People
Murad named Ariya Kittichaikarn sales director for Asian-Pacific markets. Kittichaikarn will lead the Asian market by maximizing sales with existing businesses and new distributors and focusing on expanding the company's presence in China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.Related posts
People
Murad announced the addition of Eric Arroyo as media director. In this role, Arroyo will be responsible for managing all of the company's Direct Response Television (DRTV) and radio placements, as well as overseeing media buying agencies.Related posts
A Spa to Call Your Own
I think that spa-going is turning into a rite of passage. As a mother I want to pass on a clear message to my daughters that being good to one’s self is perfectly OK and necessary. In fact, I have just booked my nine-year-old daughter Paige into her first spa day camp. It is an entire day dedicated to girls to teach them how to care for their nails, skin and hair! What a fabulous idea (see that in our next issue).
This issue, you’ll read all about Canadian celebrity Sass Jordan as she tells us about her favourite spa. She prefers the quality of an out-of-the-way spa that gives incredible service to their clients. It is not the biggest or most architecturally significant but it offers unique treatments for people looking for lifestyle changes.
Spas aren’t just about beautifying the outside anymore. Within these pages you will find spas that treat health concerns, dietary habits and offer the latest in revitalizing technology.
Finding that extraordinary spa, for some us of there isn’t just ONE, but when you find a place you love, make it your special escape because we all need a place to call our own.
Stay well,
Mary
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TRADITIONS AND OLD BELIEFS
The sauna is an ancient custom and almost a sacred place (particularly for the Finns). Tradition related to Finnish sauna is rich and diversified. It was not a place just for sweat bathing. It is associated with the peoples’ lives in all their stages. Traditionally, Finnish women gave birth in sauna. Folk healers were curing the patients in the sauna. Furthermore, it was the place where the bodies of the dead were washed and prepared for their final journey.
Place for a magic
Sauna was also a place where magic was performed and casting love spells could also happen there. It was often performed on young women to improve their marriage ability, with special sauna bath: birch whisks hanging, special herbs aroma in the air and the love spells of the magician woman. Sauna had an important role in “healing” of love affairs through magic.
Old beliefs and customs
Gnome
It was believed that little sauna elf, called gnome lived in a sauna. He was treated with respect, because he might cause troubles for people and “punish” them if acting “immorally” in the sauna. As sauna was the place where gnome was living, people used to warm up the sauna occasionally just for him. Another customary was to leave some food outside the sauna for that little elf.
Christmas sauna
There is an old custom referring to Christmas and sauna, which represents the old tradition of many Finnish peasant families. They started heating sauna two days before Christmas so everybody could take sauna bathing before the sun set at Christmas Eve. Why? There are two different versions of the tale… In the first one, once the darkness set in, the sauna is used by the invisible folks who are previous inhabitants of the house. Others believed that the invisible visitors were sauna elfs who brought a good fortune to the house.
New Year
“In Koivisto on the
(“Sauna – A Finnish national institution”, Erkki Helamaa, architect, Professor emeritus and Juha Pentikäinen, Professor,
Different functions of sauna in the past
In
Popularity: 29% [?]
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HAMMAM
Hammam [hamam] known also as ‘Turkish bath’ is the
History of Hammam
Besides bathing, hammams always represented places to socialize and of religious cleansing. Hammam was an important part of Islam culture and their life. Even the wealthy citizens, possessing their own private hammams, visited the public ones in order to show the people their cleanliness. Hammam has also become important part of life for Moslem women, for whom it represented the only opportunity to socialize outside their homes. The
Bathing stages in hammam
Hammam usually includes separated parts for men and women. The process of bathing consists of several phases, leading the bather to the heavenly experience. These phases can be best described by the words of Mikkel Aaland. After his experience of Cagaloglu Hammam in Istanbu he wrote: “We entered the first stage of the five-step progression through the hammam. First is the seasoning of the body with heat; second is the vigorous massage; third is the peeling off of the outer layer of skin, and removal of body hairs; fourth, the soaping, and fifth, relaxation.”
