Welcome back, everyone. Today’s episode was made for any bathhouse or sauna owner who currently offers or plans to offer sauna rituals and programming. As well as ritual practitioners—both experienced and aspiring. My hope is that you’ll end the episode with a strong understanding of how sauna rituals, like Aufguss, can add real value for your guests and contribute to a sustainable business model. And that conducting them in the right way—with standards that center safety, training, and quality—is worth the effort.
You’ll hear from experts in the space, including sauna master trainers and a thermal bathing attorney.
So let’s get into it!
This episode features:
MacKenzie Boling, Esq is an active attorney, former massage therapist and recent sauna master. She uses a proprietary risk architecture framework to help thermal bathing businesses build durable trust infrastructure.
Grace Edmunds is an internationally trained sauna master guiding Aufguss and Baltic sauna rituals and is the founder of Northern Kin Sauna and Vermont Sauna Fest.
Alycia Wong is Colorado’s first sauna master, internationally certified in breathwork, thermalist practices, and somatic disciplines.
Nate Daubert is the first American fully certified as a Sauna-Meister by the Deutsche Sauna Akademie
Neveah Chansouk is the Assistant Manager at Hideout in Stamford, CT. She’s also Connecticut’s second Aufguss master
What is a sauna ritual?
First things first. I’m going to be talking about a few different types of sauna rituals, so let’s quickly define them for you all. The first is Aufguss. Aufguss has its roots in Germany where it was created about 30 years ago or so as a way to engage thermal spa guests in sauna culture. Aufguss is a structured ritual that lasts between 10 and 15 minutes and includes rounds of snowballs with essential oil combinations. The Aufguss master places these snowballs on the stove and uses towel-waving and fanning to move the heat and steam around the sauna cabin. Aufguss is not an ancient ritual, but its cultural origins should nevertheless be learned and respected. In the UK, “Aufguss” has become something of a catch-all category of sauna rituals, so if you attend an Aufguss session in England, for example, you might find whisks, masks, and scrubs which are not a part of the traditional German practice.
Aufguss did, however, derive from a sacred, ancient Finnish tradition, called löyly. When you pour water on the rocks in a traditional sauna you are creating löyly. But löyly is not just steam. Löyly is the spirit of the sauna (that’s “SOW-nah”). The energy of the sauna. When a Finn asks you how the löyly was they aren’t asking how the steam was. They are asking how the atmosphere of the sauna experience was. Finns say that a sauna without löyly is not a sauna at all. I agree (go listen to my Brief & Dark History of Infrared Sauna episode if you want more on that).
A Finnish sauna healing ceremony you may hear about is Saunotus. This practice was once common in Finland’s public saunas, but as the culture shifted toward private saunas roughly 70 years ago, the tradition of healing in shared spaces was largely lost. Sipoonjoki heritage sauna outside of Helsinki, Finland and led by Laura, Saara, and Otto is working to bring the tradition back.
Sauna healing doesn’t focus on a single body part or specific ailment. Instead, it seeks to address the whole person, restoring balance as a path to healing. Löyly is the central healing power. The ceremony itself includes whisking, scrubs, steam, and sauna poems (mythological spells) all guided by a skilled and confident sauna healer.
Other types of sauna rituals you may have heard of include Pirtis or Pirts, which is the Lithuanian and Latvian tradition involving similar components to Saunotos such as the whisks or a bundle of branches. Russian banya tradition also has their own rituals like Venik Platza. And a modern ritual gaining popularity is sound healing in the sauna. Using bowls, gongs, or even vinyl records.
Most of today’s episode will focus on Aufguss as its the sauna ritual gaining the most popularity in the American and UK sauna cultures. But know that regardless of the ritual type, it’s important to respect the cultural origins of each ritual, to train yourself or your staff through high-quality training programs before conducting any of these rituals, and to respect the craft of the practitioners.
Why should sauna goers care about Aufguss?
The first reason is simple. Sauna rituals are fun. There’s music, lovely scents, towel-waving, and you’re enjoying it all in good company. Combine that with a cold dip and there’s bound to lots of words of encouragement, screeching, and cheering. We could stop the list here because adding a little joy to our lives is reason enough, but there’s plenty of other good reasons to give Aufguss a try.
