I was lying face down on a towel-covered wooden bench in a Russian dry banya, where the air was heated to a toasty 200 degrees. Think Finnish dry sauna, but 60 degrees warmer. Could it get any hotter ...

The Greek physician Hippocrates may well have been the first sauna aficionado. One can imagine him, circa 400 BC, sitting in a tiny windowless room heated by hot rocks, sweat dripping down his brow, ...

On the day Michael Uspenski and I met, we slapped each other with brooms of oak branches. The practice, called platza, is a therapeutic treatment traditionally performed in a Russian sauna known as a ...

The needle on the thermometer in the sauna hovered over 200 degrees. It was like being in a pizza oven. The next step was plunging into a freezing pool. Going from boiling hot to stinging cold is part ...

For something entirely different, try Hoxton’s Banya No.1.”, and having been to the Russian spa, we have to agree ...

A Russian finalist in Finland’s annual World Sauna Championships, a heat-endurance contest in which participants attempt to withstand temperatures of 230 degrees, died yesterday after being rushed to ...

The Korean-inspired bathhouse is not for the faint of heart. Split into wet (unclothed, single sex) and dry (clothed, unisex) areas, the 33,000-square-foot facility offers purifying jasmine-scented ...

You don't have to travel all the way to Boston to get the "Cheers" experience. There's one right here by the Jersey Shore, but it may not be what you expect. Bear and Birch, a BYOB Russian banya and ...