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History of the Sauna

• Palm healing, a type of healing in which one person lies their palm on the “patient,” has a 3000 year old tradition in China.  This technique is based on the healing properties of the natural infrared rays that we as humans give off. 
  

• Sauna use was popularized by the Finns.  It seems that the saunas were originally used for bathing, as well as childbirth and some ceremonies.  The tradition came with the Finns when they migrated from an area northwest of present day Tibet, between 5000 and 3000 BC, to their present location in Finland.  During travel, the sauna probably resembled the sweat lodges of the American Indians – holes dug in the ground covered with a cloth.  The first recorded wooden saunas date to sometime between the 5^th and 8^th centuries.  Today, there is one sauna for every two to three Finns and sauna design is a revered art.
  

• Numerous saunas appear along the Mediterranean and the world’s first bathtub appears in the palace of King Minos of Crete in 1700 BC.

• Native American sweat lodges have been used for thousands of years in North and South America and were documented with the European invasion of the Western Hemisphere.
  

• Whole body infrared therapy has been used for greater than 80 years by German physicians in an independently developed form.  
  

• Dr. Tadashi Ishikowa of Japan received a patent on the zirconia ceramic infrared heaters in 1965.  These were mostly used exclusively by medical practitioners in Japan until they were released for public use in 1979.
  

• The infrared idea has been further refined and sold in the United States since 1981.  
  

• Chinese researchers consider the band from 2 to 25 microns as the most therapeutic.