Dear Banya Family and Friends,

It has been way too long since I had a proper steam.

I have to confess: my last steam session was not at Archimedes. It was at a modern hamam in Istanbul. I’ll always remember my last steam session, not because of the beautiful lap pool and ice mountain to accompany the heat, but because that was the day Turkey announced its first case of Covid-19.

Thus began my steam starvation.

My short vacation to Turkey to visit my family became an extended lockdown when all the flights in and out of the country were grounded. Despite the disruption to my plans, it was wonderful to be next to the sea during the springtime. I watched flowers bloom and I started a vegetable garden. But Turkey prohibited public gatherings, which meant I obviously could not go to hamam or termal. Instead, I would wake up each morning, start a fire in the fireplace, and practice kundalini yoga, just to sweat a little. Moving the body in a hot room felt great, but my soul missed the connected energy from other students and my teacher’s hands-on adjustments. Even though yoga is very personal, removing critical social vibes makes the quality of my practice go down. It’s just not the same.

My feelings on the world’s condition have been rolling like the sea for the past few months. I witnessed Turks reacting to new social restrictions, such as quarantines on the weekend and limited travel between cities, while I learned about life in the US from friends and the news. When the consulate arranged an evacuation flight back to California, I endured the most intense international travel experiences of my life — we were the only flight out of the country that day, every passenger had their own row, and I wore a mask for the whole 14 hour flight. I returned home to a city in retreat. Not a solemn retreat, but one full of existential angst. You can feel the tension in the lines at the grocery store and in the overcrowded parks. We might be safe from physical harm when we shelter-in-place, but the mental harm needs to be addressed.

If we all could gather together for a steam, we would relieve that collective anxiety and mental suffering of the community. I will be there — with a face mask, if necessary — to throw more water on the rocks and to heal the body, mind, and soul in the best way I know: in the company of my fellow steamers.

As we eagerly await our reunion in the new and improved saunas at Archimedes, I am on a quest to build connections within our amazing community of steam bathers. I have been talking to other bathing obsessed people around the world to see how they are faring. Some have saunas in their backyards or have access to private banya in their neighborhood. A friend who builds saunas thinks local sweat clubs will pop up and another friend has a sauna on a trailer that is easy to clean and move around. They all believe that the healing power of socially steaming with other people present will be even more necessary now because of the pandemic.

I would like to invite you to pause and think about who you were with during your last perfect steam. How was the heat? Do you remember any good conversations you had? How about laughing together after the cold plunge? If you are anything like me, you have been dreaming that someone would walk into the sauna and ask the room full of steamers if the rocks needed another scoop of water. The best remedy for months of social distancing is steaming with your friends.

I #WishWeWereBathing together and over the next few days will be posting beautiful bathing photographs and designs from some of my favorite artists in our community of soakers and sweaters on our Instagram. We’d love to see photos of your best times at Archimedes, so please always feel free to tag @banyasf along with your Banya friends :)

With Metta and Sweat,

Ekin Balcıoğlu

PS — I would love to hear from the community! How have you been dealing without the Banya? What have you been doing to stay physically and mentally fit? Feel free to drop me a message here.

The Remedy for Social Distancing is Steaming With Your Friends was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Friends and Family,

Merhaba! Hope you are well and safe in a comfortable spot. Greetings from Urla, Turkey, where Steve and I traveled to in the beginning of March to visit with my family. We decided to extend our two week trip and not risk flying back to San Francisco as we watched the situation in the US get worse. We are grateful to be here and this situation has made me realize even more how much healing the world needs. That is why I am excited to finally tell you about the project I have been working on for the last six months.

