There are bathing traditions reminiscent of the Finnish sauna on other continents, for example, the traditions surrounding the Roman, Turkish, and Celtic bath, the Japanese furo, and the Native American sweat lodge (such as the Lakota inipi). What is common to all of them is the feeling that bathing is not just a cleansing experience, but a spiritual one, as well as the bath's intimate connection to various life stages and rituals. In all these traditions, baths have also played a part in solving various personal crises. In inipi, furo, and sauna mind and body are purified—re-created, as it were, to enable the person to face the challenges life presents. On all three continents sacred baths are the subject of various religious narratives, including certain Japanese Buddhist texts, Native American initiation songs, and the poems of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.
At the core of the sauna is the kiuas (lit., "stones in a hot heap"), around which the early sauna, in a depression in the earth, and subsequently the smoke sauna were created.
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