IF New York is the city that never sleeps, it’s also the city that never seems to stop checking its phone. But where can you go to escape the unflattering glow of all those screens?


How about a schvitz?


Schvitzing, Yiddish for sweating, often refers to the ancient practice of steam or sauna bathing. Almost every culture has a tradition of sweating in the name of health and social interaction. In Turkey the baths are called hammams; in Russia they’re banyas; and the sauna is considered a cultural institution in Finland.


There are subtle differences, but the basic idea involves sitting in a hot room and sweating your face off. Then you plunge into a cold pool, or dump a bucket of cold water on your head, and do it all over again. An average trip to the baths runs around $35, with special treatments costing extra.


New York has a variety of options for a good sweat, from the 120-year-old baths of the East Village to a sprawling Korean spa in Queens to a Roman bath in TriBeCa to authentic Russian baths in Brooklyn. Walking into any of them feels like stepping into a time machine or being beamed somewhere very far away.


TO THE EAST VILLAGE


Any conversation about sweating in the five boroughs begins with the Russian & Turkish Baths on 10th Street in the East Village. Since 1892 New Yorkers have been communally bathing and kibitzing in this building between First Avenue and Avenue A.


John Belushi was said to have spent an occasional Sunday morning taking in the steam there, followed by a bracing plunge into the ice-cold pool. Frank Sinatra and Timothy Leary were also said to have bathed there. And that’s what makes these baths such an amazing spot: They offer a special opportunity for people watching and eavesdropping among an eclectic (and sweaty) group of New Yorkers.


The first step is to check your valuables — including that cellphone — at the desk and head to the men’s or women’s locker room. You can borrow a sleeveless robe and sandals, but all the regulars seem to bring their own bathing suits and flip-flops.


After changing you walk down a narrow set of stairs to the baths. There is an aromatherapy steam room, a Swedish sauna and a small tiled steam room, but the Russian radiant heat room is the claim to fame. It is the largest room and by far the hottest. Inside, someone is usually receiving a platza treatment, which involves lying face down and being aggressively rubbed down with a bunch of soapy oak leaves. This procedure is said to open the pores and exfoliate the skin.


A quarter of the room is occupied by a furnace, whose stones are heated overnight, giving the space its blistering heat (around 200 degrees). There are a number of big white buckets and a fountain full of cold water for dousing yourself. A session longer than 20 minutes isn’t recommended.


The baths’ Web site jokingly asks of 10th street, “Can you get a hotter location?”


A TASTE OF RUSSIA


For an authentic Russian experience head to the Mermaid Spa, where Russian is the language spoken and great quantities of beer are consumed no matter the hour. Abutting the private, beachside community of Sea Gate, the Mermaid Spa will definitely make you feel as if you had traveled much farther than the southwestern tip of Brooklyn.


The men’s and women’s locker rooms lead out into a large and well-lighted room featuring a big, circular whirlpool. In the corner of the main room are doors leading to a sauna, a Turkish steam room and a scorching Russian steam room, which is heated by a gigantic oven that your fellow bathers will mercilessly feed with water. Speaking of merciless, just outside this room are two tiled cold tubs, with an ice machine behind the wall that shoots cubes directly into the water. Entering these pools after sweating it out in the steam is a big part of the ritual (as are the readily available platza treatments).


Many bathers wear traditional pointed wool hats, which, counterintuitively, help to maintain body temperature. The hats are on sale at the front desk for $20.


In one area men and women cluster around tables drinking water, tea and beer and eating some remarkably good food. Sitting in your bathing suit, eating fresh mushroom dumplings and drinking a huge frosty mug of beer while watching Premier League soccer turns out to be quite a relaxing way to spend an afternoon.


OUT OF THIS WORLD


A trip to Spa Castle in College Point, Queens, almost feels like leaving Earth. Spa Castle is a 100,000-square-foot temple of bathing that boasts indoor and outdoor pools, seven coed saunas and two food courts offering corn dogs, udon noodles and much more.


The locker rooms lead into separate men’s and women’s nude bathing areas. You can choose from a steam room, a sauna and whirlpools of varying temperatures with powerful jets. If the nudity bothers you, don’t worry: Spa Castle provides T-shirts and shorts (blue and gray for the men; orange and pink for the women) for use in the coed portion of the baths, where everyone is more modestly covered.