New research1 coming out of the UK suggests that sauna rituals can boost wellbeing. Aufguss enhances social connectedness and creates a sense of belonging. Communal sauna rituals invoke emotional synchrony—sharing an emotional state with others—something that is particularly invoked in a communal ritual, as opposed to, let’s say, enjoying a relaxing private spa experience. Emotional synchrony strengthens our social connections and can improve wellbeing.
Sauna bathing as a collective ritual, potentially offers ideal conditions for powerful relational dynamics to emerge, as it combines pathways to fusion: emotional synchrony, shared vulnerability, and emotionally salient experiences. - Newson, M., McGrath, R., Mosina, I., Reason, G., & Peitz, L. (2026)
Aufguss traditionally uses pure essential oil combinations which are diffused on snowballs. An Aufguss master may select certain oils with the intention of improving the guests’ wellbeing2. This is, effectively, aromatherapy. When inhaling the essential oil in an Aufguss, olfactory receptors in your nose respond by sending messages to your brain. Scent and memory are linked. When we smell a scent like lavender for example, we associate it with past experiences of calmness and relaxation. These exact links are not universal. So what I mean is that a response to a scent is culturally and experientially informed. People from one culture may consider vanilla to be a luxurious, refined scent while folks from a different culture might consider it too sweet and immature. The research is pretty mixed on aromatherapy, but some research does suggest that it may be beneficial for treating anxiety and insomnia3.
I was recently hosting an Aufguss at DRYYP in New Haven, Connecticut. Alonzo Solórzano, the Director of Aufguss at BATHHOUSE NYC, was training me on heat management and towel waving. (I’m trying to up my game for next year’s US Aufguss National Competition). A guest asked us what the benefits of Aufguss were. Of course we mentioned wellbeing, emotional synchrony, and aromatherapy. But Alonzo also offered another compelling benefit: good heat.
When you’re enjoying a regular sauna session (sans snowballs and towel-waving) your sweat is helping you regulate your body temperature. It’s helping you cool down. But in an Aufguss, the waving affects this sweat—the waving whisks the sweat off your body. Less sweat on your skin means the sessions feel more intense. The heat is good. The towel waving is also moving air around the space. A good Aufguss master is making the air more breathable for guests across the cabin. The heat is just good.
And finally, an Aufguss ritual helps sauna newcomers understand their heat threshold. A typical Aufguss session lasts no more than 15 minutes. For new sauna goers, they might be hesitant to last 15 minutes in a session alone. An Aufguss can help them realize their limit may be longer than they think. This does not mean that Aufguss is encouraging guests to stay in the sauna an unhealthy amount of time. Every good Aufguss master will give the guests a safety and informational orientation, and they will emphasize that guests should listen to their bodies and can leave the ritual at any time. I’m in a lot of Aufguss rituals as a practitioner and as a guest, and I have no shame in leaving an Aufguss early. Attending an Aufguss is not a competition, but it can help build resilience if you let it.
Why should sauna and bathhouse owners and operators care about Aufguss?
I like to describe Aufguss as a doorway to a regular sauna practice. I’ve heard Aufguss dismissed by some staunch sauna traditionalists as too performative, too structured. And for those who grew up in a culture of sweating together with friends, family, and neighbors alike, that might be true. Why does anyone need music and scent when they can enjoy the peace and quiet of the sauna? Well, for those who don’t have an established sauna practice (and in the US, that’s many of us), Aufguss provides an intriguing doorway into sauna culture. I’ve seen this many times in my Aufguss rituals. Newcomers are drawn to Aufguss. Guests who evangelize sauna can only convince their partners to join them in the heat for an Aufguss. When done well, an Aufguss creates the conditions for a safe, enjoyable sauna experience. The competence of the Aufguss master gives new guests confidence. They can relax. They don’t have to worry about what to do or how to be. They can be sure the sauna master will guide them. It’s a way to educate newcomers on sauna etiquette. Aufguss masters confidently and calmly explain the dos and don’ts in the space and no one feels patronized or embarrassed. Because the sauna world in North America is still so nascent, Aufguss not only helps attract new guests in your space, but it also gently establishes etiquette so guests feel confident building their own practice and returning more regularly.