When I began drafting the first Open Heart newsletter last fall, my plan was to provide an update on my life and work and announce a new photo essay project in which I interviewed the many diverse souls I’ve met while bathing and sweating. As I was describing the project to Steve, he asked if I had ever heard of WET Magazine (an avantgarde publication from the late 70s about gourmet bathing) and pulled up the website to show me. I began imagining how I would curate the art and culture of bathing into one place. Inspiration flowed into my body like a river of divine guidance and everything I needed was revealed to me in a split second … including the name :)

Bringing HAMAM to life has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my professional life. As Steve and I worked through the initial concept together, we drew from our love of water, hot springs, bathhouses, and all things soaking. We had no idea how to make a magazine, but everyone we talked to about HAMAM could understand our vision, especially our amazing partners Okay Karadayılar and Ali Taptik. Together, Okay and Ali run ONAGÖRE, a multidisciplinary design studio that works with cultural institutions and most recently they developed the visual identity of the 16th Istanbul Biennial “The Seventh Continent’ and the Marina Abramovic Exhibition Design at Sakıp Sabancı Museum.

HAMAM is for unconventional spirits — those with curious minds, open hearts, creative & big ideas. We plan to print the first issue this summer and will feature artist projects, personal essays, photo essays, interviews, poems, and short stories from an amazing group of contributors from all over the world. We don’t like to think of HAMAM as just a magazine about bathing. It is an object of Letting Go that you can hold in your hand.

We’re so excited to introduce HAMAM to the world. Please follow us on Instagram at @hamammagazine as we announce contributors and sign up for updates at hamammag.com.

With Metta,
Ekin

Editor-in-chief and Co-Founder, HAMAM
ekin@hamammag.com

Three Rules of Work:
Out of clutter find simplicity.
From discord find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
― Albert Einstein

Introducing HAMAM was originally published in Open Heart on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s a typical Thursday night at Archimedes: the saunas are packed with sweating bodies and the steam oven’s stones give off the perfect sizzle indicating the complex heating system is operating properly. The regulars are catching each other up on the week’s events and offering compliments on the quality of the heat to no one in particular, when a man walks up the stairs wearing a gray hat with “BOSS” unironically stitched into the felt. He raises his hands above his head to survey the conditions as he has done in almost every sauna from here to Kamchatka. “I’ll add a few scoops”, he says. Even without the custom embroidery, his presence is ominous causing one of the guests to lean over and whisper to his friend “that’s the owner.”

Dr. Mikhail Brodsky is indeed the Boss of the Banya. When he isn’t cooking steam, he wears a boss hat of a different kind at Lincoln University in Oakland where he is the President. To friends he is known as Misha, but to sweat enthusiasts all over the world, he has come to be known as Archimedes. Like the ancient mathematician and inventor, Misha is a problem solver with an eye for detail, which means he is almost always in teaching mode. “I designed this room so the steam would rise and collect before falling here,” he instructs as he points to the corners of the room. “See how the ceiling slopes?”

As the dense steam falls, Misha waves his towel in the air to mix the heat and spread his love of sweat bathing across the room. Some guests head for the cold plunge as Misha takes his place on the top shelf — his favorite spot in the sauna — while others stay with anticipation that class is about to be in session.

I recall the first platza I gave when Misha was in the sauna. I could feel him observing my technique and sensing my nerves wielding veniks instead of a paintbrush, the standard tool of my trade. Anticipating a lecture, I was shocked and relieved when he approached, grabbed a venik and joined in on the action. “All details are important, there is nothing secondary,” Misha recently told me, describing the perfect platza as a philosopher would. “The success is in the details.”

However, building a successful Russian bathhouse on the shores of the San Francisco Bay was easier said than done. As the story goes, it was 1998 and Misha was a statistics research professor climbing the ladder of academia. When his application to be a department chair was rejected, he instead decided to pitch the idea of a public banya to his Russian friends and his steam buddies at Frogs. “The Bay Area is so international and I feel an obligation to educate our community in the different ways of communal bathing,” Misha told me. There was no lack of enthusiasm for his vision, but financing was not as easy to come by. Thus began the twelve year journey to opening Archimedes. “I was not confident in the result, chances to complete the project were slim and several partners withdrew. However I am also quite stubborn and that helps against calculations.”

