The Herbal Bath – Health, Beauty, & Ritual

“There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.” – Sylvia Plath

Water is our planet’s universal element. All living things depend on it for life. It’s a connecting thread for us all. The very act of engaging with water in any way is an act of self-care. We drink to be hydrated and healthy. We wash to be cleansed and renewed. We use water as a symbol of purity and rebirth.
Using water as a tool for health is known as Hydrotherapy. Hydrotherapy incorporates water in all its forms – ice, liquid, and steam, hot and cold. Hydrotherapy is used for the health of our physical bodies, our immune systems. We use it for health beyond our physical bodies, healing our minds and even our spirits. The herbal bath is an example of hydrotherapy that ranges through all its intentions from healing the body to honoring the sacred within us all.
The herbal bath heals our bodies by supporting our integumentary and musculoskeletal systems. Salts, clays, grains, milks, oils, and herbs can be used in a multitude of ways to sooth ailments. Herbal baths can use herbs to reduce inflammations like rashes and hives. They can use mineral salts to restore sore muscles, relax spasms, relieve pain, and promote physical relaxation. They increase the body’s ability to heal damaged tissues with sitz baths (a concentrated shallow herbal infusion meant to be sat in for various ailments).
A beautiful example of healing baths in history is the three stages of a roman bath. The first stage was the tepidarium, a warm room used for massage and anointing oils. The second stage known as caldarium was a hot room containing hot pools, steam rooms (sudatorium), and dry heat rooms (laconicum). The roman bath concluded with the frigidarium, a huge unheated room with cold plunge pools. The roman baths promoted both cleanliness and immune health.
The herbal bath is used for beauty. We soften and exfoliate, improving our texture and tone. We keep our skin hydrated and youthful. We replenish our skin from the harm of the harsh elements we encounter in our daily lives. The herbal bath can be as much a part of our beauty routine as our daily face care routines.
The herbal bath works perfectly as a means of ritual, a way to heal the spirit, to connect to the sacred within and around us. Histories and cultures all over the world use water as a symbol for purification, an offering of service, and a preparation to receive the divine. We have baptisms and the washing of feet in Christian faiths. In Buddhist traditions statues of the baby Buddha are bathed on Vesak (Buddha’s birthday), representing the purity of heart and mind. The Misogi, meaning “water cleansing” is a Japanese tradition of standing under a cold waterfall to achieve a cleansed body, mind, and spirit. Examples of traditional bathing rituals go on and on through numerous cultures and histories for a plethora of symbolic meanings.
Below are just a few recipes that can heal the body, mind, and soul.

The Herbal Sitz Bath

For any healing down there.

The sitz bath is a concentrated tea of salt and herbs to soak localized tissues. A sitz bath can aid in healing torn tissues post birth, reduce inflammations of the urinary tract or hemorrhoids, and aid in reducing infection.

Epsom Salt 1 cup
2 Tablespoons each of calendula, chamomile, marshmallow, uva ursi, comfrey, yarrow, plantain, and witch hazel.
Bring a stock pot of water to a boil. Turn off heat and add mixture of salt and herbs. Allow to steep for at least 1 hour. Add concentrated tea to a shallow bath and soak for 20 minutes 3 times a day.

Herbal Bath Tea

Epsom Salt 1 cup
Rolled Oats 1 cup
2 Tablespoons each of calendula, chamomile, lavender, and rose.
Cocoa Butter 1 wafer.

Add 4 tablespoons of mixture to a muslin tea bag with one wafer of cocoa butter.

Soak tea bag in a bath for soft and smooth skin.

The muslin bag is reusable for your next bath.

The Ritual Bath

The ritual bath can have many facets. You can follow a recipe or create your own. You can use salts, milks, oils, fresh or dried flowers and herbs, crystals, smoke medicine, sound medicine, songs, prayer, and mantras. Ritual baths can be timed by astrology or the moon. The new moon is a time for clearing, for shedding and letting go, for becoming a vessel for what you would call in. The full moon is a time for creation and desire, for building strength, for manifesting abundance.

The Heart Ritual Bath

A warm bath with Himalayan Sea salt and rose essential oil, rose quartz crystals in or around the bath, pink candles around the bath, fresh rose petals on the bath surface, copal tears smoking over charcoal. We say mantras and prayers: “I honor and release my grief. I invite love in its place. I bring love to the world around me.”

Let the herbal bounties of the earth, amplified in the universal element of water, bring you healing and happiness.

This article was written by our Herbalism instructor, Martin Hansen. He has been an Herbalist and Aesthetician since 2000. He also teaches for our sister school, The School of Botanical and Medical Aesthetics. Martin is a treasure to our school – his understanding of herbal medicine, both physically and spiritually, and his ability to share his unique experiences with these medicines endears him to all who learn from him.