logistical afterthought, lockers in a curtained hallway. Everyone after is wrapped in huge fluffy towels, their own robes or pestemals (soft plaid fabric worn like a sarong, or Indian lungi.) Women carry their potions and tools in duffel bags or baskets. Carpeted stairs wind down to curtained glass doors and the baths.Within the hamam itself the air is warm and lights softer, and the ceiling hung with glowing fabrics. The couches, deep as twin beds, are upholstered in vinyl, piled with pillows, and every few feet supplied with throw blankets. Women sit and doze and read and chat softly, rosy from bathing and relaxed.

Past the resting room, narrow halls decorated with tile mosaic branch to massage rooms, sauna and cold shower, and the beating heart of the hamam: the bellystone room. Little bells of falling water ring off

the raw marble walls from the deep marble sinks set into alcoves. The air is dim and warm and carries light scents of lemon and rose. The domed ceiling holds a gold-flecked floral mosaic rosette in blues and greens, and round frosted skylights. The bellystone, an octagonal slab of polished marble and bigger than a king-sized bed, fills the space at knee-height. I lay my towel on the stone and lay myself on the towel, and warmth began pouring into my skin. The bellystone is not hot, but warm like an electric blanket, enough to prompt sweat but also enough to provoke absolute contentment. After a very few moments I was drifting, melted like butter.

Eventually, I wandered to an alcove, filled a sink with warm water, and used a silver bowl and soft cloth to douse and polish myself clean. I was visiting Hamam on “children's day” (it was also my birthday) and for the first time, I got to see what babies think of bathhouses. Giggling and splashing, shining pinkly after their bath, curled napping between reclining women on the bellystone, melted like little pats of butter. In no particular order, and with as much repetition as desired, the activities of the bellystone room seem to rotate around this dousing and dosing, and as the hours slip by, all bodies ease into a languid, liquid comfort. I did visit the sauna down the hall (small and wooden in classic Finnish homage, 80 degrees and filled with heavy lemongrass steam) but stayed only long enough to admire the efficient layout. The pace of the hamam was so contrary to extremes, I didn't miss sweating at all.

Hamam offers its tickets in 3-hour increments. I usually find I'm done with my bathing routines somewhere around 2 hours, and then I bounce or slide out of the bathhouse feeling rejuvenated and fresh. At Hamam, I spent a post-bath hour curled up on their magnificent couches, sipping tea and looking at the pictures in German magazines. During the extra time relaxing, the warmth and softness from the bellystone worked its way deeper under my skin, releasing tension and resolving my body into balance. When I finally left, snow was sticking, and it was colder still, but I was completely warm. I was warm for hours after.

Hamam: Bathing in the Chocolate Factory Women's Center

Sauna #4: Kalma Saun

Kalma Saun even looks like the edifice from a different hybrid era it is. It's graceful, but monolithic; sheathed in marble and institutional tile and deep orange wood. Another unique tumble of the competing Slavic/Scandinavian/Rossiyan pachinko game like Estonia, like Finland. In all of Tallinn, it seems to be the only still-functioning, always-was-a bathhouse. Spas are everywhere, mostly tucked inside hotels and convention centers (which are also everywhere, outside Old Town), running a gamut of size and purpose. Some are salons with advanced manicure/pedicure offerings, others more like indoor water parks with swimming pools and waterslides, steam rooms and saunas.

If Kamla is their predecessor, I imagine I can understand the abundance. If we'd gone This is a more-is-more bathhouse, a bring-your-own full-service spa, a day-long ritual committed to complete restoration of personal purity. In the women's side (up the stairs to the left from the hotel-lobby-like attendant station), the atmosphere is relaxed and functional, the dress code is completely un-, and the complicit camaraderie between bathers is total. Women come in pairs or alone, and spend hours in ablution. They bring apothecaries of potted unguents and elaboratives, soaps and scrubs and masques and henna for their hair. They manicure and medic themselves, tend to exfoliation and eczema with equal focus, and perform every bit of body caring to be done. Kalma is, in fact, a large-capacity, well-resourced, bathing room. And it's wonderful!