Drawing from years of experience soaking and sweating in bathhouses all over the world, Misha had plenty of inspiration for how Archimedes should look. “My wife and I were always attracted to the simplicity of ancient Roman architecture from the baths of Caracalla and Pompeii. When we went to Stockholm, we fell in love with the Art Nouveau swimming pool at Centralbadet. By the way, they also have their banya on the ground floor, then residences, then the roof deck.” Misha is a wellspring of knowledge when it comes to building a modern urban bathhouse, but his dream project became complex after working with several different artists and architects. “I tried to include as many features from different bathing cultures as possible in a relatively small space. I have all the designs, but finally the simplicity proposed by Vadim Puyandaev and structural requirements, such as the columns, made the banya as it appears today.”

Archimedes opened its doors for the Bay Area banya community on New Year’s Eve in 2011. It was never a guarantee, and no one knows the obstacles that were overcome better than the Boss. “It required some bravery for Americans to believe that a co-ed, clothing optional bathhouse could exist,” he said. “Of course San Francisco is among the best places to get it done.”

Twenty years into his quest to spread the practice of communal bathing and Misha is still dedicated to the cause. When I asked about his most outrageous schvitz, he described a private banya next to a lake outside Riga, Latvia whose owner overcame hurdles to open a banya for people. “It was the right time, late October or early November, so it was cold outside. The platza man was heavily tattooed and had spent years in prison. Now he realized, respected, and valued the simple pleasures of life, specifically banya rituals. It was his love of the banya and his pride in demonstrating the quality of his place, his veniks, and his work. The combination resulted in my great experience.” Perhaps Misha’s commitment to his vision and his attention to details are the greatest legacy he has created with Archimedes Banya.

Create your bathing ritual at Archimedes Banya. Learn more at banyasf.com

Spreading the Love of Communal Bathing was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Merhaba, and I hope that you are well. Thank you so much for all the support and feedback on my first newsletter. I am very grateful to be surrounded by such a great community and I am full of excitement about finishing 2019 strong, focused, and satisfied.

I recently returned from a spectacular trip to Miami and Key West with my partner, Steve, to visit his family. In Miami, I rode a bicycle through the alligator-filled Everglades National Park, saw a $120,000 banana at Art Basel, and soaked in the ocean water hot pool at the infamous Russian and Turkish Baths. In Key West, I rode a different bicycle to second place in a duathlon, saw countless sea turtles and sharks, and flew in a sea plane to the Dry Tortugas National Park. I feel so blessed and the full details are below.

I am thrilled to announce that I was promoted to Creative Director at Archimedes Banya. In my new role I will oversee the visual aesthetic of our Banya and will refresh our brand’s identity and website. I am very excited about the road ahead and serving the Banya community.

In the spirit of the new year, my art will be discounted 20% until the end of January. Please check out my website and let me know if you’d like to have a conversation about any of my work :)

— Ekin

River of Grass

The Everglades are the nation’s slowest and widest river covering 1.5 million acres of wetland. It’s endlessly flat, which made exploring a 15 mile bike trail absolutely dreamy. I rode into no man’s land past spoonbills, egrets, ibises, alligators, and turtles that were thriving and were surprisingly comfortable when I would wander into their space. As the sun went down early that night, we sped through the shallow waters on an airboat, sucked naturally filtered water from swamp grass, and drank tropical juices from El Palacio de Los Jugos. There was joy in all directions, at all moments.

Jettersetters, Vultures, and an Absurd Type of Consumerism

We booked our trip and later discovered Art Basel would be opening our last night in Miami. Today’s contemporary art fairs are gigantic productions that saturate a city. Art Basel was no different and it was impossible to avoid the gravitational pull into the miserable traffic jams and head-pounding house music. The fair itself was similar to ones I’ve attended in NYC, Istanbul, and SF: superficial, mediocre, and with very few examples of original work. However, the people watching is world class. It’s painful to admit, but most of these instagram-friendly shows lack exceptional talent. I came across this interview with Avelina Lesper, a Mexican writer and art critic. She sums up her views with a one word description of contemporary art: “fraud”. Walking through Art Basel, where a rotting banana taped to the wall was the biggest news, I was resonating with Avelina’s points.

