in praise of my gym's steam room

each time i exit the small tiled room of hazy nothingness, i am red-faced, raw, and reborn.

me enjoying my steam and being inspired to write this very post

for around 20 minutes and a decent monthly membership, i can enjoy a vaporized return to the womb. that’s the best way i can describe the time i spend inside my local YMCA’s women’s steam room.

i say steam room and i know you’re thinking of the slippery tiles, the musty conditions, the wet vulnerability of warm bodies sharing a collective steam in silence like little dumplings inside a bamboo steamer.

never have i ever left a steam room uninspired and unmoved. NEVER!! (a little too well-done? surely. but i’ve never regretted sitting in a steamed up room for any measure of time.)

these humble spaces are rooms of revelations. a steam room is a reprieve that spares no electronic device and i think that’s so beautiful.

(further on that: keep your phone & apple watch screens outta my steam. be present. be here now. afford yourself this time. i beg of you.)

intimate yet public. collective yet personal. introspective yet shared. liquid yet gas.

all of these things, in my opinion, are true of steam rooms and saunas.

this is one place where everything inside you is steamed out into a cloudy void. where you and the vapor around you become one. where you leave feeling lighter. like air.

i use my steam time to thoughtfully move each part of my body around, letting the hot veil of watery mist soak through my pores and go straight to my bones.

i gently coax the steam, asking it to lift away all the bodily worries, muscle tensions, deep-seeded emotions, and decades of stress stored inside my flesh prison.

i trust that these four dripping-wet walls will heal me. i need them to heal me. and the only way that can happen is if i do my proper duty as a steamer and force myself to sit with myself.

that’s all the steam room asks of me. practically choking it out of me through heat and water and air, the sauna beckons: be in this now.

i emerge and exhale—free, loose, exposed, reborn, dewy, and very very red—then float to my locker.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. 🧖‍♀️