that time I didn't shower for 7 months
When I first started Locust Light, I lived in a tiny cottage on the farm.
The cottage featured 4 rooms: the first floor was an open-plan kitchen and living room, the second floor held two small rooms and a very small bathroom. I do mean very small: the sink was thigh-level and no bigger than a large watermelon.
This very small bathroom was filled with a very large claw-foot tub. You might think this glamorous, and it might have been, but for one detail: the tub was just a tub, no shower, and it was beneath a sharply sloping ceiling -- there was no way to stand. To get water over my head, there was a 2-foot plastic hose attached to the faucet of the tub.
Another detail is that the cottage shared its water source -- and water pressure -- with my greenhouse, which was just a few paces away. The water pressure through the tub faucet was about that of a bathroom sink: very low. And if someone was watering in the greenhouse or irrigating the garden, the pressure to the entire cottage slowed to a trickle.
When it was time to take a bath (after checking that no one was using the garden water or -- god forbid -- someone had just flushed the toiled and now the tank needed to fill), I had two options:
1) Fill the tub (a 45-minute endeavor)
2) Put a few inches of water in the bottom to warm the tub, then sit naked in the tub while using the hose to wash. (In the winter, a frigid endeavor.)
Needless to say, during the year I lived in the cottage, bathing was not something I did frequently. It required all sorts of coordination (does anyone need to use the toilet before I spend 45 minutes filling the tub?) and took a large chunk out of an evening.
Bathing was stressful, and kind of a hassle. It was also S L O W.
When it takes 45 minutes to fill a tub, you've got plenty of time to steep an herbal infusion, mix up some bentonite clay with salts and essential oils, light a candle, and eagerly anticipate the submersion into the steaming water.
It was during this year that I became a Foremost Expert on Luscious Bathing.
I spent the year experimenting with different methods of adding herbs to baths. I honed techniques of salts and sugar scrubs. I solved all the mysteries of clays.
I also learned how to slow down.
When it takes 45 minutes to fill a tub, once you finally get in, you R E L A X.
You're not going anywhere, anytime soon. Your entire evening has already been devoted to the bath. You're going to linger until every muscle, tendon, and fascia has melted into a wet noodle.
It was during this year that I learned to rely on baths for every form of support: releasing muscle tension, winding down, entering into a new phase of being, shedding old layers -- the bath is the perfect ritual, or medicine, for all of it.
So even though the logistics of bathing were somewhat fraught, the bath time itself was wonderful. I loved sinking into the tub, feeling my whole body exhale and my bones adjust as my muscles relaxed. I could get truly warm, truly rested from my day.
It was 7 months before I took a shower.
Seven months of gentle bathing (or naked hosing -- I won't make it sound more glamorous than it was), seven months of herb-scented water, seven months of baths being a long, slow process.
Seven months of thinking that, when I finally took a shower, it would be extraordinary, convenient, a feat of modernity.
I imagined that I'd feel more clean after a shower, more thoroughly rinsed, more in-tune with the lives of the modern humans around me.
My chance came during winter travel, when I stayed for a few days with friends.
As was now my habit, I waited until I was unbearably stinky to bathe. When the stink finally set in, it was time: I gathered my belongings, closed myself in the bathroom, and turned on the water. Once it warmed up, I got in.
Immediately, my face was pelted by shards of water. I turned away and the streams accosted my back, hot and sharp. It felt so aggressive.
"Is this what most people's experience of water is like?" I thought to myself. "How stressful..."
I finished the shower as quickly as possible. It was not at all relaxing, and I did not feel more clean or better-rinsed than I did from a bath.
I did, however, feel a new sympathy for the modern humans around me.
"I'm not missing out," I thought. "They are."
I realized that, over the last 7 months, my relationship with bathing -- and with water -- had changed. Bathing had gone from being a useful, de-stinkifying activity to an enveloping, restorative ritual.
Despite the hassle of toilet-and-irrigation water pressure coordination, the challenge of setting aside a full hour to get clean, and the occasional bone-chilling naked-hose sessions, the inconvenient claw foot tub had been a gift.
At the end of my time in the cottage, I moved into an apartment with a modern bath/shower setup. I promised myself that I wouldn't stop taking baths simply because I had a shower -- I would still give myself a luscious bath at least once a week.
And yet... I didn't. Showers are so dang convenient. I managed to get in a bath maybe once a month, or less -- sometimes I wouldn't take a bath until I got enough tension headaches and realized my body was stiff.
Even when we know that something makes us feel good, it's hard to make time to do it.
And that's one of the reasons that I created Ritual & Bath.
Having to sit naked and wet in a clawfoot tub on a cold night while you hose yourself off because you've got to get clean? I don't wish that for you.
But I do wish that you experience the gentle, restorative powers of slow self-care. I wish that you can experience bathing as something more profound than a way to stop whiffing at your own armpits in disgust. And I wish that you experience something we all need: self-care accountability.
In our modern lives, we need an external force to make us slow down. Sometimes it's an illness. Sometimes it's a needy cat. Sometimes it's a farm cottage with low water pressure. It's hard to make that time for yourself without a nudge of tough-love.
Ritual & Bath is more than a collection of decadent bath recipes, magical plant talk, and charming videos of me making balms in my kitchen. It's also a commitment to caring for yourself in a gentle way -- a way of inviting me to be your tough-love self-care accountability partner, checking in each week and asking "Have you taken your bath yet?"
If you're looking for a way to soften into the new year, to ease into an era, to love yourself as you slowly unfold, join us for a 7-week journey of lusciousness and transformation.
With the warm exhale of sinking into steamy water,
Amanda
P.S. What's the most bizarre bath you've ever taken. Leave a comment and let me know ;)
Ritual & Bath will open for registration in February :)
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