“Now,” mentioned the soft-spoken Latvian man with whom I’d simply spent the final couple of hours largely bare in a smoke-filled cabin within the woods, “I hit you with a whisk.”
Underneath another circumstances, the assertion may provoke concern, or on the very least, confusion. However whisking was in step with the rundown I’d acquired earlier on what to anticipate from my inaugural pirts. The phrase is so deeply ancestral, it defies straightforward translation, however “Latvian sauna” is essentially the most ceaselessly used shorthand to assist outsiders get the gist.
Not that I might have felt like an outsider for lengthy once I booked a session at one of many nation’s most acclaimed suppliers: the family-run Ziedlejas, a wellness resort whose identify means “flower valley” in Latvian. Once I requested the homeowners get there from Riga, the mom, Madara, advised I take a day practice to the small city of Sigulda, nearly an hour northeast of the capital, the place she’d swing by for me after faculty pickup. In the midst of a single e-mail trade, I’d gone from stranger to household carpool participant.
As for why I’d reached out to start with: Pirts will seemingly be enshrined as a part of its nation’s intangible cultural heritage this fall — on the heels of Ziedlejas profitable a tourism award from the Prime Minister’s workplace — each exceedingly uncommon honors within the wellness world. The reporter in me was intrigued, and the sauna lover in me was obsessed.
Neither was dissatisfied.
“The earliest time we will begin the Smoke pirts ritual is 5 p.m. as a result of the Smoke pirts must be ready all day lengthy,” Madara defined once I’d first made contact. And since my session would final not less than three hours (they often stretch to 4 hours or extra), I made a decision to order a post-treatment keep at one of many onsite “glass rooms,” every an outsized, 3-D window onto the encircling Gauja Nationwide Park.
I finished in my room to drop off my luggage, however the actual unburdening started once I took a meandering forest path to a fairytale cabin, full with smoking chimney and misty pond. There I made my means down a staircase to fulfill Rolands, one among a number of extremely educated pirts masters on employees, who let me know that folks are likely to really feel such a profound letting-go throughout these periods that crying wasn’t unparalleled, nor was yelling. Then he advised I set an intention.
“To study,” I mentioned, so fortunately addled by the woodsy smoke that I couldn’t give you a greater reply.
I used to be about to expertise a singular historical self-discipline — one with parts of pagan naturism, Latvian herbalism, conventional folklore and native life cycle rituals (every little thing from childbirth to loss of life rites right here used to contain a pirts, again within the day). Whereas no two periods are the identical — and there are many inventive Twenty first-century takes — I had chosen an homage to custom.
After warming up with wormwood tea, bread baked by a pirts grasp and a beneficiant pour of native honey, I’d be off to the primary occasion within the cabin’s darkish, scorching, thickly smoky internal sanctum. There, mentioned Rolands, I’d be handled to an natural cleaning, then the “hitting with the brushes” (botanical bundles sourced from native maple, oak, linden and pine timber); and at last, a heat honey masks, with alternatives alongside the best way to dip within the frigid pond and nap within the almost-as-frigid air.
These have been “all simply suggestions, not obligatory,” clarified Rolands, a preternaturally quiet, light soul — even when he’s whipping steamy whisks round like he’s Alex Van Halen.
Rounds of tapping, brushing and thwacking commenced, the temperature rising all of the whereas. I knew I might request a break at any time, and we did, at one level, strive an immersion within the pond: a no-go previous the ankles for me. However there was one thing so soothing and intimate in regards to the course of, particularly with Rolands’ faint renditions of Latvian people songs, I used to be delighted to remain put.
Quickly, I discovered myself bundled up for a nap on a wood bench exterior the cabin, the place I found that — if I’m sufficiently euphoric — I can sleep like a child in a freezing Latvian forest. From there, I returned to my glass room and had goals so vivid and delightful, you’d suppose I’d inhaled one thing stronger than wooden smoke.
Reflecting on the expertise the subsequent morning on a stroll alongside the ethereal Gauja River, the place I had solely geese for companions, I noticed I’d neither cried nor yelled within the pirts. However I used to be content material with my beginner-level bliss.
Maybe, I assumed, I ought to proceed my research throughout one among Ziedlejas’ Pirts Spirit Camp periods. And if I make the one which’s taking place July 7-12 (for which there are nonetheless a couple of spots), I’ll be the one making an attempt to go greater than ankle-deep within the pond.
