6 Tips for the Best Bath & 12 Ingredients to Add
When people think of an ideal way to relax, a nice hot bath is usually what comes to mind. However, there are a few lesser-known tips and tricks that can take your bath from a simple relaxation to a full-blown healing, medically therapeutic investment!
Before you dive in, however, be sure you follow these tips for the best cleansing bath you’ve ever had:
1. Some like it hot…but not too hot!
How hot can you stand it? For some, if it feels like bathing in a bubbling cauldron of bliss, it’s just the right temperature. But did you know that superheated baths actually get your nervous system revved up? In actuality, there’s a threshold of heat where the relaxation is just a bit of an illusion. If you’re pregnant, this is especially important; keep your baths to a maximum of about 37˚C (100˚F) — just barely above body temperature!
Not only is your nervous system…well, a little nervous, but homeostatically it can be a bad idea to start boiling your system. Contrary to popular belief, if you can’t sleep, a piping hot bath is actually more likely to keep you awake than soothe you to sleep.
The most relaxing baths are not quite piping hot. If you are bathing for sedation or specifically to help you sleep, keep the temperature easy on your body.
2. Keep it cool
Ever feel wilted and sluggish after a hot bath? You may have even gotten a headache afterwards. Avoid this post-bath syndrome by keeping your head, hands, feet, or all three cool with a cold washcloth, ice cubes wrapped in a towel, or pouring cold water on these spots on occasion. They are your body’s ideal spots to release heat, which is important.
Your body isn’t actually too fond of getting too hot when it doesn’t have a chance to release heat. This creates an artificial fever. An artificial fever has its uses, but it can also have some unpleasant side effects, such as headaches. Give your body some opportunity to shed some heat. Your core body temperature will still go up (and you’ll get the benefits of that), but it will cause less physiological stress. You may be quite surprised at how much this improves your experience.
3. Make it a massage time
Treat yourself completely with a little self-massage, perhaps to release tension in trigger points. You can try something like a self-abhyanga massage after your bath, or you bring a ball into the bath with you and trap it under your body to apply pressure to stiff and aching muscles. Simply run a warm bath, and trap a ball between your body and the bottom or back of the tub to rub your back muscles — your buoyancy allows for excellent control over moderate pressures without being too intense.
4. Stay hydrated, my friends!
Guess what? Even if your bath is only slightly warmer than your body, your systems start to attempt to cool you off in the way it knows best: sweating! You can end up losing a lot of valuable fluid this way, so do yourself a favor and drink plenty of liquids before, during and after to replenish your body.
Choose liquids that are indeed hydrating rather than any diuretics, such as caffeinated tea, alcohol (sorry, bath wine!), or coffee. Instead, try a refreshing cool lemon water! This way, you will also help avoid a post-bath headache.
5. Lower back love
If you have lower back pain, a hot bath is the treatment for you! It’s even better than trying to ice it (which might even be on the harmful side).
The myth that a hot bath will only worsen the “inflamed” back is simply not true. The great majority of low back pain is essentially muscular in nature, contrary to the popular and mistaken view that it’s usually caused by something “mechanical” like a intervertebral disc herniation. Specifically, the cause of most back pain is myofascial trigger points (“knots” in your muscles), which can cause far more grief than most people realize — and yet they are relatively treatable. A little reassurance, rubbing, and a hot bath go a surprisingly long way, even with the most horrendous case of low back pain. A hot bath is amazingly good therapy for back pain, and the price sure is right.
Once again, trigger points are eased by heat, and usually irritated by cold.
6. Deep bath breathing
What better place to “blow off steam” breathing than in the bath? Controlling your breath moves energy throughout your body, and with the right technique, can be a hugely helping hand in relaxation.
Conscious, deeper breathing is always relaxing, grounding, and embodying. It can make you more comfortable in your own skin. But it seems to be particularly effective in a hot bath.
Now that you’re a bath pro, discover what bath ingredient is best for you! For example, did you know that by adding tea bags into your bath, you can help your body balance its energy and hormones, aid in clearing it of toxins, and also provide the anti-aging benefits of antioxidants? Check out this infographic, and see what ingredients you’d like to start trying.
About the Author
How to Let Go of Negative Emotions
When clients come into my office, they describe many types of problems. Yet, whatever their situation, they almost always complain that they feel stuck in feelings of anger, sadness, fear or hurt. In order to help my clients, I teach them something called the Sensation Meditation (SM). This meditation guides people to focus on their negative feelings in a specific manner.
