On the Genealogy of a Bad Sauna - Part I
This is the introduction to a four-part exploration of sauna pods, optimization culture, and the joys of sweat bathing.
Recently, a friend sent me a Facebook Marketplace listing for a truly bad sauna. A product of mid-twentieth century enthusiasm for fiberglass, this strange apparatus consists of a person-sized mustard yellow capsule with a door, a chair made of wood and metal, a basin below the chair containing an electrified metal coil, and a hole that allows for a person’s head to emerge. Just add water to the basin, plug in the capsule, and voila!—a personal, plug-and-play human sous vide! (The power cord indicates a max temperature of 400 degrees: perfect temperature for roasting chicken, veggies, or baking a cake.) As one commenter on Reddit observed of a similar model, it really puts the “nah” in sauna.
As a sauna enthusiast, this device struck me as both bizarre and ridiculous. For me, sauna is above all else an activity of relaxation and leisure. Sitting in a hunk of plastic that resembles a pod from Invasion of the Body Snatchers seems like a fairly disagreeable way to spend an afternoon. Beyond its dystopian aesthetics, the device makes relaxation almost impossible by restricting the movement and positioning of the limbs, confining the user to a stiff, upright position, and restraining the head as if in preparation for a medical procedure.
Furthermore, the “sauna pod” is a solitary experience, ruling out a fundamental feature of what I consider a “good” sauna: the ability to share the experience with others. (Though I suppose you could push together a collection of sauna pods and enjoy a siloed experience in the company of friends.)
The device also lacks any reference to — or flavor of — traditional sweat bathing culture, such as the Finnish sauna, the Russian banya, or Turkish Hamam, limiting the ability to connect with the various elements (sometimes intangible) that make those experiences special—time-worn designs that connect the user to something beyond themselves, a sense of historical continuity, time and place. In fact, the pod has no reference to place at all: on wheels, it is a fungible and transient experience with no roots.
Finally, I find the idea of climbing into such a confining machine deeply unsettling. It seems to suggest that the human body is itself something unnatural and mechanical: a mere product.
As my list of the sauna pod’s negative characteristics grew, I began to wonder: Who would design such a bad sauna, and toward what end?
No sooner had I asked the question than I realized that the sauna pod was no mere oddity of post-war America. Pods, for one, are all around us: from tanning beds, to float tanks and infrared cabins, and even a Q-Anon-adjacent conspiracy involving something called “medbeds.” And sauna pods in particular can be found throughout history, from at least as far back as the Middle Ages up until the present moment, as a brief survey of Temu or Amazon will reveal. Such devices are, according to their marketing, a “portable” and “convenient” manner of accessing the health benefits of sauna, such as “weight loss”, “detoxification”, and the easing of muscle tension.
“Oxygen Therapy” pod in Bloomfield (Pittsburgh, PA).
Common sauna pod, available on Amazon.com.
For the adventurous reader, a “Tesla Medbed Center” can be found along Route 8 in Butler, PA.
Undeniably, this version of sweat bathing is either a long way from or a very narrow interpretation of traditional practices, such as the Lakota inipi, the Irish tigh ‘n alluis, or the Scythian sweat lodges of the fifth century BCE, whose concerns include(d) (but are not limited to): hygiene, ritual purification, healing, communalism, leisure, and spirituality. When and why were these other, more profound aspects of sweat bathing jettisoned, reducing the entire experience to a superficial focus on beautification and health optimization?
In other words, what is the genealogy of the bad sauna? And what can it tell us about a good sauna?
I decided to investigate, starting with the late medieval period in Europe, when personal sweat boxes first started turning up in the historical record. What I discovered was an increasingly narrow association between sweat bathing and productivity, focusing first on medicinal benefits and culminating in modern America’s obsession with optimization.
This is the introduction to a four-part exploration of sauna pods, optimization culture, and the joys of sweat bathing. Tune in next week for Part II.