The changing and resting room is outfitted like a den, there's a big fireplace that looks like it sees regular use when it gets truly cold, and overstuffed couches and chairs. The 13 wooden lockers are large and solid, ringing the lounge without a trace of privacy. This is where modesty ends. I was probably the youngest woman both times I visited, and was welcomed both times with a maternal lack of curiosity. Besides stashing away street-clothes so the bathers can attend to more important aspects of themselves, the lounge also acts for a comfy and dry cooling room, where you can sit in your new skin til you are ready to return to the world.

I visited twice because I love a fully-functioning and vibrant bathhouse, but also because I really wanted to get it right. In Helsinki's saunas, the meat of the visit is the stove room, the purging bouts of sweating, and a bracing scrub in cold water afterwards. At Kalma, its DIY spa day. The main activity swirls around a tiled room lined with showers and filled with stone benches that are equipt with hot and cold running faucets, like so many luxurious lab tables. Stationed at these, with buckets of water as hot as you like, with any tool and potion you desire, personal devotions begin. There is laughter and smalltalk, and susurations of comfort. The place smells like fresh-cut conifer wood, good green tea, and delicate soaps.

The sauna actual is a fierce place, where no one spends more than 5 minutes, and there was no question of me keeping up my (now solidly toned) usual sweating routine. The room is no more than 15 feet long, but baking with two electric stoves. The thermometer flexed between 100-110 degrees, and I believe every decimal. This is heat that stings you skin, and you don't adjust to it. The first time I sat on its wooden benches, my skin immediately prickled into goosebumps, and started itching. Still flush with pride in my sauna skills, I made it longer than the woman who came in with me, but only by seconds. Shocked and appalled moments later in as cold a shower as I could find, my skin cooled but remained a piebald of too-pink and distressingly-pale splotches. I scrubbed down until my skin was at least a uniform color, and spent much of my first stay in the lovely cool water pool.

So the second visit I came geared up. I brought my sauna kit (hat, sit-upon, sisal mitt), I brought a fragrant sliver of soap and my nail clippers, and I brought body oils. I also bought a whisk of leafy birch twigs from the attendant, because I'd been dreaming about them since reading about Traditional Sauna, and Kalma was the first place I'd seen anyone using them. I copied the other women, soaking my whisk in hot water til the twigs were soft and whippy, and the whole affair smelled like the woods in spring. After I was warmed up and had undergone my first layer of cleansing, I took the whisk into the stove room. I sat as long as I could, breathing the steam off the whisk while the heat pried open every one of my pores, and then set about slapping my skin. It was amazing! Suddenly, the prickly itch was met and overcome, and I swear I could feel endorphins flooding my body. As I finished whisking my back it was as if all my muscles, whether in affirmation or sensory overwhelm, all relaxed at once. Success! I stepped out of that dragon room, skin completely new, to finish my bath.  

Kalma Saun: Oldest bath in Tallinn

Sauna #3: Arla

Sauna Arla's website completely defied deciphering; google translation spat it back out, and anyway there didn't appear to be much actual website. All the pertinent details hide out in the logo block, and otherwise I only got that they seem to be hosting a lecture series. I'd heard a rumor it was a sauna/art gallery, sounded like a hip place. Something about murals on the walls...

The entrance gate is an impressive bit of welding, and the tunnel leading from the street into the courtyard tightropes between folksy kitsch and angular impressionism. I admit, the walk in got me hoping for tattoos and day-glo sauna hats. There are mysig lights beside the door, and it looked like the courtyard serves as a cooling patio. The attendant's booth is hung with Sauna Arla logo t-shirts, bedazzled AC/DC flipflops and framed magazine pages. There's a little basket of cherry tomatoes on the counter, and carafes of water topped with new glasses like an outdoor cafe. The changing room is painted bright colors, and there are a ton of excellent art-scene magazines in the very sparse cooling-area. So maybe Arla is arty, but its no gallery.