Idi v Banyu

Miami is flashy, parties hard, works out, and tans too much. The beaches and art deco are nothing short of iconic, but the overall feel is plastic. I could definitely get by on the tropical fruits and will probably return just for the Russian and Turkish Baths in the basement of Hotel New Point in North Miami Beach. The whole structure reminded me of Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight’s visionary environment in the California Desert. Both are surreal to the eye and feel like a psychedelic trip to the mind. RTB is as strange as it gets. It expands your comfort zone and your awareness.

RTB combines a heavy duty ocean water waterfall in the ceiling, an actual size sculpture of tigers fighting, and over 30 years of celebrity photos, newspaper and magazine articles about the Banya or its NYC sibling facility (see Open Heart Vol. 1). RTB is surreal, kitschy, and its heat is extra hot. The schvitz (russian sauna) is equal parts temple and dungeon. The thin plywood benches would ordinarily burn your ass, if it were not for the continuously running cold water pipes filling buckets to dump on your head. There’s a polar bear room that is just a walk-in freezer, a neon red room with large amethysts, and a room with no lights and a fire hose for hydrotherapy that is equally enjoyable for the person aiming the powerful stream of water as it is for the person being hosed. The pipes snake up the walls and ceiling and the whole system is spectacularly rudimentary. RTB is not a minimalist spa for the mainstream, but that’s what makes it so delightful. We got lost every night in Miami soaking and sweating at the RTB. No Art Basel party can beat that.

“To me, the social importance of the banya is reflected in a popular Russian idiom ‘Idi v banyu!’ — a politer equivalent of ‘Get lost!’. Indeed, getting lost (entirely relaxed and detached from reality) inside the banya comes naturally.” — Vitali Vitaliev

Super Soakers

Due to a bonus overtime schvitz and the aforementioned Miami traffic, the ocean highway trip through the Florida Keys unfortunately happened in the dark. And our first Key West morning began in the dark before the dawn… with a race. With only a few hours of sleep and barely enough time to adjust my bicycle seat, Steve ran and I biked under the name Super Soakers in a duathlon relay, while his ambitious and determined father completed the triathlon and his cool mother was the lifeguard on a jet ski :) Despite our lack of training, the Super Soakers triumphantly received second place medals and stood on a podium outside a barbecue joint in downtown Key West.

The Mother Lode of Ibis

I continued to bike all over the small island, which has a distinctly outsider and transient energy that seems to escape the consciousness of most of the cruise ship tourists. Unofficially, it’s the Conch Republic and locals and the football team are conchs, but no one embodies the spirit I felt more than Lloyd, the old guy with a serious fruit hookup and an uncensored bike tour. I appreciate people like Lloyd, who have their own rules and different ways of doing things. He was a super fit, sunbaked transplant from the Bronx and likely a different world entirely. We blindly followed him through backstreets and back issues of Lloyd’s 50 year tenure on the island, while he picked and fed us fruit from the yards of his neighbors. At Lloyd’s assurance and without hesitation, I sampled Caribbean cherries and avocados, cactus, berries, and an egg fruit that tastes like cheesecake. It came as no surprise to anyone when Lloyd detoured the rare fruit bike tour to an animal sanctuary and summoned a “mother lode” of long-beaked ibis to eat seed out of my hands. While chopping coconuts with a machete, Lloyd shared with us some of his core beliefs that resonated with me: we are interconnected with animals and plants, we are all just space dust.

