The Sacred Bath
For some time now, the bath has been my place of quietude, fun, self. With the craziness of kids running around the house, pregnancy, life…the bath has always been my getaway.
I believe strongly in the power of both hydrotherapy and calming the mind, but also it’s power to bring us back to our starting point, forget the responsibilities of life and find who I am, who I want to be, it’s time to think, but not always be so serious. Whenever I’m feeling tired, achy, fatigued, or plain old bored, I run myself a nice hot bath and soak. It gives me a slice of time to be me, not mommy, or wifey, or any other title.
For a while I was loving sitting in the bath and watching reruns of old favorites (law and order, friends, my so called life) on my iPad and just zoning out. Sometimes I light candles and soak in silence. Often I bring my book (I’m reading Philippa Gregory’s The Other Queen right now). Sometimes I blast some music and sing along.
I always add some salts and herbs or oils to my bath to enhance the experience. The salts work deep into my body to detox and cleanse, calm nerves and offset achy muscles. The herbs and oils heal through aromatherapy and skin softening. Our skin is our biggest organ and what we put on it, what soaks through it, is incorporated much quicker than that which goes through our digestive systems. So…a bath can be much more healing than you might otherwise imagine.
For salts I always go for natural sea salts when I can. Otherwise I opt for an Epsom salt which is easily found in any drug store. As for herbs and oils, here are a few I go to regularly:
- Lavender for relaxing and calming
- Eucalyptus for centering and soothing any respiratory ailments
- Lemon for awakening and cleansing
- Calendula for skin healing and softening
- Peppermint for awakening and rejuvenating
- Tea tree when I feel a cold brewing…it’s anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and antiseptic
- Orange is my happy scentJ