Latvian Sauna Master Residency
OCTOBER 13–22, 2026
An Immersion in the Living Tradition of Latvian Pirts
Ann Arbor & Dexter, Michigan
For ten days this October, Latvian sauna masters Māra Tīmane and Vilnis Lejnieks come to Michigan to share the powerful healing tradition of pirts, an earth-centered practice weaving heat, steam, water, plants, touch, song, rest, and relationship.
This rare residency offers two ways to experience the tradition: an intimate three-day experiential workshop and a limited number of private sauna rituals for individuals, couples, and small groups.
Not Your Gym Sauna
Across the cold-weather world, sauna was never simply a wellness treatment. It was woven into everyday life, a place to cleanse and restore the body, tend relationships, mark transitions, welcome new life, grieve loss, and reconnect with the rhythms of the living world.
A traditional Latvian pirts brings together heat and cold, water and steam, stone and fire, medicinal plants, rhythmic whisking, touch, sound, song, and rest. Beneath these practices is a larger relational understanding of health in which human well-being cannot be separated from our relationships with one another, land, plants, elements, ancestors, and the more-than-human world.
A Rare Opportunity in the United States
For ten days this October, Māra and Vilnis bring Latvia’s pirts healing ritual tradition to Michigan.
The residency invites participants into the larger cosmology elements, seasons, plants, and the natural world from which these practices emerged.
Through intimate workshops and private pirts experiences, participants will have the opportunity to learn directly from these renowned practitioners who carry, teach, and continue to preserve this tradition today.
Three-Day Pirts Immersion
October 16–18 · Dexter, Michigan
A small-group experiential introduction to Latvian sauna tradition.
Over three days, participants will learn through both teaching and direct experience. Foundational practices will include preparing the sauna and practitioner; working with medicinal and aromatic plants; making and using sauna whisks; introductory whisking and bodywork; heat, steam, and temperature contrast; sound and song; rest and integration; and the relational worldview underlying the practice.
The weekend takes place in a spacious private home surrounded by forested land near Dexter.
Māra and Vilnis will teach in English to the best of their ability, with translation provided as needed. Much of the learning will happen in spaces beyond words through demonstration and experience.
Private Pirts Healing Sessions
October 13–22 · Limited appointments
Experience the living healing tradition of Latvian pirts through a private therapeutic sauna ritual with visiting sauna master Māra Tīmane or Vilnis Lejnieks.
Far more than a sauna session, pirts is an intentional, whole-person practice weaving together heat, steam, medicinal plants, herbal whisks, natural body treatments, touch, temperature contrast, and deep rest. Each three-hour experience is personalized to support relaxation, restoration, emotional release, and reconnection with the body and living world.
Individuals · Couples · Private groups up to 6
Ann Arbor Area · $300 per session
Meet Māra & Vilnis
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Sauna Master and Medicine Woman
Māra Tīmane is a Latvian sauna master (pirtniece), herbalist, artist, and traditional healing practitioner from Kurzeme, Latvia. A mother of three and grandmother of twin girls, Māra brings a warmth and creativity to her work that reflects a life deeply connected to plants, people, and the natural world.
Immersed in pirts culture since childhood, Māra has practiced as a sauna master for over a decade. Central to her work is an understanding of the profound influence our thoughts and words can have on how we experience ourselves and our lives.
Māra’s relationship with plants extends far beyond the sauna. She gathers and works with herbs to create scrubs, extracts, salves, infused oils, and other preparations for well-being. She spends deep time in nature, leads plant meditations, and creates meditative sound instruments and intuitive “feeling paintings”, works that capture what she describes as the whispers of feelings through color, plants, and form. Her creative practice also includes eco-printing, plant dyeing, wreath weaving, and traditional Latvian crafts.
At the heart of Māra’s work is an invitation to slow down, feel, listen deeply, reconnect with the living world, and dare to be fully oneself.
Māra is also an organizer of PirtsFest, a celebration of Latvia’s sauna traditions and culture.
Learn more:
Māra’s practice, Māras dārza pirtiņa on Facebook
PirtsFest — Latvia’s Sauna & Well-Being Festival -
Sauna Master & Breathworker
Vilnis Lejnieks is a Latvian pirts meistars (sauna master), teacher, and healing practitioner whose work explores the relationship between the physical body, emotions, mind, and human well-being.
A former entrepreneur, Vilnis came to the pirts through a deep curiosity about people and healing. He trained as both a pirtnieks and pirts meistars, later becoming a teacher and director of Latvia’s professional Pirts School.
Vilnis has since played an important role in the development of pirts as a professional field in Latvia. As an industry expert, he helped develop educational programs and professional standards for sauna practitioners, sauna masters, and SPA specialists and continues to teach pirts practice today.
His ongoing search to understand the connection between our physical and emotional lives has also led him into Reiki, spiritual healing, and integrative breath therapy. He brings elements of these practices into his work with people both in and beyond the pirts.
At the heart of Vilnis’s work is a genuine and enduring curiosity about how we hold experience in the body, how we release what is no longer needed, and how practices of heat, breath, attention, and human connection can support greater well-being.
During his Michigan visit, Vilnis will share both the depth of his experience and a contemporary expression of Latvia’s living pirts tradition through intimate sauna sessions, workshops, and teaching.
In Latvia, Vilnis practices at Ziedlejas, an acclaimed pirts and wellness retreat dedicated to the Latvian sauna tradition.
Explore Ziedlejas in Latvia - https://ziedlejas.lv/en
Come Experience Pirts!
Traditional Latvian sauna offers more than heat. It is a practice of relationship with body, plants, elements, community, and the living world.
This residency welcomes sauna enthusiasts, healers, bodyworkers, therapists, herbalists, land stewards, culture builders, and anyone curious about traditional European healing and nature-based ways of living.
No experience necessary. Just curiosity. Join us!