Dedicated to the Ocean

We had the unique gift of flying in a seaplane to the wettest National Park: the Dry Tortugas. I sat next to the pilot for our 30 minute flight to Fort Jefferson and spotted countless sea turtles while we flew over the shallow protected marine sanctuary. The experience was full of smiles and when we landed next to the fort, I climbed out of the plane and onto the beach. In front of me lay a beautiful and remote world that expanded my senses. I climbed to the top of the unfinished ramparts to drink in the scents and colors of the ocean and gray blue sky. It is mind blowing that hundreds settled at the fort in the nineteenth century and even crazier that park rangers still live there (though I am told a seaplane delivers a pizza from time to time). It’s a special kind of retreat. The universe was generous to us on the return flight and sent rain clouds and shooting rainbows dissolving into the submerged sand dunes below.

Be Like the Earth

My days and my heart are filled with joy and I feel like I have reached the mother lode. 2019 was a transformational year filled with a variety of micro wins and fails. There were immeasurable improvements: in my career, art, thoughts, and relationships. I am proud of myself for all the hard work and growth. 2019 has been wisdom, victories, failures, struggles, love, new excitement and awarenesses, and a brand new mindset. I am now vigilant, diligent, positive, creative, peaceful, gentle, and honest. Like all the previous years I had obstacles, I struggled, I cried, I failed, but I accepted my failures. This gave me strength and now I am shining brighter than ever.

“Be like the earth, which supports all living creatures indiscriminately, without distinguishing good from bad. The earth is simply there. Your practice should be strengthened by the difficult situations you encounter, just as a bonfire in a strong wind is not blown out, but blazes even brighter.” — Dilgo Khyentse

I realize how lucky I am to be sharing my journey with you. This is one of my ways of giving back. I am dedicating my life to be in service to others and do meaningful work, and I am looking forward to 2020 to explore new ways to be a better human.

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you;
You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (read the full version of this life changing book here)

“An open heart is an open mind” — His Holiness the Dalai Lama

May all beings be endowed with happiness and its causes.
May all beings be free of suffering and its causes.
May all beings never be parted from well-being, free of dissatisfaction.
May all beings dwell in impartiality free of attachment and hostility for those near and far.

If you would like to subscribe to my newsletter you can do so here: ekinbalcioglu.com/newsletter

Volume 2: The Mother Lode was originally published in Open Heart on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Family and Friends,

Merhaba, and I hope that you are well. I am very excited to write to you with updates from my art and life :) For many of you, it’s been far too long since we’ve been in touch and I am happy about the opportunity to reconnect with you :)

When I started thinking about writing this email, my intention was to simply share news of my recent exhibition and upcoming projects with people who had purchased my art — a group of souls, for whom I am forever grateful, and will cherish forever. But like most things that I start, I discovered that the deeper I went, the more I had to say and the more I wanted to open up.

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

These are some of my stories, watered with blood, tears, and laughter. Teşekkür ederim for reading and to all of you for your support, friendship, and love.

— Ekin

In Pursuit of Letting Go

Over the past few years I have had a lot of experiences that felt like I was polishing myself with very rough sandpaper. I first began sanding at a Garrison Institute retreat designed to cultivate emotional balance led by Alan Wallace and Eve Ekman. I continued my Dharma learning at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado with The Four Immeasurables retreat also led by Alan Wallace. The Tibetan Buddhist teachings spoke to my heart and put words to the feelings I had, which I couldn’t properly explain before. Dharma helped me sand off my outer layers and I invited both freedom and vulnerability. Being vulnerable has made me emotionally stronger and I am transforming from being consistently inconsistent to being consistently consistent. I am grateful for the blessings of both pain and joy and, for me, Dharma has opened my heart for the possibility of emotional and spiritual cleansing. And I discovered a new inner well of bliss in a 200F (93C) sauna.

