There is a version of the sauna that puts people off before they try it. Airless wooden box, someone else’s sweat, an hour you have to endure. If that is the picture in your head, the first thing worth saying is that a wood-fired barrel on the south coast has very little in common with it.
Most people who come to us in Hiriketiya have never used a sauna properly. They have maybe sat in a hotel one for five minutes and left. So here is what the first session actually looks like, start to finish.
You will be too hot before you are properly warm
The barrel runs above 60°C. Walk in and the heat hits your face and ears first, because heat rises and your head is at the top of the room. This is the moment most first timers decide they have had enough, and it arrives long before the body has done anything useful.
Sit low rather than on the top bench. Breathe out slowly. Give it four or five minutes before you judge it. The sensation changes: the sharp discomfort at the surface fades and something slower and heavier takes over, which is the point of the whole thing.
If your head is what keeps ending your rounds early, a felt hat is worth the three thousand rupees. It insulates the scalp so the rest of you can catch up.
Five to fifteen minutes is a round, not a challenge
There is no prize for staying in. Five minutes is a real round. Fifteen is a long one. The people who last longest are not tougher, they have just done it more often and know what the middle of a round feels like.
Come out when you want to come out. Nothing is timed once you are inside.
The cold is the part you will remember
Straight from the barrel into the plunge, held between 3 and 8°C. The first two seconds are genuinely unpleasant and there is no technique that removes that. What helps is exhaling as you get in rather than gasping, and knowing that the shock passes at around the twenty second mark.
One to three minutes is plenty. What you are after is the flood of alertness afterwards, which arrives a minute or so after you get out and lasts most of the evening.
What to bring
Swimwear, and that is close to it. Water and a towel are included, and there are showers. Rinse before you get in the tubs, out of courtesy more than anything.
Do not eat a full meal first. Do not come with a hangover expecting to be cured, because heat and dehydration are not a good combination. If you are pregnant or being treated for a heart condition or blood pressure, talk to your doctor before a first session.
How a first visit usually goes
Two or three rounds over ninety minutes is normal. Heat, rest, cold, repeat. Rest properly between rounds, which means sitting down and doing nothing for five minutes rather than standing around talking yourself into the next one.
Somewhere in the second round most people stop clock-watching. That is the part that brings them back.
Sessions start every 90 minutes from 8:00 am, and walk ins are welcome, though sunset slots fill first. The full circuit is LKR 6,000 for 90 minutes with the sauna, cold plunge, steam room and magnesium bath, water and towel included.