Heat

There is just something about the first breath you take in a sauna. Your body's not aware quite yet that the air has changed. Your skin certainly feels it, but nothing else has quite registered. The heat hasn't pervaded you yet. Then you breathe. If you breathe in through your mouth, you feel it immediately in your chest. The air is thicker with the heat. It doesn't ease down into your lungs the right way. It moves slower. If you breathe in through your nose, you feel it, the heat rasping across the membranes in a way that lets you know that the whole mouth-breathing thing is a considerably better idea. Either way, you're aware that something purgative has begun, and all you need to do is let it happen.

I love saunas for just that reason. Physically and metaphysically, 20 minutes in an arid cedar sauna draws out toxins. Sweat beads on your skin and every drop takes something away. Long, slow breaths pull from the inside, every exhalation lightening your soul just a bit. Alone in a sauna, there's nothing to do but think. So I think of the things I need to release, the weights and poisons I let seep into my soul during the day. I breathe them out, let them evaporate in the heat. I take in another hot, cleansing breath and do it again. I watch the sweat fall to the boards, every drop a moment I can do without. They hit, burst, fade. I pour more water on the stones to increase the heat to hurry the cleansing along.

The first time I took a sauna was at a friend's uncle's house on Lake Boone in Hudson, MA. The sauna was built on a concrete slab above a dock. It was wood-fired and it got plenty hot. The joy of it was that you'd sit and schivtz in the sauna for 20, then run like hell out the door, down the steps, onto the dock and dive into the lake. If you turned and came up quickly enough you could see the steam rising from where you went in. You'd climb out and back for another round. After two or three runs, you'd lather up with soap, maybe some shampoo in your hair, and take one more dive. I don't think I've ever slept as well as I did after that first sauna, and I'm pretty sure my skin squeaked, I was so clean.

Now I take my heat once a week or so at the local Y. We only recently joined and I'm trying to get my money's worth. I work out a bit first--far less than I should--but I know I'm really just there for my time in the heat. I'm there for the sweat-meditation, for time to reach into myself, time to let the dark stuff out. The last time there I could feel my breathing change. I could feel it clearing a space within, opening, all save for one tight, solid ball in the center of my chest. And since you can't fire off a good soul-clearing primal scream in a YMCA sauna without raising a bit of alarm, I recognized it for what it was, named it and accepted it. I know it's just a matter of time before the heat melts it away.

That's what saunas are for.