Hot tubs and Spas: Speaking to an Ancient Indian Tradition
Life takes a gorgeous turn when you decide to bring a new hot tub into your back yard. It speaks of a commitment to pleasure and fun, and marking these as high priorities in your life. Hot tubs and spas are, fortunately, constantly giving back more than you put into them, making their positive effects known immediately. It keeps growing too, and it gets better, where you’re constantly learning new things and experimenting with new possibilities for your backyard parties. Just knowing the spa is waiting for you at the end of the day is enough, but there’s more. Hot tubs have enormous health benefits, and it seems as though new positive news about them comes through the wire every week.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, as hot tubs and spas have been used for centuries, and all over the world. There are various forms of hot tubs, and you could easily include the Roman baths as well as the Onsen in Japan as types of hot tub, in structure or in its effects. And it’s also possible to connect these with bathing rituals, and when the ritual is connected to health, be it mental or physical or spiritual, then there is a relation to portable spas. There are many excellent examples of the ritual use of bathing in India to suggest a link to how we see the therapeutic effects of water here.
There are drawings and sculptures from Karnataka from at least the 13th century that show ritual bathing, and it’s certainly been something in practice for much, much longer. There are many ritual uses for bathing today in contemporary India that could easily connect to antiquity. At the beginning of the year, millions are drawn to the place where the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers meet, to wash in the waters and break the karmic cycle. And again at Pongol, there are many instances of ritual washing for the big harvest festival. This all speaks to the healing powers of water, here used for purification. There is also a huge social aspect to these gatherings, of course, and the feeling of being in the water next to someone you care evokes fantastically powerful instincts. Even if it is just gathering together to watch the Big Game.