“Bathing is best enjoyed in a place where you feel safe enough to put aside your social roles, relax your body armor, and open your psyche to the moment” — Leonard Koren, Undesigning the Bath

After graduate school, I made my first trip to New York City to explore the city. I was only supposed to stay for a week, but I fell in love with the energy, architecture, and culture. On some great local advice I stumbled into the Russian and Turkish Baths (“the banya”) and instantly realized I was creating a ritual. The harmonious mixtures of hot and cold, steam and water served to really optimize the mind-body connection. It was in the banya, covered in sweat, that I’ve met the most interesting people of my life. Professional athletes, hasidic rabbis, writers, healers, fellow artists, and some “regulars” that had been visiting the same saunas and steam rooms every week for over 50 years. More on this later …

Living in NYC was its own kind of rough sandpaper, especially the cold winters. No matter how much time I spent at the banya, my heart never could fully thaw out in NYC. So I went home to Turkey for the summer of 2018 for one of my exhibitions and it was there I decided to move back to San Francisco. Even though I had lived there for three years during graduate school, this time was different.

Belly of the Beast

As an artist, I have always believed I was not meant to do real work. But my economic reality drove me to find a job assembling bouquets in a flower factory. It was brutal and humbling work. I woke up every morning at 5am and rode my bike in the dark and cold to work in a big and cruel warehouse trying to make things that are “pretty”. I turned my focus inward and listened to a dozen book recordings including James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Richard Wright’s Native Son, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids and M-Train. I felt like Patti, especially during her early years working in the basement of a bookshop, struggling to find food. Her protopunk song “Piss Factory” hit really close to home. I finally had enough after a mandatory 13 hour shift the night of Thanksgiving, when one of my colleagues refused to turn down the volume of his cheap, awful pop music. USA can be an unforgiving place if you are unfortunate. I was defeated and I was cold down to my soul. I needed to soak and sweat at a banya.

“I’m gonna be so big I’m gonna be a big star and I will never return,
Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory
And I will travel light.”

from “Piss Factory” by Patti Smith

Fahrenheit 200

Archimedes Banya is located in a dystopian bayside neighborhood on the outskirts of San Francisco. The building is a wacky combination of brutalist Soviet architecture and 20th century San Francisco pastel and sits next to an old naval facility that used to decommission nuclear ships. The area feels forgotten, but I immediately embraced the weirdness of it all. The saunas are hot and I felt my soul begin to thaw as I observed a larger-than-life employee giving a strong platza to another man. They spoke Russian to each other and even though I don’t speak the language, I felt comfort. When I left the banya, I saw the platza master getting into his car, so I walked up to him and told him I want to work here. He told me to email the manager and inquire about an opening, so I did. The next time I went to the banya I was hired.

The banya is a place of many extremes, not just temperatures. Archimedes invites a wide spectrum of people. Clothing is optional and guests of all shapes, sizes, colors, and orientations mingle in a large open bath hall and float in and out of saunas and steam rooms, hot and cold pools. For a typical spa-goer, the banya probably feels like a place to unwind. But for the regulars and for the people who work there, the banya is an outlet for humans that have decidedly lived many lives.

The working conditions are intense: the Russian oven makes steam that feels like a dragon’s breath and the cold plunge (40F / 5C) is like a thousand tiny needles all over your skin. I coach people to take control over their breath because the shock of hot and cold can make you high. I once had a client faint and fall on me after a platza and the cold plunge often induces audible gasps from even the biggest and toughest-looking guests. I love challenging myself at the banya, not just physically, but also emotionally. During a platza, I make contact with people using a venik (a bouquet of branches and leaves, typically oak or birch) and circulate steam to heat and detoxify the body. Many of my clients have never had a platza before and describe the experience as life-altering. Some people have very intimate emotional experiences and I am very grateful to be part of their healing process. Some have unwelcomed sensual responses, an unfortunate byproduct of an environment that welcomes people of all kinds to be unguarded. Some fall asleep, some talk, some become ticklish, some fall in love. Some just smile.

For me banya is a not a part time job, it is an experience of another world that straddles the sensory spectrum from dystopia to utopia.

