Stephanie Smith has grown accustomed to the blank stares.
They arrive, just like clockwork, whenever she discusses her job of the past three years.
Smith understands, though. She’s been on the giving end of those same odd looks.
“I remember when the woman who hired me was trying to explain what she was hiring me for,” Smith recalls. “I was like, ‘I am 100 percent sure you are doing an excellent job describing this job, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Like, I cannot visualize what you mean in any way.’ ”
Welcome to Aufguss, the under-the-radar wellness ritual that combines elements of meditation, breathwork, yoga and aromatherapy, along with music, dance, intricate towel movements, the occasional tuning fork and a grueling, almost incomprehensible level of heat, even for Las Vegas.
Spa meets Vegas
If Aufguss, pronounced “OWF-goose” and taken from the German word for “infusion,” hadn’t evolved over the course of millennia of sauna culture, someone in Las Vegas surely would have invented it. 
“It’s the perfect fusion of spa and Vegas,” says Kim Key, director of spa and fitness at Resorts World Las Vegas. “You actually have a show in a sauna.”
The hotel’s Awana Spa debuted America’s first Aufguss sauna in September 2021. Four years later, there are still only a handful of similar saunas in the country. One of the most prominent can be found almost directly across Las Vegas Boulevard.
“When I explain Aufguss, I say it’s the heart of our spa. It really creates that energetic pulse,” says Ashley Tullo, manager of fitness and wellness at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “It takes away from being on this journey alone to really feel like you’re guided with wellness practitioners.”
After a few false starts, the coed sauna experience that’s massively popular in Europe is finally having its moment in America.
If you can’t stand the heat …
Tullo begins an Aufguss session in the Fontainebleau’s Lapis Spa by making sure the participants have left their sandals and any drink containers outside the sauna.
It’s going to get up to 180 degrees, she says, and those items will melt.
The words hit like a slap across the face.
AHUNDREDANDEIGHTY!
It’s a number that doesn’t sound survivable, let alone therapeutic.
That’s taking the hottest day ever recorded in Las Vegas — 120 degrees on July 7, 2024 — then stacking a lovely spring day on top of it.
The folks at Crockpot say the low setting on its brand of slow cookers will reach temperatures between 164 and 182 degrees.
According to grill maker Traeger, 180 degrees is within the temperature range for smoking brisket.
Surprisingly, the process could be even less comfortable.
In Europe, you’d be doing this naked.
What to expect
Each Aufgussmeister brings different skills and different points of emphasis to a performance. Some focus more on breathwork, others on stretching. But there are some constants.
Over the course of about 15 minutes, she’ll place a series of ice balls infused with essential oils onto the heated stones.
As the room warms, she’ll direct some of that heat at guests using towels in a process that often resembles rhythmic gymnastics.
Tuning forks come into play, at times, as a form of sound healing.
Dried lavender steamed over the rocks can be used in a way that’s not unlike a smudging ceremony attempting to cleanse a room of evil spirits.
If you look around during any given Aufguss session, you’ll see a couple of beatific participants relishing the heat in the cross-legged Sukhasana yoga pose. You’ll also notice others scanning the room with wide eyes in search of encouragement and/or confirmation that all of this is really happening.
“People who haven’t done it before, they might be a little unsure. ‘What is Aufguss? What is this event sauna? And what’s going to happen in here?’ ” Key says. “But when it’s over, they’ve kind of bonded.”
The roots of Aufguss
Modern Aufguss began in Germany nearly a century ago, Don Genders says.
The CEO of Design for Leisure, which created the event sauna at Resorts World, explains that members of the Finnish national team brought some of their homeland’s spa culture to the Berlin Olympics. 
Those athletes set up a wooden box in the Olympic village, then kept going in and out of it on their way to finishing a surprising fifth in the overall medal count. The Germans became obsessed with what was in the box and the nation eventually developed Aufguss as a performance art.
