To all the Nordic posters on here....I'm renting a wood fired barrel sauna. I'm not hardcore sauna, but thought it would be cool to try with family & friends.
I originally was thinking we'd have a bunch of drinks and food, but reading about how to properly sauna, apparently that is the exact opposite of what you should do!
Any sauna fanatics on here? What are your routines?
Food and drinks are ok, nothing wrong with that. Drinking in the sauna is ok, but I'd eat after the sauna session, not during. A good sauna will increase your appetite.
As a social event, a proper sauna evening with friends in Finland is probably something like a tailgate before a football game in USA, not sure what I could compare it with in Canada.
A standard "sauna cycle" is shower, sauna, cooling (lake / shower / ouside), repeat as many times as you want. Drinking beer, water, or soft drinks in sauna or while cooling off is common here. Just don't take anything that is made of glass to sauna. So heat up the barrel sauna, take a beer, go inside and enjoy the heat, go outside to cool off and enjoy another beer. Take a shower if possible, go back to sauna and enjoy a beer. Drink some water to prevent dehydration. After few of those cycles and more beer, take a shower, cool off, dry yourself and put clothes on. You feel hungry, so hopefully you have some burgers or hotdogs on the grill waiting for you. And some cold beer. After eating, if you feel like it, start sauna again. Or divide the group into two or more, first group can enjoy sauna and then come to the food made by others, and then change roles.
I sometimes see instructions for sauna written by NA sauna "experts", who say that you have to stay this many minutes in this high heat, and do this and that, to make sure you get all the health benefits. That all bullshits, taking a sauna is all about relaxing and doing it the way you want. All those rules just increase your stress instead. Of course it's good to understand the basics. Drink some water to stay hydrated, stay in sauna as long as you feel like, cool off, go back to sauna.
I think I'd need to write a novel to explain everything, so this is just a brief summary.