And historically, Aufguss was created just for this purpose. In Germany, thermes—beautiful spa complexes with saunas and pools—wanted a way to keep guests in their spaces for longer. Aufguss did just that. Guests stayed for an extra hour to make it to the next Aufguss ritual. And they learned about etiquette and how to treat the space well—something that makes any spa operator happy. Today Germany has a strongly established sauna culture of their own with a unique set of sauna etiquette. A culture that was shaped in large part by Aufguss.
Aufguss doesn’t just attract newcomers into the practice. It keeps current ones returning. Visit any of the three BATHHOUSE locations in NYC and you’ll know just what I’m talking about. Regulars come back for the good heat of the Aufguss and to see their favorite sauna master. No Aufguss ritual is the same—with the sauna master switching up their music, scents, and waving. Regular Aufguss programming keeps your offerings fresh. Guests know what to expect from the ritual but as each one is different, it’s exciting to experience it anew.
The rise of Aufguss in the UK and US
Aufguss and sauna rituals are on the rise in the US and UK. Just look at the growing popularity of the Aufguss National Competitions. And brands are responding. Look at Othership. Historically, they intentionally didn’t refer to their very Aufguss-like rituals, which include essential oils, snowballs, and towel-waving, as Aufguss. Preferring instead to position the rituals as unique Othership sessions. Not long after the 2026 Aufguss competition in NYC, which was hosted at BATHHOUSE’s new Atlantic Ave location, Othership began using the word “Aufguss” to describe their rituals. What makes a brand shift its language? Aufguss is gaining traction. Two, three years ago, a ritual with snowballs and towel-waving could be called anything at all. But today, there’s enough awareness about the German tradition that guests recognize an Aufguss ritual when they see it. This is an important shift in the sauna culture in the States that illustrates that acknowledging the original cultural origins behind sauna rituals is important. Guests are savvy enough to see through branding that potentially co-ops cultural traditions. A good reason to have standards around sauna rituals if I ever heard of one.
By the way, I have a whole episode dedicated to my behind-the-scenes take on the recent US National Competition where I competed in the Show Teams category. Think theater in the sauna.
Why do standards matter for sauna rituals?
Safety of guests, staff, and practitioners
Cultural respect for sauna traditions and practices
Quality and consistency of experience
Fair compensation for skilled practitioners
Risk reduction for owner operators and practitioners
The sauna is inherently a risky space. You have high heat, steam, hot potentially slippery floors, and people packed onto benches. And yet time again I see bathhouse and sauna owners hire staff with backgrounds that don’t include an understanding of sauna safety. A yoga teacher, fitness instructor, or breathwork practitioner brings a valuable skillset to a space, but they don’t have the basic training in sauna safety. That includes being able to evaluate if a sauna is in safe operating condition as well as hosting rituals or creating löyly in a way that ensures their own safety and the safety of the guests. For as much as Aufguss is a performance, it’s also first and foremost a ritual being led by a practitioner centering a guest’s safety above all else.
Standards also ensure that global sauna traditions are respected. Many of the sauna rituals and traditions being practiced today in the US and UK are living cultural traditions from cultures around the world. You have whisking from Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonia, and Finnish culture. You have Aufguss from Germany and Switzerland. And of course the practice of water on the rocks is the Finnish tradition of löyly. We all want to create our unique rituals inspired by these traditions. And I don’t think there’s any wrong with that. But we must start from a place of curiosity and respect. If you don’t really understand what löyly means to a Finn and its importance in the history of Finnish sauna culture, then your own practice of a version of löyly lacks depth and loses some of its quality.
As the sweat and soak market in the US matures, we’re seeing new customers enter. We’re moving beyond the early adopters—the performance optimizers, the amateur athletes, the sauna bros—and into a wider variety of consumers. These guests are seeking cultural experiences and novelty in their lifestyles. These are savvy consumers—they can tell when a business and a brand has done the real homework of education. I’m seeing that the particularly sophisticated brands are the most curious and the most diligent about educating themselves on the history, culture, and traditions of bathing.
Nell Waters of Sweat Temples and I are hosting a “Business of Sweat” Lab to help close the education gap in the bathing culture industry. It’s a deep dive into bathing history—you’ll get the full story—from the grandeur of 1800s bathhouse entrepreneurs to the inflection points shaping the US market today. And it’s a working space for founders, builders, and the bathing-curious to absorb industry trends, brainstorm a way forward, and forecast where this market goes next.
