Sauna visits bring warmth and companionship to Pilcene seniors

For three years, sauna practitioner Sandra Šakina has visited seniors at the Pilcene nursing home twice a month, where sessions have grown so popular that residents now form a waiting list, LSM’s Latgale editorial office reports. Residents say they feel better physically and emotionally after a visit.

The sessions take place in a sauna in an outbuilding beside the home. Šakina says the visits are about more than washing: they give residents a chance to talk and be heard. “More precisely, I listen more,” she said. Many enjoy remembering their homes, their own saunas and their lives.

Šakina prepares warm foot baths, a salt scrub, honey and aromatic sauna whisks. Residents were initially cautious about going to the sauna, but interest has gradually grown.

Pilcene is a branch of the Rēzekne Municipality Health and Social Care Centre. It has operated for more than a decade in a former school building and is home to 25 seniors. The small number of residents helps create a family-like atmosphere, which the sauna visits add to with warmth, conversation and care.