On my own again (I guess the place is full on weekends, but not in the post-dinner hours of Thursday evenings), the attendant showed me around, making sure – “since it is your first time at Arla” – that I knew how to steam the stove “safely.” Not properly. Safely. You see, the stove at Arla is the size of a phone booth. It's electric, but electric like the power plants of your favorite 1930s monochrome industry-and-man photo. Through a hatch exactly at head height, dark stones smolder and mutter.

The whole room was colorless tile and concrete. The stove dominated a full sixth of the space. The heat dominated everything. The kind of heat that wants you to submit to it, and is very confident. Heat filled every corner, every crack. Walls and floor and stairs and stove were locked in a thermal feedback loop. The benching on the top stair was hot to the touch. (Its hard to make wood hot to the touch.) Standing on anything put my feet in danger of blistering. Leaning against anything was a Very Bad Idea. I made myself comfortable with extra sauna “pillows” (little lengths of benching meant to lean against, or sit upon if you're making use of one of the lower stairs); one at my back, one under my feet. From this refuge, I set about my sauna in a safe (and awed) manner.

You steam the sauna at Arla like you're practicing boxing, it's all timing and accuracy. The ducking and retreating are also like combat training. You nimble your way down to the floor, scoop up a good-sized ladle of water, take careful aim, and heave it into the maw of the stove. Then you best duck, drop the ladle back in the bucket, and scurry like an edible thing back up to your seat. With this technique you are almost certainly guaranteed to 1) minimize time toasting your tootsies on horizontal surfaces, 2) show proper respectful genuflection to the fire-monster in the room, and 3) avoid scalding your face with water vaporizing at velocity.

And if you do, you are then rewarded with the most astonishing, embracing, muscular steam a sauna-lover could hope for. It rolls towards you in bellows, digging its fingers into shoulders and neck, reaching around to prod your back muscles. And you relax, all at once, thoroughly surrendered to the Great Beast Healing. “Lovely” is too pastel a word for this steam, “impressive” is too clean-edged, “overwhelming” too violent. What's wanted is a word for a particularly elegant excavator, or some prehistorically large animal galloping. “Majestic” works, so does “behemothic.” I imagine the wrathful compassion of daikinis would be similar.

About an hour into this ritual, I finally realized the addictive quality of sauna as an endurance sport. In between the thrilling steam drill, I sat on the top stair being massaged by the steam-mastadon, and sweating. I did so for as long as seemed reasonable, then went out for quick cold showers. My usual sauna cues seemed not to manifest; I felt no giddiness, no palpitations, no woozyness, no ineffable feeling of resolution. I did feel as if I was being completely wrung out, but as this is not one of my personal sauna-sensations, I felt more curious about What Would Happen Next than anything. I kept going back for mastadon. I tapped into the sauna archetype known as the Heroic Sufferer. I fidgeted, and tried out different positions. I spent a lot of time trying to decipher the thermometer. It seemed stuck, patinaed to the point of permanence, topped out at 140. But that didn't seem right, since I wasn't, y'know, dead. (I expect the needle should have been hovering between 90-100 – Mr. Attendant agreed.)

Eventually, and all at once, I knew I Was Done. My scamper had been massaged into a wobble, and I thought it best to just keep my head down and bow my way past the stove and out the door. The shower couldn't get cold enough to calm the fire now living inside my skin. I felt like I had been given some kind of Monster Fire Transfusion, and I was positive I would never be cold again. But neither was I in any state to put street clothes back on. So I spent a completely, serenely limp half an hour catching up on the Helsinki art scene, and called it a night.

Sauna Arla Bastu: "Washes All"

Sauna #2: Hermanni

I almost missed it, hawk-eyed though I was, perched in the #6 tram. Hämeentie Street plays cute little games with it's address numbers – the left and right sides don't keep pace, and are happy to skip a decade or 2 on a whim. I'd almost begun thinking I'd gone too far, when I saw a little sign, shining through the rainy gloom, from the corner of a large apartment block.