An attendant, staff working in hammam called tellak leads you to the dressing room, where you get the cotton wrap – pestemal to cover your body, kese – a rough glove for the massage, and you slip into the special wooden clogs called nalin, that will prevent you from slipping on the wet floor, your bowl and natural black soap if you wish. First, you enter the hot steam room (harara) with the large, heated marble stone platform at the centre, on which bathers are laying. In the corners of the room there are niches with the fountains for pouring the water over your body. This is the hottest room of the hammam (45 ºC), where your body will start to perspire, and the pores start to open. Then, if you wish you can experience a vigorous Turkish massage. After the short relaxation, a tellak will pour the water over you, and then rub your back with the coarse (usually horse or camel hair) glove, removing the layers of dead skin. After the scrubbing, your entire body will be soaped and rinsed with the water poured all over you from the basin.
The bathing in hammam ends up in the resting room (soğukluk) where you will relax in the comfortable couches or sofas, let your skin pores to close and refresh yourself with the offered tea, coffee, or a soft drink.
Where to visit a genuine hammam?
If you wish to visit a genuine hammam, we recommend you the “Cağaloğlu Hamami” in
In
Popularity: 37% [?]
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Japanese Ofuro
This type of sweat bath, named by Japanese people simply Furo what means simply “bath”, is important part of Japanese culture. This traditional bath in
Onsen – public Japanese bath
Bathtubs are unavoidable part in modern Japanese homes, but there are still many homes, particularly in older or rural areas where people live in small housing facilities that do not have private bathtubs, so public bathhouses called sentō or onsen, are common. Onsen is a public bath which uses the hot water from natural
Onsen in Japanese tourism
Onsen, on the other hand, today plays an important role in Japanese national tourism. There are thousand of onsens alongside the country, often found in the countryside as significant tourist attraction, mainly for Japanese tourists. They can be in various forms and shapes, including indoor and outdoor onsen. If you visit
You can still find traditional ofuro throughout
Popularity: 24% [?]
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SAUNA WISEACRE
Sauna
Finnish style sweat bath / “building” for Finnish sweat bathing. The correct pronunciation is sow-na, as it is in a word “cow”, not saw-na.
Saunoa is action of bathing in sauna, and saunoja is a person bathing in sauna.
Savusauna is Finnish name for smoke sauna.
Avantouinti
Swimming in a hole in the ice covering the lake or the sea (literally – “ice hole swimming”). Sauna bathers often cut a large hole through the ice and plunge quickly or swim for a few minutes, for refreshment after, or in between sweat baths. It makes them feel refreshed and most of them appreciate the hot sauna after the cool swimming in the icy water. It is recommended to go to the Avanto (hole in the ice) not directly from the sauna heat, but after the short time in the changing room, where there is a relative coolness unlike the sauna.
Kauha (kippo)
Ladle for throwing water on the stones in the stove
Kiuas
Sauna stove, heater of the sauna. It is heated with wood or electricity, and has stones on the top for increased heating capacity and producing löyly. Originally, kiuas was just a pile of stones around a fire, making heating process very slow. In smoke saunas, stoves did not have the chimney, thus the smoke was cleared from room usually through the doors or lakeinen, just before bathing. Today, most heaters are designed in a steel casing. A wood heated kiuas is thought to give more pleasant warmth and löyly.
Kiuaskivet
Stones in the sauna stove. The more there are stones; the better is the heat the stove produces.
Kiulu
Small bucket usually made of wood, for keeping the löyly water.
Kisu, kitku (tiku)
Unpleasant smoke which arise in smoke sauna, right after the heating. It disappears after one or two hours. Just afterwards the sauna is ready.
Lakeinen
Opening in the roof of a smoke sauna where smoke escapes during the bathing.
