Sweat-working

In sweltering cities, the sauna has become a way to buy the stillness that nature provides for free.

- PATSY ANTHONY examines the strange rise of ‘purposeful’ sweat.

I DON'T GET why someone who can barely handle the heat even with a fan would choose to sit in a hot, stuffy room—just step outside at noon and you'll get the same experience,” declared my friend Rayeesa Raffiq, a social media manager in Chennai, as we sat in bustling traffic. Yet there I was, contemplating paying a premium to enter a cedar-lined box that mimicked the very climate we were shielding ourselves from behind tinted glass.

This is the great wellness contradiction of the modern urbanite: we spend our lives in pursuit of a perfect 22 degrees Celsius environment, only to seek out 80 degrees Celsius the moment it is packaged as a ‘ritual’. The irony is that our bodies cannot distinguish between the detoxifying sweat of a luxury sauna and that of a humid bus ride, yet we willingly book 30-minute sessions in wooden boxes because the heat arrives accompanied by aromatherapy and a curated ambience.