Ducking around back I found that magical door named Sauna, and headed down to the basement level, and a hallway that would have been at home in any midcentury school building. A smiling lady in a marquee-booth between women's and men's doors later, I was in the locker room and on my own for the next 2 hours. (Being alone, I took the liberty of taking pictures, which I somehow always feel hesitant about in bathhouses.)

Hermanni Sauna is what I imagine any neighborhood bath could be like; comfortable and straightforward, not leaning in any particular direction. A clean, well-used, commonly-loved bath. The showering room is only for showering, the drying and dressing room for exactly what it says. Not much room for socializing or luxuriating, high function-to-form ratio.

The stove room is similarly simple, wood panels and wood benches, a lovely room long enough to feel a real heat differential from door-end to stove-end. The first public place here I've seen where the low bench could really be for sitting, maybe a nod to a multigenerational (multitemperational?) clientele. The stove is a monsterous thing; a cylinder of stones a solid 4 feet tall, caged by steel mesh. Through the gaps I could see long loops of heating element glowing orange. For all that it seemed a fairly timid stove, giving mild and even heat. Id guess somewhere between 70-80? (There was just a thermometer-shaped clean patch on the wall.) Throwing a ladle of water on it (really nice round-belly ladles!) didn't have a strong effect. The stove always stopped sizzling before any wave of heat rolled toward me, and the wave was short-lived. Smelled of hot metal and rainy asphalt. The heat was easy to spend long minutes in, easy to leave and return to, easy to tell when I was finished.

Sauna Hermanni -- Neighborhood bathhouse.

Sauna #1: Kotiharjun

“Smells Like Home” Sauna

As I walked up, men young and old were cooling themselves in towels under the huge red neon SAUNA sign, along the sidewalk to the front door. The neighborhood reminded me of any urban apartment district, a bright-lit restaurant-and-laundry street just around the corner.

The tiny foyer was high traffic, cramped with a deep freeze for birch whisks, a cooler for hard & soft drinks, brightly colored piles of towels, and photocopied instructions on the walls. The attendant stood in a tiny closet of an office with a half-door and a vibe like a maitre d'. One door, propped open, looked down a few steps into the men's changing/cooling room, wooden lockers and tables and dozens of body types roaming pinkly around. The air in the foyer smelled strongly of layers of sweat, and clean laundry.

Up the stairs out of the miasma and through frosted glass doors, the women's changing/cooling room looked similar, though less thoroughly used. The odd fake plant, wood lockers and varnished benches and picnic tables. The air smelled lightly like a half dozen kinds of soap, and delicious roasting sausages from a friendly gathering in progress.

Unrobed and farther in, the large shower room had nubby pebbled flooring and excellent showers, the kinds here with both mobile and static shower heads, and a toggle to switch between. Plenty of hooks to leave my towel, cement benches on which to commandeer a few square inches to stash my shower supplies, if I'd had any. (Note to self: bring shower supplies.)

At the far end of the shower room is a wooden-handled wooden door named Sauna. The stove room is cement, filled with piles of cleanly split wood, and walking in, it is simply warm. On the left is a giant, impressive (incinerator-, crematorium-worthy) furnace of a stove. There are stern warnings not to mess with this oven in 3 languages (the English one calls it the Owen.) Past the stove is a kind of amphitheater of cement stairs rounding 2 walls, the top level about 4 feet from the ceiling and decked with narrow pine planks. 2-foot lengths of similar benching are propped up for backrests.

On the top stair the room smelled of wood smoke, hot pine and clean steam. Standing on the middle stairs I caught the mammalian scent of warm bodies – it actually was very homey. Stepping off the stairs each time I left the sauna for a quick cold shower, I could smell chlorine, and the metal of the stove, but these scents slunk around the floor.