Consistency builds trust with guests. When guests know they can expect a quality sauna experience every time they visit your space, you’re building trust and loyalty with them. Bringing in properly trained staff to host rituals makes it more likely that they will consistently deliver quality experiences to guests. I know there can be an urge to cut corners when your business is new and growing fast. Why not just have your regular staff put essential oils in the bucket and wave a towel around? I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen staff bring bottles of oils into the hot cabin and over to the stove. Both of these examples are hazards to guests, staff, and your space. Oils and high heat are no joke. Fires start this way. When you put oils in the water and put that water on the stove you risk burning the oils on the rocks. This is unhealthy and unsafe. The snowballs in Aufguss aren’t just for show. We put oil on the snowball so that the oils never directly hit the stove. The snow or ice allows the oils to diffuse safety into the air.
If you’re hearing this and cringing because you’ve done some of these examples (and wow do I have a lot more I could share!), it’s okay. Many sauna owners have taken these short cuts as well from lack of knowledge or understanding. The solution? Education. Educate yourself and your staff. Hire practitioners who have been properly trained through established sauna master programs. Later in the episode I will share some resources for education and training.
By now I hope it’s clear. Aufguss masters are skilled craftspeople. They prioritize the safety and health of guests. They uphold cultural sauna traditions with respect and intention. They provide quality, consistent experiences that build trust with guests. They establish sauna etiquette that keeps the sauna in good working condition. And they create conditions for belonging, wellbeing, and connectedness. These practitioners often pursue independent education and training so that they can continuously improve their craft. As such, these aren’t unskilled, inexperienced individuals who should be paid with “exposure.” I was once asked to host 12 Aufguss rituals for free at a sauna festival because it’d be great exposure for me. Notwithstanding the fact this is an absolutely unhealthy number of rituals to host in a single weekend, asking a practitioner to host rituals for free, especially when they also provide their own oils, fans, and towels, completely minimizes their experience, skillset, and intention. As owner operators (and sauna festival organizers), I implore you to compensate your sauna practitioners fairly. Asking practitioners to work for free is insulting (and by the way, word and reputation travels fast in the sauna world), but it also discourages quality practitioners from practicing. It means we’re lowering the bar for what we expect rituals to be in the sauna. And that so easily means a degradation of safety standards. If you compensate your practitioners well, you will be rewarded with quality experiences for your guests—consistent, culturally-respectful engaging experiences. Don’t take a shortcut when guest safety and your reputation is on the line!
Going deeper on risk reduction with a thermal bathing attorney
Having standards for sauna rituals means that owners and practitioners are offering safe, high quality sauna experiences consistently for guests. Doing so reduces your risk exposure as a business owner and practitioner. The US is a highly litigious country and protecting yourself and your business should be a top concern for any sauna-preneur. I’m happy to have MacKenzie Boling, the founder of Longevity Law, join us to talk more about reducing risk in the sauna space.
MacKenzie Boling, Esq. is an active attorney, former massage therapist and recent sauna master. She uses a proprietary risk architecture framework to help thermal bathing businesses build durable trust infrastructure.
“The standards are how honest operators become legible so they can drown out the noise. They can be amplified, they can be more visible in the public eye.”
-MacKenzie Boling, Esq. of Longevity Law LLC
Sarah: Standards in sauna ritual practices do many things. They improve safety for guests and practitioners. They reduce risk for practitioners and owner operators. They ensure that expectations for an experience better match the actual experience. And they promote fair compensation for practitioners who are certified and properly trained. You’re a trained massage therapist and sauna master, but you’re also an attorney who has created a risk architecture for thermal bathing business. You’ve also written a white paper about the importance of standards in this nascent industry. Can you speak more to how you’d define standards and why they are so important at this moment to the bathing industry?