“The experience of extreme opposite temperatures back-to-back — hot to cold, or cold to hot — is particularly revelatory. Traversing thermal extremes with others also has a positive social bonding effect.” — Leonard Koren, Undesigning the Bath

Many Awakenings

I worked at Archimedes from December 2018 until May 2019 when I went back to Turkey to see family and prepare for my exhibition later in the summer. I windsurfed, painted, swam, and cleansed by the sea, as I can really only do in my hometown. In Turkey, we have hammams, and many of my best friends are from the NYC and SF banyas so I rarely am distant from bathing community and culture.

My latest exhibition was hosted at Art Shop Galeri in Alaçatı on a hot night in July. Awakening of the Myths is a series of watercolor and ink paintings that draw inspiration from the mythologies and sculptures of Ancient Middle Eastern and Greek civilizations. I have always been deeply influenced by my ancestry and my artistic exploration has recently been enhanced spiritually by examining life through my family constellation and scientifically by spitting into a tube and getting my DNA analyzed by 23andme. For Awakening of the Myths, I travelled through the past to animate my ancestors with a contemporary and revitalized vision. My aspiration was to create a space in which the stories and the spirit of my roots can come back to life. I hope I did that. In exhibiting Awakening of the Myths and through the emotional and spiritual cleansing of the past few years, I feel reborn and reawakened like a phoenix.

“There is an enormous joy and satisfaction in doing what you really want to do and are best fitted to do. When it all comes together like that, it gives you a wonderful sense of well-being and satisfaction knowing that you have been doing what you were intended to do for this lifetime.” ― Tenzin Palmo (for more on Tenzin, watch this video)

If you would like to purchase art from Awakening of the Myths or any of my other work, please send me an email at ebalcioglu [at] cca [dot] edu :)

At the end of the summer, I returned to SF to explore California and think about what’s next in life and art. I love road trips and have seen much of the Pacific coastline in USA. In a few hours drive, I can touch some of the tallest trees in the world in desolate redwood forests that are just a few miles up the road from heritage cannabis farms that have been harvesting sun-grown organic weed for decades. I went to Death Valley, which is like being on a different planet. We arrived during a windstorm so strong it was throwing rocks and shattering the windows of many unfortunate rental cars. Sunrises with one thousand suns in the sky at the same time. The pastel colors. The softest sand. Painting by the crater. And a lighthouse on the backside of the desert. So surreal…

I also picked up right where I left off at Archimedes. It is still as intense as ever, but I am less shocked when I witness the extremes. Because of this newfound perspective, I have been able to center myself and open up space for my creative energy and I have a ton of new ideas flowing. I am excited to share that I am working on a new media and print project on bathing culture in ancient and modern times. My plan is to publish a series of works beginning 2020, that explores the intersection of art, humanity, architecture, spirituality, design, and soaking. To me, soaking is healing, celebrating, cleansing and relaxing all at once.

I can’t wait to see where this goes and hope you will join me for the ride :)

My Recent Projects

• Awakening of the Myths is a watercolor and ink painting series that draws inspiration from the mythologies and sculptures of Ancient Middle Eastern and Greek civilizations.
• Bare Men: The Group Show is a group photography exhibition celebrating all expressions of the male nude ranging from the figure studies, fashion and glamour, editorial, outdoor, conceptual, erotic and self portrait genres.

How you can be helpful

• Connect me with anyone who has printed a magazine before
• Very good printing services in California, New York, or Turkey
• If you’re interested in purchasing any of my art, please reply to this email :)

“The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.” — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (read the full version of this life changing book here)

“An open heart is an open mind” — His Holiness the Dalai Lama

May all beings be endowed with happiness and its causes.
May all beings be free of suffering and its causes.
May all beings never be parted from well-being, free of dissatisfaction.
May all beings dwell in impartiality free of attachment and hostility for those near and far.

