Sweat

SWEAT BATHING HAS BEEN as common to people as the making of bread and the squeezing of the grape. Numerous cultures through history have discovered that the sweat bath, in one form or another, enlivens both body and spirit. Although sweat bathing has only recently en­tered America’s contemporary life, it thrived here long before Col­umbus in the form of sweat lodges and temescals. Imagine literally sweating yourself around the world, as Mikkel Aaland did-lying on a marble slab in a Turkish hammam enduring a delicious pummeling by a fierce masseur or basking in the profound tranquility of a mushi-buro in Kyoto. Aaland spent three years on his pilgrimage sweating with people in far parts of the world-in the ancient smoke saunas (savusaunas) of rural Finland, boisterous banias in Russia, neighborly temescals in a Mexican village, and a Navajo sweat lodge in the Southwest. Aaland brought back a rich