The heat built with each step up, at first I was surprised that only the top stair was decked for a bench, but it's only at the top that the air is finally hot enough to draw sweat. The wall behind me radiated heat, I was held on all sides by heat. The thermometer on the wall behind me kept its needle hovering around 90. Each time a woman entered or left the stove room, she would ask if we wanted more steam. She'd open a little lever on the stove for a second or two, and hissing billows would roll towards us. As it wrapped around us, the air got quiet and heavy, and everything seemed to go into soft focus. Soft and round, it was still the kind of steam that bows your head for you. My lungs felt bigger with every breath, my muscles longer and my skin smoother. Each time I left the room, I cranked the showers colder. By the end of 2 hours of bowing to heat and ducking under cold water, sitting on the top stair felt like floating.

Kotiharjun Sauna -- Helsinki's oldest wood-fired public sauna.

A Prelude To All This Bathing

I love bathing. Soaking. Sweating. Steaming. I love bathing of all sorts. I love giant claw-foot cast iron tubs. I love dinner-plate cascade showerheads. I love wooden rooms with black stoves breathing the scalding perfume of forests. I love pale smooth tiled rooms veiled in curls of warm mist.

I love camping solar showers and watertank farm showers and jumping in rivers. I love exfoliating with beach sand and painting myself with mud. I love homemade salt scrubs and candlelit tubs and chromotherapy and fragrant, herb-infused water. And yes, if it's all I've got, I also love rickety prefab shower cabinets and thumpy fiberglass tubs.

And I love bathhouses. All-wood and tatami, onsen-inspired ones. Romanesque marble-and-echo ones. Mosaic bellystone ones. YMCA gymnasium ones. Hippies-on-the-beach ones. Forest retreat picture-window ones. Strip-mall imported-salt-chunk-and-plastic-seahorse ones. Sanitarium scrub-down ones. I am radically pro-bathhouse. I want more in the world.

I want you to know this, so you know where I'm coming from, when I talk about what I've been doing. I read through guidebooks and travel forums, and people are reviewing bathhouses like the opening of a new fast-food chain. I've been to bathhouses that weren't my style, and bathhouses that didn't function, but I don't believe in bad bathhouses. I'm not looking for perfect. I'm not looking for fancy. I'm not even looking for effortless. I don't mind a bathhouse that takes me an hour to find, that's older than I am, whose traditions I have to learn, whose cleaning crews aren't compulsive. I've got reams of theories about bathing and enjoying life, about health and happiness and the right to both. I want bathhouses that make people happy. I'm looking for living, vital bathhouses that are loved by their patrons, cared for by their owners, and are improving people's lives. I believe in bathhouses that work. I believe in lots and lots of bathing experiences.

And the bathing experience we're discussing right now is saunas. Because this is Scandinavia, full-on Finland, where they made up the word Sauna. So, our language is sweat and stove and stone and wood and fire and steam. For the rest of the chapter, we are all sizzle and bench and endorphin rushes and this beautiful idea of löyly (which is a word I can't pronounce, and neither can you, but I like to read it, and to hear Finnish people describe it as near-sentient steam, the soul of the sauna.)

Oh, and a word about temperature. I'm using Celsius as my sauna-heat measure, because it underscores for me the whole complete and unique tactile environment in the stove room. (I can't hear “110 degrees Fahrenheit” without thinking of that vacation in Texas, or my childhood summer egg-experiments. Too prone to hyperbole. Even (hitherto) imaginary temperatures like 180.) Celsius gives sauna heat it's own authority. So, let's just remember that 100 degrees boils water, yes? And 40 is a dangerously hot summer day.

All Kinds Of Ready!

I have a mission today! A bright, golden glowing mission that will, can only, result in lovely sighs and victory! I've got a fancy new wooly hat, and a scratchy new mitt, and you know what that means? Today I sauna!

Sauna Aitta -- Helsinki's only all-sauna, all-the-time accoutrement store!