The UK chooses its first Aufguss Champions
On a spring-green lawn at Rudding Park Hotel’s spa, people in white towelling robes are wafting towels around in choreographed movements. “Are they something to do with the golf tournament?” asks a woman sipping prosecco and watching from a nearby swimming pool?” “No, it’s the thing in the sauna with the towels,” says her friend, by way of explanation. She’s referring to Aufguss, the ritual of wafting steam and essential oils around a sauna with such grace and enthusiasm that international competitions are held in its honour. The towel-wafting individuals are there for a reason; over the course of two days they will perform well-rehearsed 15-minute Aufguss rituals before a panel of judges from Japan, Norway and Denmark. The winner will, for the first time, represent the UK at the Aufguss World Championships taking place in the Satama Sauna Resort near Berlin in September.
Teams from Aufguss WM, Rudding Park and the British Sauna Society celebrate with the UK Aufguss Championship’s competitors. Photo credit: Ryzard Rak for the British Sauna Society
That this year’s event is taking place in Germany is fitting; Aufguss has been practiced by many sweat bathing cultures over the years, but the Germans introduced the concept into spas after WW2, and it’s widely recognised as a leading wellness practice across Europe. The UK has not, until now, been part of the gang, but Matthew Mackaness, Rudding Park’s director and British Aufguss judge Deborah Carr are eager that it becomes so. Anyone working in a British spa can enter the competition, but it’s not as easy as it looks.
What do they judges look for? “Everything about the professionalism of the performer,” says Carr, who has trained two of the five contestants taking part. “How they present themselves; how they hold their towels, how they pour the water on the stones, the steam that they create, how the aromas are circulated, as well as towel techniques. And storytelling. What are they saying? Are they taking the audience with them? Are they shy? Are they making eye contact?” At its most impactful, Aufguss can be a physical and an emotional experience; bathers can be moved to tears when they’ve been taken on a powerful journey.
UK Team Champions Jena Robinson and Renato Neto from Rudding Park, Harrogate, perform Tribute to HRH in the Rudding Park Panorama Spa. Photo credit: Ryzard Rak for the British Sauna Society
Like many Aufguss performers, Carr started out teaching herself. “I was drawn to Aufguss, not only for its wellbeing aspect, but also because there has to be more than just coming to a beautiful spa, lounging around for an afternoon drinking prosecco. I wanted more than that.” She spent much of Covid practicing in her dining room with Denmark’s leading Aufguss maestro Lay Pang Ong on Zoom and went on to perform in front of 200 people at last year’s International Aufguss Competition as part of the debut British team. Rudding Park’s offering is a more modest (and less naked) affair than the week-long international tournament, “but it's about getting the ball rolling; not just with the participants, but with guests too,” explains Carr. Such was the curiosity around the event, that the audience on the lawn outside the sauna was at times almost as large as the audience inside it. “We have a long way to go,” she concedes, “but if people become aware of the benefits of sauna, and then see how enjoyable it is, they will want to see Aufguss more.”
Unless you have visited a central European spa, you are unlikely to have come across Aufguss. Its Eurovision-meets-performance-art style is Not Very British. But anyone who has sat through a well-tuned Aufguss ritual will want to go back for more. It’s addictive, entertaining and the deep sweating it delivers makes you feel cleansed. As a woman in her 30s, at Rudding Park on a spa day, said. “I don’t normally like sauna very much, but that Aufguss made me stay in”. “It’s different, isn’t it?” said her friend, before asking why everyone was wearing sauna hats. (Answer: to protect your head and hair from the heat.)
“When people start to understand the benefits of sauna, and see how enjoyable Aufguss can be, they will want to see it more,” says Carr. “It’s about education.” And there is no better teacher than Lay Pang Ong, Denmark’s six-times Aufguss champion, and trainer to sauna masters the world over. At an opening ritual, Pang asked bathers on packed benches: “What is Aufguss?” then proceeded to show us, by way of incense (jasmine, birch and white sage), ice balls infused with essential oils and the expert manipulation of steam with towels in movements he calls ‘rain’ and ‘cloud’. It was exhilarating, enlightening and extremely hot.
Deborah Carr, Aufguss Lead and Trustee for the British Sauna Society, and Mika Meskanen, Co-Founder and Chair of the British Sauna Society, award first place in the Singles Competition to Pavel Poliacek, Aufguss Master from Galgorm Spa, in the chapel at Rudding Park. Photo credit: Ryzard Rak for the British Sauna Society
After Pang’s display, Rudding Park contestants Jena Robinson and Renato Neto performed a ‘Tribute to Queen Elizabeth’ which had the full-to-bursting sauna crowd singing along to Vera Lynn (what could be a more British?). But it was Pavel Poliacek, Fitness and Wellbeing Instructor and Sauna Master from Galgorm Spa in Northern Ireland, who stole the show with a story of his arrival in Northern Ireland as a Slovakian schoolboy. He will go on to represent the UK at the International Championships in Germany in September. “I got into Aufguss six years ago when I saw a colleague performing it at Galgorm and I started laughing,” says Poliacek. “He said, ‘you do it then,’ so I did.” Poliacek has devised many of his own performances and typically uses a strong essence at the start to bring everybody up and a sweet one to finish off. “I see Aufguss as a treatment to get people to understand what saunas are really like.” Does he think British bathers will embrace it? “Definitely. Because they have already, and hopefully in the next year there will also be more shows and more training.”
This July, Pang and Carr will offer Aufguss Master training at Alpamare Spa in Scarborough and more dates and locations around the country will follow. (Alpamare has a 60-person event sauna with sea views where dolphins are sometimes spotted.) “The course will involve basic training in aromatherapy and essential oils and how they fit with the body,” says Carr. Such is the open- minded, mix and match approach of the UK’s emerging sauna scene, that elements from other sauna cultures - Russian whisking say, or Latvian and Lithuanian pirtis - will also be on offer. (Katie Bracher, founder of Wowo Wild Spa in Sussex is offering training in the latter at her spa in June, see BSS website for details). “We want to build core knowledge so that any sauna master trainee can go into the sauna culture that they're drawn to,” says Carr. “But we've got to get the basics right across the board.”
The UK Aufguss Jury (L-R): Lay Pang Ong, Hideo Yoshida, Deborah Carr, Heonsok Kim, Lasse Eriksen. Photo credit: Ryzard Rak for the British Sauna Society
Mackaness fell in love with Aufguss after encountering it in Austria seven years ago. “‘Aufguss’ and ‘Sauna Master’ need to become words that are prevalent in the UK’s spa industry,” he says. “This is the start of the journey and we are all responsible for taking it on. The collaboration between great minds, different people, various cultures and different experiences is a whole cooking pot that's going to take sauna culture to the next level.” Beaming and steaming after a dazzling performance by visiting Czech Aufguss world champion Robert Zidek, he adds: “Yorkshire is known for tea and for Harrogate Water, and now, hopefully, for Aufguss too.
