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 ...

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 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, ...

I have always wanted to try a banya - a traditional Russian steam bath. What is the particularity of these types of spas, you ask? Besides the fact the steam rooms are much hotter than a regular sauna ...

Walk into virtually any downtown Toronto spa and you're likely to witness the following: Couples prudishly strapped into bathing suits struggling with tepid infrared saunas. Gaggles of bridal parties ...

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 ...