According to a recent study, 46% of women relax by taking a bath, as compared with 20% of men. More men would indulge if they knew what architects knew: men sound better singing in the bath than women, because the tiles are made of materials that resonate to lower frequencies.

In the movie “The Sting”, Paul Newman eased his hangover in a tub full of ice cubes, but the bath needn’t be the equivalent of cod-liver oil to cure what ails you. For centuries, bathing has been used to relieve a variety of ills, from eczema to rheumatoid arthritis.

A creak of spigots, a gush of water, the drip of the tap, and silence: in the bath we create our own private watery world. The ancient Greek word “to bath” also meant “to drive sadness from the mind” a soak makes today’s problems trivial and tomorrow’s problems solvable. Bathing soothes the mind and body, revives the senses, and invigorates the soul. The perfect bath is nothing less than a purifying oasis. Make the most of your time in the tub, and crate the right environment to harmonize the way you want to feel.

To lie in a pool of hot water, slicked by oil or tickled by the suds, is to rediscover the child inside oneself. Hair swirling under water is a sea creature: a breast breaks through and the water lapping against it is a wave against a boulder. A bebop of hot & cold as steam evaporates off the skin’s surface: and the embrace of thick-piled towels redolent of Ivory soap, we become disembodied. Do those ten toes way down there really belong to me? How ever much out bodies may annoy us, underwater we appreciate them anew. Everyone is beautiful in the bathtub, for others, it’s the place to tune in. We have brainstorms: we do deals; we whisper conspiratorially to our lovers on phones, planning what the night will bring. Perhaps when we’re submerged, trace memories of the womb allow us to tap into some primitive creative force.

Bathing is a baptism, a call to the faithful for restoring body, mind and spirit. Medieval monks bathed in cold water as a penance. The human animal sheds its skin about 899 times during its lifetime. In the bath, we are renewed by sloughing off dead skin, we literally allow our inner selves to surface.