Labas.
I'm Silvija.
I hold the heat and I work with the trees. And more and more, I think my place in all this is to be a bridge. Between Lithuania and wherever you are now. Between the old songs and the steam, and anyone who feels that pull and doesn't know where to start.
Under an old oak
It keeps pointing home
I've been thinking a lot lately about how the more we let life in, the more we start to see what's ours. What's actually meant for us. You try things, you go places, you get it wrong… and slowly the direction shows itself.
And for me, it keeps pointing home.
I've lived away from Lithuania for a long time now. So I know that yearning really well. Feeling the pull of a place, a culture, and not quite knowing how to reach it from where you are.
What brought me back wasn't a history book. It was the trees.
Roots I could feel in my body
It was the trees. The land. The old songs and charms and stories. And the pirtis, more than anything.
Lying in the steam with a birch whisk, I could feel my roots in my body again, before I could even explain it.
The tree looks back
For a long time I thought of meeting a tree as something I did. I go to the tree. I notice it. I gather from it, carefully.
And then at some point it turned around. I realised I was being witnessed back. Something so simple, but it really landed. That I matter. That I'm being met by the other, by the more-than-human, just for being here.
I can't prove that to you, and I don't need to. It's just how it feels from the inside. And it changed how I hold everything else.
When we bring the trees into the steam, they're not props. They're active participants.
Think about it. We're sitting in the heat, simmering, almost like we're inside a teacup. The leaves warm up, the phytoncides and all those compounds release, and we meet them through the lungs, the skin, the smell, every sense. It's such an intimate meeting.
And the pirtis can be so many things. Sometimes there's music, it's lively, people are laughing. Sometimes it's completely quiet. It's all about intention. How the space is prepared, how it's opened, how it's held.
Honest about where it comes from
Tradition matters to me, deeply. And I don't want to be trapped inside it either. I want to keep listening, stay open-hearted, and keep sharpening the sensitivity to actually hear what the more-than-human world is saying, instead of just repeating what's already been said about it.
So I try to be honest about where everything comes from.
The archives, the charms, the songs.
Most of what I draw on comes from primary sources and folk archives. A lot of it has never been translated into English. When I say something comes from the archives, it does, and I'll tell you where.
Where the record is thin.
There are gaps. Where there are, I piece things together from what's there, and I say so: in some villages, one version of the song, as far as we can tell. I'd rather leave a question open than fill it with a nice story.
Something you can live.
Modern pirtis is partly new, and so is mine. How I open and close a session, the order the trees come in, the names of the programmes I teach: that's me, working in the spirit of what came before.
I can only be in one place at a time, and right now that's the UK. But so many of the people who write to me are across the seas. So I teach in English, with the charms and songs spoken in the original, and the stories can travel further than I can.
Children and grandchildren of people who left. Some have never been. Some have a grandmother's name and a few words of the language, and that's it. And I know a lot of them feel that same pull. Because I felt it.
It's for anyone who loves trees and heat and old stories, too. You're welcome here wherever you're from.
Where something came from someone, I say so
- The schools
Baltic Pirtis–SPA School · Perkūnija Sauna School · International Bath Academy
- My teacher
Vladas JokubauskasThe whisking programmes I teach are built on what I learned from him. The names, the sequences as I've written them, and the way I teach them are my own.
- The record
Charms, songs and archivesOld Lithuanian texts, healing charms, folk songs, poems and mythology, read in the original.
- The trees
I go to themWhen I'm learning a tree, we're always outside, beside the tree itself.
- Still learning
The kanklės and the old songsI'm learning both by ear. I'm early in my teaching life, and I want to keep learning for the whole of it.
pirtis
The Lithuanian bathhouse. And the going itself: people asked Ar gera pirtis buvo? Was it a good pirtis?
pirtininkė
A woman who tends the pirtis and the people in it. The heat, the steam, the whisks, the care.
vanta
A whisk: a bundle of leafy branches, gathered in season and brought into the heat.
garas
Steam. Water on hot stones, poured slowly, one ladle at a time.
nulinis taskas
The zero point. The silence between rounds, when the body settles and nothing is asked of it.
talka
Neighbours working together, then sitting down to eat together. How I like to hold a retreat.
What it's like to come
“From the heart and soul, the spaces Silvija holds invite you back to the rawness of your roots… a bridge between ancestral roots and modern life.”
“I found that the different trees brought forward different emotions and ideas for me, and I will carry those with me.”
“Silvija is incredibly embodied in her craft and space-holding.”
Wherever you'd like to begin
You can stay at the edge and read, or come all the way into the heat. No circle is lesser. Start wherever you are.
- Read · freeNotes from the pirtisQuiet notes on heat, plants, bodies and seasons.→
- Learn · freeSession 0 of With the TreesWhere the material comes from, and whether it's for you.→
- LearnWith the TreesSeven trees of the pirtis, their charms, songs and stories.→
- Come inGatherings and women's ritualsSmall groups, slow steam, in the UK and Lithuania.→
- Come inA private ritualTwo hours in the heat, held just for you. Write to me to book.→
- The centrePractitioner trainingOne to one, at your own sauna, for people already in the heat.→
And if you have Lithuanian roots… tell me where your family's from. I'd really love to know.
I read every message.
Write to meSee you in the trees.
SilvijaPirtininkė & herbalist · Lithuanian pirtis from the source