Lauteet
Elevated wooden platforms in the sauna for people to sit on (high benches). As the hot air rises on the lauteet bather can enjoy the hotter air close to the ceiling.
Löyly
Steam (vapor) created by throwing water on the hot stones. It is hot and rises up the temperature in the sauna temporarily. As water carries heat more efficiently then the air, the change is felt instantly. The word löyly is sometimes used for the heat, humidity and temperature in the sauna in general.
Löylyhuone is the hot room.
Pesuhone
The washing room
Pukuhone
The dressing room
Räppänä
Duct or vent on a sauna wall close to the ceiling.
Saunatonttu
Literally translated it would mean a sauna elf. It is a little gnome that was believed to live in the sauna.
Vihta, vasta
Whisk made of birch twigs, used for gentle beating of the body in sauna, in order to stimulate the feeling of löyly and improve the blood circulation. In countries where the birch is hard to find, people use similar trees rich in leafs (cedar, poplar…).
Popularity: 19% [?]
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Roman thermae
Bathing has played an important role in the life of the ancient
The structure of thermae
Public bathing was practiced by the both, the rich and the poor. The difference is that the patricians, the reach citizens were accompanied by one or more slaves serving them during the bathing in thermae. They were also bringing their own bathing implements: brushes, oils for massage, dish for scooping water and the strigil (a small, curved, metal tool use to scrap dirt and sweat from the body).
The building structure of thermae was very complex, but it had three “principal” rooms: caldarium, tepidarium and frigidarium. Sometimes they have also had laconicum – a hot, dry area for inducing sweating.
The bathing process in therame
The bathing process often begun with some workout in the palestra where different sports and activities took place, in order to stimulate the circulation and keep the body in a good condition. Afterwards, the bathers were passing the three rooms of different purposes. Firstly, they would go to tepidarium – normally the largest room in thermae, decorated with the most precious mosaics and marbles. This was the place where the bathers firstly assembled and spent an hour or more, relaxing and being “oiled” (mostly using the olive oil). The following step was caldarium, very hot and steamy room, heated by the under floor heating system, with the bath of hot water (swimming pool). Very often, the laconicum was an integral part of the caldarium, where bather would stay for a short time and prepare its body for the massage. Afterwards, the vigorous massage was the next, followed by removing off the dead skin with the earlier mentioned strigil. The final phase of the bathing process was frigidarium where bathers would plunge into the large pool of cold water, refreshing themselves and withdrawing themselves to the one of the relaxing areas, library or assembly room to continue with the socializing and intellectual discussions.
Popularity: 45% [?]
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Native American Sweat Lodge
The sweat lodge is kind of “ceremonial” sauna, used by the first settlers in
A lodge was a wooden structure built on earth, made of pliable tree branches, arching in a dome shaped form. This wooden structure was then covered, usually with blankets or animal skins. Sometimes, if the lodges were “permanent”, they were sheathed with soil or mud. The lodge doors are in the east faces sacred fire. The stones were heated at the exterior fire, outside the lodge, brought on forked poles into the lodge, and then placed in the pit in the ground at the centre.
Purpose of the Lodge
For Native Americans sweat lodge had several functions: to purify the body, but also the mind and spirit, to connect the physical with the spiritual and to reconnect with the nature and the earth. The sweat lodge ceremony and its preparation were conducted by the medicine man. It was often connected with the god and creations, or reconnection with the Mother Earth. The ceremony was accompanied with spiritual songs and prayers, or dancing. Rituals were different from tribe to tribe, but the purifying of body, mind and soul was at the heart of the every sweat lodge ceremony. The end of the ceremony differed from tribe to tribe. Some tribes after the ceremony cooled off by rolling in the snow and others have plunged into the lakes or rivers.
Some Indian tribes and Alaskan Eskimos were building lodges heated directly by the fire. The lodge was large enough to receive a dozen of men (women could enter the lodge just during some particular ceremonies when lodge actually haven’t had its original purpose of “bathing”)
Popularity: 17% [?]