MacKenzie: How I define standards and why now? From a personal level, I come at this from practitioner first, a lover of bathing first. I am a trained sauna master, former massage therapist. I fell in love with sauna before I ever looked at it from a legal lens. So when I talk about standards, I’m not talking about the red tape or the bureaucracy type of standards. I’m talking about the thing that lets the experience be the same from moment to moment. Whether it’s me that has the ladle or it’s you that has the ladle or whomever else that has the ladle who might not be properly trained. It’s all about a promise that you’ve made explicit enough that somebody else can keep that promise if you’re not in the room. And so defining standards is writing down what you do so it can be replicated, so it can be relied on. So it can be consistently relied on if the time comes where something were to go wrong.
For standards, it is for the guest and the practitioner. An Aufguss master working heat and towel and crowd is managing real physical risk, not just to the guests, but to themselves too. And it’s important that operators are willing and able to acknowledge that—the rigor involved with doing an Aufguss ceremony the right way as a trained professional, with the correct oils, with the correct quality of oils.
Sure, it’s a risk reduction too, like you mentioned, for the owner operator. But it’s really, like I said, it’s about predictability. You can’t defend or ensure or scale an experience that you can’t describe or define or rely on that will be consistent long term after a year or two of practicing.
Expectation matching is a huge part of what I do. The guest needs to receive the space that is promised, the container that is promised. It’s the heart of consumer trust. The gap between the promise and the experience is exactly where trust dies and where liability lives. And so standards are very important in our Aufguss practitioners because yes, it’ll be safer, it’ll be more reliable. And it will be more predictable for matching expectations.
I want there to be standards around how an Aufguss practitioner is trained and how they deliver the experience. And part of that is because they deserve to be compensated fairly for the rigor involved with the practice.
I’m corresponding very closely with the North American Sauna Society. We’ve had so many conversations about this moment that is we’re on the precipice of here in the US. And it’s so exciting to be in this industry, to watch this kind of tidal wave of amazing sauna experiences coming at us and I cannot wait to dive into all of them.
But because the category is expanding faster than its own vocabulary, any warm room is considered a sauna, right? Or contrast therapy is the phrase of the month. And and it’s when the language outruns the practice that the operators who are doing business honestly and with good stewardship, they often get drowned out by the noise of others. And same for the Aufguss.
Aufguss practitioners who are properly trained and have a full understanding of the science involved with what’s going on in the sauna and who are trained to make sure the essential oil disclosures and the safety talk is consistent each time. And they’ve been trained to do that. Those Aufguss practitioners, if they haven’t already, will likely be in the future drowned out by other practitioners who might not have even been trained. They might just be kind of an employee of an operator who’s thrown into a sauna with a towel and a bucket, and they’re kind of winging it.
The people who represent it honestly get drowned out by the people who don’t. The standards are how the honest operators become legible. And so they can drown out the noise, they can be amplified, they can be more more visible in the public eye.
“The gap between promise and the experience is exactly where trust dies and liability lives. And so standards [are] very important in our practitioners. Because yes, it’ll be safer, it’ll be more reliable, and more predictable for matching expectations.”
-MacKenzie Boling, Esq. of Longevity Law LLC
Sarah: If you’re a sauna or bathhouse owner listening to this what are the one or two things you’d tell them to do this month to actually reduce their risk? What does ‘getting ahead of it’ look like in practice, not just in theory?
MacKenzie: One of the things that I would like operators to do early would be to start understanding that the promise and the practice both need to match up. And if and when there were ever to be an adverse incident, those two things also need to match up with the proof. So those are the three pillars of my risk analysis—at least in how you present the invitation to your guests but also how that plays out in practice. And if an adverse event were to happen, how is it that you can prove what happened that day?
What I would recommend is to operate as if you are going to be regulated in the future. And by that I mean shoring up operational stewardship. Meaning whatever you claim to your guests, make sure you have to have the structure, the operational structure to back it up. Meaning through intake, screening, but also documentation consistency of events, near misses, and training schedules for your staff. So those are two ways that I think that either pre-build or post-opening operators can kind of hold themselves to a higher standard. Operate as if they are already regulated so that if and when the time comes that regulations are imposed, it is more of a, “hey, we’re already operating like this, great.”
Connect with MacKenzie
I also recommend checking out the North American Sauna Society. They’ve brought MacKenzie on for a free webinar and they provide additional resources for sauna operators and practitioners.
Learn more about North American Sauna Society.
