Call them hot and unbothered.
During late June’s heat wave, when most New Yorkers sat pinned to air conditioners, 1,200 sauna enthusiasts swarmed Brooklyn’s Bathhouse to witness the country’s first sauna master smackdown.
Some wore bell-shaped felt bucket caps to prevent overheating and to signal: This ain’t my first hydro-deo. Others were Bathhouse regulars who, like any good New Yorker, saw a line — in this case for the wellness venue’s 80-seater “event sauna” — and joined the queue.
Called competitive show aufguss (pronounced “off-goose”) — a German term for a type of guided group sauna experience common in Europe — the two-day event featured 10 of the nation’s top sauna masters, who took turns spinning towels like lassos and pounding aroma-infused ice balls onto hot stone as a panel of judges and fired-up fans looked on.
Each 13- to 15-minute routine also brought the heat with lights, music, dance, narration, costumes and props intended to blow hot air and tell a story.
One master with the apropos last name Fiery portrayed the evolution of hip hop. Another depicted a terminal illness.
“The Celestial Sisters of Fire and Ice” interpretive-danced their way through a fight and reconciliation.
“Fire can help warm and ice can help soothe, and those working together creates a more beautiful world,” the real-life siblings and Vegas showgirls cooed.
The goal of those in the hot seat? To rack up enough points in categories like heat distribution and towel technique to secure the title of first US aufguss champion — and advance to the world championships in Italy this fall.
“I’m so nervous,” Thor Moeller admitted a few hours before stepping onto the steamy stage. After all, a lot could go wrong. He once dropped a hot stone.
Others have smacked spectators with spinning towels. You can get off beat or over time. There’s choreography to forget, essential oils to burn, lines to miss.
One of the day’s first performers had already burned and crashed — straight into the sauna’s glass door. Outside, Moeller consoled the rumor mill in earnest: “I didn’t see any blood.”
“It’s kind of like being a samurai. A sauna master comes to you and they’re like, ‘You’re a sauna master.’ It’s very unofficial.”
Travis Talmadge, Bathhouse cofounder
It was a lot to absorb on a Monday afternoon when both the literal and figurative world was burning. But when you’re sticking to strangers just trying to breathe through the next hot minute, “a lot” is relative. That’s the whole point.
“You can experience beautiful art if you’re just open for it,” said Lasse Eriksen, a Norwegian jury member and vice president of the Aufguss WM, described as the FIFA for aufguss. “But if you just want to sit there and critique, you can do that, but then it becomes very hot. And then you just want to leave.”
Auf-what?
“Aufguss is immersion into the way of sauna. That’s the important thing: It’s still sauna,” Eriksen explains.
But rather than sweating it out alone, aufguss is communal and guided. Rather than leaving when you get too hot, the ritual has a beginning and end.
There’s also math (hot stone plus ice equals steam) and science (wafted steam feels hotter than still steam). The actual temperature, however, remains the same — around 185 degrees Fahrenheit.
“People are always like, ‘How hot are you going to make it?’” Moeller, 32, said. “I’m like, ‘How hot can I allow you to feel the sun?’”
Show or “theme” aufguss is classic sauna on steroids. It can be the difference between a bartender cracking open a beer and a mixologist crafting a cocktail blindfolded — and then lighting the garnish on fire. It is, many sauna masters will tell you, a multi-sensory experience.
Competitive show aufguss, then, asks: Who does it best?
The answer comes down to five elements: professionality (if you drop a towel, you mustn’t use it again), heat distribution (why should one row get all the good stuff?), towel technique (a helicopter is a classic; a release-and-catch throw is risky but wows), fragrance (real birch beats synthetic lavender) and storytelling (audience members’ tears and laughter are a good sign).
Sauna masters “need to learn to connect with the sound, to move the wind and the smells and create it comfortably hot, not too early, not too late, right in the middle,” Eriksen explained.
“The music has the right build up, the volume is just the right build up. When everything is in line and everything is perfect, then you have a maximum score. And that is almost impossible.”
The road to sauna master
Aufguss has long been a familiar offering in European saunas, but it’s only recently gained steam in the US, in large part due to the burgeoning “social wellness” movement, said Don Genders, CEO of Design for Leisure, an event co-sponsor and maker of spa environments like sauna cabins.