Genders is the driving force behind the expansion of Aufguss in America. He nearly got the concept off the ground in 2008 with the Aquavana experience at The Venetian’s Canyon Ranch Spa & Fitness. The spa was too busy early on for the staff to learn the art of Aufguss, Genders says, and the idea just fell by the wayside.
In setting up the Resorts World program 13 years later, Genders brought in Aufguss consultants Lasse Eriksen and three-time world champion Rob Keijzer for eight-hour days of training the new employees. Over the years, Keijzer has remained an influential figure in Las Vegas spas, training and certifying other Aufgussmeisters.
The London-based Genders sees America as the next great Aufguss frontier, thanks in part to its extroverted nature.
“Americans love a show. They love partying; they love the excitement,” he explains. “They join in so enthusiastically. They don’t have the inhibitions that many Europeans have.”
The influence of dance
In some of the more traditional saunas throughout Europe, the Aufgussmeister is likely to be a burly fellow who, instead of swinging towels, looks more like he should be swinging swords in a 1990s action movie.
This is not that.
Veteran Las Vegas choreographer and producer Jaimee Gallego supplies Resorts World’s Aufgussmeisters and helped add some “Vegas flair” to the program.
As a dancer, her Las Vegas career goes back to the groundbreaking “EFX” with Rick Springfield at the MGM Grand. As a producer, her most recent show, the retro burlesque “Lady Like” at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, closed in May.
Gallego is used to placing dancers around town, and it was no different at Resorts World, where each Aufgussmeister is a current or former pro. The experience is treated so much like a show, in addition to the spa’s four main Aufgussmeisters, there’s a fifth who acts as a “swing.”
“I just feel like dancers have the athleticism to be placed in any element,” Gallego says. “And then for me, I like it if they’re yoga-certified or have a nutrition background.” 
The schedule gives dancers an extra source of income during the day without interfering with their night jobs. But the sauna work also lets performers who have grown tired of the show grind keep a pointed toe in the entertainment world.
“It’s a great transition for a lot of dancers who still want to be in the performing aspect … but don’t want to do the nightly shows,” Gallego says. “It’s a great little avenue.”
Smith, an Aufgussmeister at Resorts World, certainly fits that bill.
“I had a 22-year dance career,” she says, referencing shows ranging from “Fantasy” on the Strip to dancing for Disney in Japan. “It was actually the pandemic that retired me.”
With Aufguss, she’s able to blend dance with her skills as a nervous system resilience coach. Halfway through her first performance, though, Smith thought she was going to pass out, vomit or both.
“It’s only 15 minutes,” she notes, “but it’s 15 minutes of cardio in a 175-degree room.” 
She’s since learned to pace herself and prepare her body for what’s to come. Smith typically performs the spa’s two morning shows or the two in the afternoon, with a 45-minute break between them.
On Aufguss days, she loads up on proteins, carbs, electrolytes and Vitamin B. Based on the size of her bottle, she estimates she drinks 48 ounces of water before her first performance, then another 36 before the second.
She sweats out every drop.
The chilling conclusion
The most diabolical part of the Aufguss experience comes at the end.
Once participants leave the sauna, they’re advised to rinse off in one of the spa’s variety of showers before soaking in the 50-degree cold plunge.
At the Fontainebleau, guests have the option of the communal snow shower, which simulates being inside a snow cone machine by dropping shaved ice and bringing the room down to a crisp 14 degrees. 
Tullo, who’s been a massage therapist for more than 10 years and teaches breathwork and sound bowls, explains the benefits of what she refers to as “contrast hydrotherapy.”
The extreme heat opens up the blood vessels through a process known as vasodilation, she says, and it helps the muscles release tension. During this, the heart has to work harder to pump blood through the larger vessels. The cold plunge, then, creates a vasoconstriction and tightens everything up.