If you would like to subscribe to my newsletter you can do so here: ekinbalcioglu.com/newsletter

Volume 1: Introducing Open Heart was originally published in Open Heart on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Banya Family and Friends,

Hello, and I hope that you are well. My name is Ekin Balcıoğlu and I am very excited to write to you about our new publication The Banya Journal — a literary celebration of our community of bathers, soakers, sweaters, and dreamers.

You might know me as one of the Platza Masters at Archimedes Banya or, perhaps, simply “The Turk”. Additionally, I am an artist and a healer originally from Izmir, Turkey and I received my BA (Honors) from Central Saint Martins in London and my MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA in Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. I grew up around the practice of hammam and am a lifelong ofuroholic with a strong belief in bathing’s capacity for rejuvenation. I have spent years quite literally immersing myself in the great water cultures of the world.

I came to Archimedes a little over a year ago after moving from NYC and I desperately needed to soak and sweat. The saunas were hot and I felt my soul begin to thaw as I observed a larger-than-life employee giving a strong platza to another man. They spoke Russian to each other and even though I don’t speak the language, I felt the diversity of cultures and people melting together. I immediately embraced the remarkable blend of past and present traditions and knew that Archimedes held a special place in the collective hearts of its community. I will dive deeper into the history of Archimedes in my next issue which will include an interview with our founder, Dr Mikhail Brodsky.

The Banya Journal is a space for us to collectively explore the physical, mental, spiritual, and social aspects of banya culture and build connections between each other and water. Through a series of essays, interviews, and musings, I will plunge into both the traditional and contemporary practices of bathing culture so we may reconnect with water even when we are not at the Banya. But first it’s important to understand the importance of the banya throughout history.

The architectural and cultural significance of the bathhouse is immensely fascinating and I love studying the great authors on the topic. One of the most monumental architectural theorists, Sigfried Giedion, had this to say in Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition: “The way in which a civilization integrates bathing into its daily life, as well as the type of bathing it prefers, yields an insight into that period.” Giedion adds in Mechanization Takes Command, “The role bathing plays within a culture reveals the culture’s attitude toward human relaxation. It is a measure of how far individual well-being is regarded as an indispensable part of community life.” This is certainly true for our community at Archimedes, particularly when it comes to creating a habit of self-care. In Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity, Fikret Yegül, an architect and Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of California Santa Barbara, writes “Bathing in the ancient world, especially the world of the Romans, went far beyond the functional and hygienic necessities of washing. It was a personal regeneration and a deeply rooted social and cultural habit — in the full sense of the word, an institution.”

In Taking the Waters, Alev Lytle Croutier captures the essence of my personal relationship with bathing as a “ritualistic communion with water”. Croutier writes that “While most societies developed different ways of creating physical contact with water, incorporating the philosophy and temperament of their people and their environment, they always seemed to have the same elements in common — spiritual, hygienic, therapeutic, and social.”

To me, the banya is a place I can create a ritual around relaxation and well being. It is also a place of many extremes, and not just temperatures. The banya invites a wide spectrum of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and orientations that have decidedly lived many lives. The Japanese have a term — brothers in the skin — that refers to the affiliation created amongst a community of bathers. I think Jane Withers, the curator of Soak, Steam, Dream: Reinventing Bathing Culture an immersive exhibition at the 2016 London Design Festival, put it best when she said, “unlike the contemporary spa — almost invariably a place of privilege and luxury — the bathhouse has more inclusive roots.” I completely agree and I am proud to work at Archimedes where the cultures of the world meet to bathe.

If you’re reading this, you already know that Archimedes is a special place. My hope with The Banya Journal is to chronicle the impact Archimedes Banya has on its community and its significance amongst the world’s greatest bathhouses. To that end, I would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, prayers, and input on where this publication can go. Like our cherished Banya, The Banya Journal is open to all beings and I am looking forward to seeing what we create together.

With metta and sweat,

Ekin

Ekin Balcıoğlu, Creative Director @ Archimedes Banya

Visit us at banyasf.com

Introducing The Banya Journal was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.