How to make a hammam at home?

Let’s start by explaining what a hammam is. It can be said that it is nothing but a steam bath. Hammam can be also a buıldıng or a complex of buildings, used to carry out the entire ritual associated with a steam bath. It is worth knowing that this tradition of a steam bath derives from Romans and Greeks and is now very popular in Turkey. And everyone who will come here for holiday can experience it.

What stages does a visit to a bathing complex consist of?

A visit to a hammam consists of several basic stages. The full procedure consists of:

• The first stage – it is a dry Finnish bath, where there is really high temperature.
• The second stage – a shower. Cold shower.
• The third stage – it is a second visit to the sauna. It can be a menthol sauna. Menthol oil aims to improving the efficiency of the respiratory system.
• The fourth stage – cooling in the shower or in the jacuzzi.
• Of course, some of the above steps can be omitted. It is not necessary to enter the sauna twice. But to fully enjoy this procedure, all these stages are worth going through. After them is time for the fifth, proper stage.
• The fifth stage. We go to a heated, marble room. Here, our body is peeled with special gloves. Then the whole body is massaged with soap foam. This is the best stage and the most pleasant one. This is the quintessence of hammam. The more firmly and thoroughly this stage is carried out, the better it is for our body.
• Sixth stage – massage in oils. It can be omitted, it is not mandatory.

How to make a hammam at home

Unfortunately, it is hard to make a real Turkish bath at home. If, of course, we have a sauna at our disposal, it is easier. Thanks to the sauna we can open pores in our skin. We can also use a special glove to massage, to get rid of dead skin. We can also soap the whole body and massage it. But it is difficult for a several reason:

• We are not able to get rid of a dead skin entirely.
• We can’t soap massage our own back.
• And most importantly, we do not have marble countertops that are heated and on which we can lie so comfortably.

At home you can carry out a treatment reminiscent of that made in a hammam, but it will only be a substitute of what you can expect from going to a real Turkish bath during holiday.