Badii’s goal: support sauna ritual practitioners in the US and make the practice a viable career path
I started Badii because the bathing culture I experienced in Switzerland was transformative. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I also know that for anyone who has experienced burnout, you’ll understand. I was living in Switzerland and working in a high-powered marketing position. Having access to the healing mineral waters of Baden, Switzerland helped me survive through burnout. And because I had found the space to stop and feel (not just think) in the hot springs and saunas, I made the toughest, and best, decision of my life—to leave corporate and start my own venture. But not just any venture. My mission was to share the aspects of the bathing culture that helped me so much with more people in my home country. Those aspects were (and are)—accessibility, communal rituals, nature, and of course sweating and soaking.
My mission hasn’t changed. But as I’ve also built my own career as an Aufguss master and sauna ritual practitioner, that mission has evolved. My goal is to help create a path for sauna ritual practicing to be a viable career in the US. Since starting Badii, I’ve created resources with that goal in mind. Below I share more and I hope you will check them out if this type of work has sparked an interest.
So you want to become a sauna master?
You know that saying that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares? The same is true for sauna masters and Aufguss masters (also called: Aufgussmaster or Aufgussmeister): All Aufguss masters are sauna masters but not all sauna masters are Aufguss masters.
“Sauna master” is a term from German tradition used to describe someone who is responsible for the safety and upkeep of a sauna. That is their primary focus. But as Aufguss took hold in German sauna culture, sauna masters started playing the role of towel-waver and ritual practitioner as well. The semantics do matter because it’s a reminder that Aufguss masters, for all the show and performance, ultimately have responsibility for creating a safe experience for guests. At the heart of it, being a sauna master supersedes being an Aufguss master when the guests’ safety is concerned.
What’s clear to me is that there is no one set path to becoming a sauna master. At least not here in the States. Where do I recommend you start? Firstly, experience as many different ritual types as you can. Travel if that’s available to you. Experiencing a sauna ritual in the culture where it’s from is special and it’s the most valuable way to learn. Aufguss is taking center stage these days but seek out traditions from other cultures as well. Even if you end up only practicing Aufguss, it will be incredibly valuable to understand how other cultures practice.
Secondly, pursue formal training. YouTube videos and online tutorials are so helpful (I will link to some good ones below), but you cannot become an effective sauna master and ritual practitioner without hand ons experience.
Once the training is complete, don’t let your learning stop. Continue to refine your craft by getting in the sauna. Even small saunas if that’s all that’s available to you. Here in Connecticut, I often operate in smaller spaces and there are fun tricks you can use to make that work—like using fans or smaller towels.
US-based sauna master certification through Ritual Heat
Not long ago, sauna master training programs in the US were scarce. I went to the UK to be trained through Anada. It’s a training I highly recommend for its focus on the foundational skills and knowledge of a sauna master. But I recognize that having a US-based option is the best scenario for many aspiring sauna masters and owner operators. Thankfully, Ritual Heat has launched in the States. Ritual Heat is the leading sauna practitioner certification program in the USA. The experienced trainers help you train the skills to create safe and innovative sauna rituals.
I’ve experienced two trainings from Ritual Heat so I can speak from experience when I say that what makes their trainings particularly strong is the diversity of their trainers. The three co-founders each bring a specific focus and specialization which offers what I consider to be a very appealing foundational sauna master certification for Americans. Let me introduce you.
First we have Grace Edmunds: Grace Edmunds is an internationally trained sauna master guiding Aufguss and Baltic sauna rituals and is the founder of Northern Kin Sauna and Vermont Sauna Fest. She has guided rituals internationally, including at Therme’s Herbarium in Bucharest, and was among the first two women to compete in the USA Aufguss Modern Classic Nationals; her work is rooted in 15 years of mindfulness and embodiment facilitation.
Then we have Alycia Wong, who was also my teammate in the recent US Aufguss National Competition. Alycia is Colorado’s first sauna master, internationally certified in breathwork, thermalist practices, and somatic disciplines. She ranks among the top sauna masters in the country after competing at the 2026 USA Aufguss Nationals, and has performed at sauna festivals and bathhouses across the US and Europe.
And we have Nate Daubert: Nate Daubert is the first American fully certified as a Sauna-Meister by the Deutsche Sauna Akademie. Having translated the academy’s full curriculum into English and visited hundreds of bathhouses across three continents, he brings a deep foundation of research and technical mastery to his work. His Aufguss ceremonies have been featured at bathhouses and festivals nationwide.