Clubbing is out, tubbing is in. “It’s almost like a perfect storm,” Genders said.
And New York is its eye. While Bathhouse is the first in New York to develop an aufguss program, the city can’t seem to get enough of water-based wellness.
Canadian bathhouse Othership landed in New York last year. Aire Ancient Baths launched on the Upper East Side in 2025. There’s also Remedy Place and the Well.
“There is actually a sauna culture in America now,” Bathhouse’s cofounder and sauna master competitor Travis Talmadge said.
And with sauna culture comes sauna masters. How exactly does one become such a thing?
“It’s not like a driver’s license yet,” Eriksen said. In fact, Talmadge said, “it’s kind of like being a samurai. A sauna master comes to you and they’re like, ‘You’re a sauna master.’ It’s very unofficial.”
Not that aspiring and accomplished masters don’t take it seriously. Most of June’s competitors honed their craft by finding mentors, obsessing over YouTube videos and practicing. They invested in towels with the preferred grip, weight and length.
Alonzo Solarzano, Bathhouse’s first director of aufguss, rented out studio space and made multiple calls to a childhood friend with acting expertise to suss out his storyline. “The advice I got was: You want to end on a positive note,” he said.
While many sauna masters have some performance background and innate hand-eye coordination, “there’s really no barrier to entry — that’s what I love about it,” Genders said. “It’s incredibly democratic.”
Solarzano, for one, had never been in a sauna — let alone heard of aufguss — when he got a job as a therapy attendant at Bathhouse in Williamsburg in 2021.
The 29-year-old had recently moved to New York after burning out as a dancer in his Massachusetts hometown. He figured the gig would help him reset.
Then Bathhouse offered its employees aufguss training. Over the next few years, Solarzano traveled abroad to learn from the auf-GOATS and quit his other job in data engineering. “He was like, ‘Aufguss is my identity,’” Talmadge recalls.
Moeller, a native New Yorker with a beard, man bun and golden retriever energy, found aufguss after moving to Austria in 2015 to work at a ski resort. He’s now a sauna meister at a different resort — and Austria’s 2023 show aufguss national champion.
Competing in the US, though, is different. Here, guests aren’t naked.
That fact eliminates at least one European debate: “Do you sit directly on the wood? Do you have a towel between your skin and the wood? A number of different people have analyzed the situation,” Moeller said.
TJ Lupo’s path to aufguss traces to his “very dark past.” The sauna master at MindZero Wellness in Virginia underwent brain surgery for a tumor and discovered contrast therapy while recovering. The spa owner, a Czech native, introduced him to aufguss.
“I found waving towels, so emotionally, I’m able to handle things much easier just because I have an outlet to express myself,” he said.
Competition heats up
When the door opened to Bathhouse’s event sauna on Day 2 of the competition, jury member and six-time Danish national aufguss champion Ong Lai Pang of Malaysia set the stage, as he did before every show.
“One, two, three!” Pang, who resembles a monk, albeit one spotted wearing an “I love naked people” T-shirt, bellowed. “Aufguss!” the crowd shouted back. “Three, two, one!” Pang continued. “Family!” onlookers roared.
Solarzano was set to take the stage. Two girls in the audience were among the many there for the home-turf favorite.
One, a Bathhouse regular, had seen Solarzano practicing and knew she had to come to his show. Her friend was more skeptical. She worried about the “cringe” factor and her ability to withstand the heat. “I’m a baby in the sauna,” she confessed. (You are allowed to leave, though few do.)
But when the lights came up after Solarzano’s Western outlaw-themed, country ballad-inspired performance of loss, deceit and redemption, the friend was still there.
She’d seen expert-level double-towel tricks for the first time. She’d clapped along to the music and gasped at the drama. The sweat was an afterthought.
“That was actually one of the best things I’ve seen all year,” she said.
The jury agreed: Solarzano took first place. The Celestial Sisters earned the top prize for pairs. Their Midwestern mom teared up.
“When people ask me what they do,” she said, “I always tell them: They’re living their dream.”
