The Europeans Have Some Notes About American Sauna Culture

Don’t get them started on the bathing suits. Or the dancing.

By Kristy Alpert

It wasn’t the fiber-optic lighting, nor the tepid heat, that shocked Cécile Méguère the first time she entered a New York City sauna.

It was the young woman in a bathing suit, bent over in downward dog.

“I was looking at her, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, she thinks this is a hot yoga session!’” said Ms. Méguère, 39, who relocated to the city from her native France in 2022.

She soon learned that some people in New York danced at bathhouses, too. Occasionally, there were D.J.s. This wasn’t a rave, she thought. What could these people be thinking?

As health-conscious Americans have jumped headfirst into saunas, some Europeans have at times also found themselves a little baffled by their fellow steam lovers’ behavior, worried a millennia-old tradition is being warped by American wellness culture.