Steam, plants and the old Lithuanian way of tending the body
Pirtis Rituals · Online Courses · Retreats
With Silvija Šuliokaitė — Pirtininkė & Herbalist
The tree meets you where you are.
Lithuanian pirtis from the source, learned from inside the language, the lineage and the land.
Learn, gather, rest in the heat
Online course · £199
With The Trees
Seven trees at the heart of the Lithuanian pirtis tradition: their medicine, their folklore, the healing charms, and how each one was brought into the heat.
Seven sessions · Yours to keep · Watch at your own pace
Lithuania · 18–24 June 2027 · Fully bookedThe Sun & Moon Retreat
A week on a family homestead by a lake: pirtis, fire, plants and song, held over the full moon, solstice and Rasos, the shortest night of the year.
Dartmoor · Coming 2027 · £60
Women's pirtis rituals
Small circles of women. Guided heat, plant infusions, leaf whisking, cold water and rest.
Every whisk is a tree first
Birch
Betula pendula
Oak
Quercus roburThe seven trees of the pirtis
Linden
Tilia cordataPine
Pinus sylvestrisJuniper
Juniperus communisHazel
Corylus avellana
Maple
Acer platanoides
Heat, water and plants, and no two sessions the same
Lithuanian steam bathing with whisks of seasonal branches. The tradition survived in private, domestic spaces, family to family. Each ritual meets the body that arrives.
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Where I've recently held the steam
Emerging Earth
42 Acres, Somerset · 14–18 September 2026
Three days of group pirtis rituals as part of a four-day intentional gathering.
Herbarium Festival
Sinsheim, Germany · 20–23 September 2026
Pirtis rituals across three days, working alongside a Lithuanian colleague.
Retreats, Gatherings & Private Events
Bringing pirtis to your gathering
I facilitate a limited number of rituals each year at retreats, festivals and private events across the UK and Europe.
Recent and upcoming work includes Emerging Earth at 42 Acres, Herbarium Festival in Germany, and women's retreats in Lithuania.
Each ritual is shaped around the group, the space and the arc of your programme. You provide the sauna; I bring the tradition.
Pirtininkė & Sauna Keeper
I'm Silvija — a Lithuanian pirtininkė, a keeper of the steam bath tradition rooted in the Baltic world of plants, heat and ancestral practice.
I trained at the Baltic Pirtis–SPA School and Perkūnija Sauna School, and I work from Lithuanian primary sources, folk archives and the living knowledge passed down through the practice.
Alongside the pirtis i’m learning to play the kanklės — Lithuania's national string instrument and I'm finding my way back to the old folk songs, slowly and by ear. Song, like the sauna, is a form of remembering. A way of going home to the people who came before.
· Testimonials ·
Words from people who have experienced the ritual
Inside the Pirtis Ritual
Each session moves in rounds — heat, cold, rest, and then again. The rhythm is deliberate and the pace is unhurried.
The space is prepared with fresh plants before anyone enters. Branches gathered in season are laid across the benches, and the air itself becomes part of the treatment.
The ritual opens with leaves in the steam. Heat is introduced gradually, allowing the body to arrive in its own time rather than being asked to adjust quickly.
Throughout the session there are salt and herb body scrubs, hydrosols distilled from the same plants present in the room, and halotherapy, where salt works into the airways alongside the steam. Herbal teas are served between rounds, drawn from the same seasonal plants.
At the centre of the session is the whisking — traditional Lithuanian vanojimas. The body is worked with using branches, and heat is guided across the skin with intention. It is the most physical part of the ritual and, for many people, the point at which the thinking mind settles.
Between rounds there is cold water and there is rest. Rest is not an interval — much of what the session does happens in the stillness.
The ritual closes gently, with time to integrate before returning to the outside air.
No two sessions are identical. Each one meets the body present, the season, and what is needed on the day.
Before you come. Heat isn’t right for everyone. Before every ritual I’ll ask you to fill in a short health form, and I may suggest a gentler ritual, or that we wait. Please tell me if you’re pregnant, have a heart or blood pressure condition, epilepsy, or have recently had alcohol or surgery.
Have an inquiry? Reach out to me…
Working with spas, retreats and festivals in the UK, Lithuania and further afield. Tell me what you're building and I'll come back within a few days.