By helping people fully feel their emotions without distraction, this meditation helps people move through “stuck” feelings into a place of healing. When people finish using this simple three minute technique, they frequently report that their negative feelings have vanished, and that their body feels relaxed, peaceful, and at ease.
The first step in doing the Sensation Meditation is to find a comfortable chair or couch, and proceed to take a couple of slow, deep breaths. Then, scan your body and notice the most uncomfortable feeling or sensation you feel. Focus on this area of your body, and feel exactly whatever is there. For example, if you’re annoyed you might notice a tightness in your chest and a warm feeling in your throat. If you’re worried, you may notice a tension in your forehead muscles and shoulder blades.
Ultimately, our emotions are experienced in our body as specific sensations such as warmth or coolness, tightness or relaxation, sharp or blunt, etc. As you notice uncomfortable sensations in your body, try to be aware of the resistance you have toward experiencing these uncomfortable feelings. Instead of avoiding or pushing away the discomfort you feel, simply allow the sensations to be there. Give yourself full permission to feel whatever is going on in the present moment.
As you tune into your present time sensations and let go of resisting whatever is there, you may notice that things start to change. Ironically, it is largely our resistance to feeling negative that allows uncomfortable feelings to stay stuck in our body. By letting go of your resistance and actually focusing on what you feel, the dam of stuck feelings will become like a moving river once again.
To help you tune into the present sensations of your body, it can help to focus on the following questions:
1. Where in my body do I feel the most uncomfortable feelings or sensations?
2. How big of an area in my body does the core of these uncomfortable sensations cover?
**3. **Is this area warmer or cooler than the rest of my body? How exactly does it feel different?
**4. **What about this sensation do I resist or find uncomfortable?
5. Can I let go of my resistance and allow the sensations to flow through?
6. What is something I could feel grateful for or look forward to in my life?
As you go through each of these, do your best to focus on what the question points to. For example, if you’re noticing how big of an area the sensations take, compare it to the size of a baseball, a basketball, or whatever seems appropriate. The more current you can be with the actual sensations in your body, the more quickly and easily stuck feelings will dissipate. As you focus on these various questions, imagine you are a scientist objectively noticing the exact moment to moment sensations in your body. By the time you reach question number six, you’ll probably feel rather relaxed. As you focus on what you feel grateful for or what you look forward to, allow yourself to be filled with the feeling of gratitude or excitement. Once you feel relaxed and positive, you can slowly open your eyes and enjoy your day.
While the Sensation Meditation is great for cutting through stuck feelings, it’s also an excellent tool for getting over minor upsets. If you feel a bit tense or annoyed, try taking three minutes to do this meditation. I think you’ll notice you’ll soon feel relaxed and at ease. With practice, you can even do a shorter version of this meditation. To do this, simply take a deep breath, notice the uncomfortable sensations in your body, and then relax and allow what you feel to fully be as it is. As you stay present with these sensations, you’ll soon observe that they change and, like a river, flow through you. If you do this method enough, you may even be able to do the whole process in under a minute. It can be a great way to love yourself.
The beauty of the Sensation Meditation is that it helps your feelings through a natural, organic process. Instead of trying to distract yourself from your feelings–which simply allows them to stay stuck–your feelings naturally become unstuck as you fully feel them. Although it can be hard to believe, it is our resistance to our feelings that allows negativity to stick around in our body. Even for major upsets, like the ending of a relationship or a death in the family, the Sensation Meditation can help you move through your grief at an accelerated rate.
To make this exercise easier to remember, you might want to write out the six questions from the meditation on a little note card. Another good thing to do is to record the meditation and then, when you need it, listen to it on your smartphone. To create your own guided Sensation Meditation, simply tell yourself to “focus on what feels uncomfortable in your body.” Wait a minute to give yourself time to feel what is there and fully welcome the sensations you feel. Then, read the six questions into your voice recorder, remembering to pause for about twenty seconds after each one. That’s all that’s needed.
Most people are secretly at war with their own feelings. Besides the obvious stress this creates, it also has a tendency to keep our bad feelings around for longer than they need to be. Fortunately, the Sensation Meditation can help you become friends with your feelings, your body, and yourself once again.
* Excerpted from “Find Happiness Now: 50 Shortcuts for Bringing More Love, Balance and Joy Into Your Life”