“You get a nice detox effect, because it squeezes all of that excess fluid back into the lymphs, allowing fresh blood and nutrients,” Tullo says. “But it also closes all of those channels, and now the heart doesn’t have to stress itself out trying to process through that opening that you created with the heat.”
Smith also recommends the cold plunge at the end of each session — even if going from extreme heat to extreme cold that quickly sounds like it should cause your body to shatter into thousands of pieces.
The advice she gives Aufguss participants could apply to the first steps of pretty much any health and wellness routine.
“In both the sauna and the cold plunge, you are fighting your nervous system’s urge to run away,” Smith says.
“The closer you get to the cold plunge, the more your brain is going to try to talk you out of it. So remember why you came to the spa: to relax and let go and not overthink things.” ◆
Local pair vies for world title
It’s a good thing Joli and Alexi Irvine are comfortable in the spotlight.
The sisters have been dancing competitively since before they were in kindergarten. They have performed in shows up and down the Strip, including “Jubilee!,” “Le Reve” and “Zumanity,” and they have danced in episodes of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
They will lean on every bit of that experience while representing America this month at the Aufguss World Master Championships in Verona, Italy.
The two kind of fell into Aufguss, the practice of placing ice balls infused with essential oils onto hot stones in a sauna, then using towels to direct the heat onto guests in an artistic manner. 
“What started as a curiosity,” Alexi says, “quickly grew into a passion.”
That passion — along with countless hours of hard, sweaty work — led to their winning the team event at the inaugural national Aufguss competition in June.
The Irvines perform alone at Lapis Spa & Wellness at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, but the chance to compete together was too good to pass up. They saw their sisterhood as an advantage over other teams.
“We always like to say we kind of share the same brain,” Joli says. “We can look at each other and know what’s going on and figure out what we need to do without even speaking to each other.”
In competitive Aufguss, contestants use music, lighting, costumes and dance to tell a story while distributing the heat and essential oils to every inch of the sauna.
The Irvines drew upon their relationship to create “The Celestial Sisters of Fire & Ice.” The tale follows Lumina, the Ice Queen, and Nixia, the Queen of Fire, as they argue and build separate, isolated worlds before realizing they’re better and stronger together.
That’s a lot to express in less than 15 minutes inside a sauna heated to 170 degrees or more, but it all comes down to their training.
“We take every moment that we can to travel and grow our knowledge of Aufguss,” Joli says. That includes two to three trips to Europe each year to train with three-time world Aufguss champion Rob Keijzer.
That work has paid off with seven certifications ranging from foundational techniques to advanced towel artistry. As an Aufgussmeister, those certifications are vital.
“Otherwise, you’re just moving around with a towel,” Joli says. “You don’t have the fundamentals, the understanding.”
The international stage is quite literally the biggest the Irvines have been on as Aufgussmeisters. Their sauna at Fontainebleau holds about 40 people. The one in Brooklyn, where they won the national competition, could seat about 80. The Aquardens sauna in Verona has room for 300 moist, judgy bodies.
Following the world finals, the sisters are looking forward to branching out and creating new projects together.
“The future,” Joli says, “is broad and beautiful.”
Aufguss experiences
At Resorts World, Aufguss is offered four times a day, Fridays through Sundays. At the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, it’s offered four times a day each day of the week, but the spa is only open to the general public Mondays through Thursdays.
At Resorts World’s Awana Spa, access to the event sauna comes with the Fountain of Youth experience. The three-hour pass includes the use of vitality pools, steam rooms, a heated crystal laconium room, heated tepidarium chairs, cool mist showers and the experiential Rain Walk.
Lapis Spa & Wellness at the Fontainebleau offers the Celestial Waters Passport, four hours of access to the event sauna as well as vitality pools, steam room, Himalayan salt room, infrared sauna, heated tepidarium chairs, cold plunge, snow shower and Stargazing Lounge.
Both services are $150, plus a 20 percent service charge. They’re included with any spa treatment lasting 60 minutes or longer.