Sarah: Grace, why is this training so important?
Grace: This training is really important to me because sauna as a culture is still growing in the U.S. It’s still very new. We’re at the beginning stages of something really exciting, something that has been present in European culture for a really long time. Places like Finland, where they have these ancient rituals, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and all across Europe where spa culture, Aufguss, is really big.
To see us at the very beginning of something that I know is going to grow and to embed more within the North American culture, it’s a really exciting moment to help people to gain the skills and the tools that they need to be sauna practitioners. And beyond just having the practical skills of like, how do you wave a towel? What scents do you bring in? How do you present yourself in the space.
Something that is really important to me and my co-facilitators is teaching and inviting our facilitators and our guides to learn how to hold the space in a really safe way. And so we teach them about psychological safety, about co-regulating of the nervous system, understanding how individual bodies and nervous systems impact each other. Because when we enter the sauna as an individual, we are entering a space that is very delicate, it’s a very vulnerable space. We’re not in homeostasis. We are walking into more of a liminal space. We’re kind of taking our body into a stressful environment. And so having guides in that space that are not only confident in the skills that they have, but know how to really be attuned to the space and the participants is so essential for the safety of the guests.
Let’s hear from a participant in the Ritual Heat program. This is Neveah, the Assistant Manager at Hideout in Stamford, CT. She’s also Connecticut’s second Aufguss master (I’m the first!). Follow her sauna adventures at @nomadic.nev on Instagram.
“I just wanted to deepen my practice and make my practice more intentional with Aufguss…I was looking for some sort of protocol when it came to safety for our guests and ensuring everyone’s having a good time but also being safe about it.”
-Neveah Chansouk, Sauna Master and Assistant Manager at Hideout
Ritual Heat’s next training is in Denver from Sept 5-7. Use code BADII at checkout to receive $100 off your booking.
Who to follow in the sauna ritual world
Wondering who to follow in the sauna ritual world to stay up to date and improve your craft? I got you.
Alonzo Solórzano, Director of Aufguss at BATHHOUSE NYC. He’s my Aufguss mentor and has assisted me with towel-waving training. If you’re interested in connecting with Alonzo to learn how he can support your Aufguss journey, he welcomes DMs via Instagram.
Sigrid at Aufguss Creations for quality towel-waving and fanning instructional videos.
Barbora Brožová, founder of Sauna Wings and decorated Aufguss champion.
Jade Coulombe, acclaimed Aufguss master based in Canada.
Aromen Aromatherapy, the top essential oil brand for Aufguss masters globally
Aufguss Roots US for training and education resources
Aufguss USA is the organizing body responsible for bringing the Aufguss competitions to America. Follow them on Instagram for the latest news on the competitions.
Deborah Carr from Ananda and Aufguss UK
Additional resources for current and aspiring sauna and Aufguss masters
At Badii we provide a number of resources for current and aspiring sauna and Aufguss masters.
Subscribe to Badii Talk on Substack for articles and guides
Send me a DM on Instagram at @badii.life if you’d like learn more about my Aufguss and business advisory services or you can visit our website badii.life
I’ve just launched a consolidated list of resources for sauna ritual practitioners in the North America and UK in partnership with Ange Cameron of Sauna Culture UK. As far as we can tell it’s the only consolidated resource list for North American and UK sauna opportunities like courses, trainings, and conferences.
Today’s member shout out goes to youcanfindt from the US. Thank you for supporting Badii Talk!
Tschuss!
Sarah
Newson, M., McGrath, R., Mosina, I., Reason, G., & Peitz, L. (2026). Sauna culture improves physical and mental wellbeing in the UK through social connection and ritual. Social Science & Medicine, 394, Article 119061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119061
I’m not suggesting that all Aufguss rituals are aromatherapy rituals. But if the sauna master is deliberate about the application of the oils for certain wellbeing outcomes, they might consider their ritual an aromatherapy ritual. As part of their training, Aufguss masters learn the fundamentals of essential oils but some sauna masters choose to deepen their education of oils and aromas in particular.
Cleveland Clinic. (2023, September 21). Aromatherapy. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/aromatherapy
