Sep 3, 2016 12:53 AM
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-we-need-to-bri...al-bathing
EXCERPT: For most of the history of our species, in most parts of the world, bathing has been a collective act. In ancient Asia, the practice was a religious ritual believed to have medical benefits related to the purification of the soul and body. For the Greeks, the baths were associated with self-expression, song, dance and sport, while in Rome they served as community centres, places to eat, exercise, read and debate politics.
But communal bathing is rare in the modern world. [...] Reintroducing bathhouses with such a principle in mind could be a means of tackling the loneliness of living in contemporary megacities. These would not be the luxury spas and beauty salons that promise eternal youth for those who can afford them, nor the gay bathhouses of the world’s metropolises, but real public spaces: cheap, multi-purpose and accessible to all.
Today, many people are turning to yoga, mindfulness and other mind-body practices as a private means of resolving the sense of ‘disembodiment’ that can arise from a cramped life spent in metro carriages and hunched over computer screens. The bathhouse could provide a similar space to focus on the body but, crucially, it would do so at the collective level, bringing corporeality and touch back into the sphere of social interaction.
This is a simple principle: that being physically present with one another makes us more aware of ourselves, and those around us, as biological – not purely linguistic and intellectual – organisms. The ghostly figures that slide past on trains and buses can, in such a space, cease to appear as abstract ideas or numbers and become human once again. It is often forgotten that the Roman baths were a space where people of different social classes would wash side by side....
EXCERPT: For most of the history of our species, in most parts of the world, bathing has been a collective act. In ancient Asia, the practice was a religious ritual believed to have medical benefits related to the purification of the soul and body. For the Greeks, the baths were associated with self-expression, song, dance and sport, while in Rome they served as community centres, places to eat, exercise, read and debate politics.
But communal bathing is rare in the modern world. [...] Reintroducing bathhouses with such a principle in mind could be a means of tackling the loneliness of living in contemporary megacities. These would not be the luxury spas and beauty salons that promise eternal youth for those who can afford them, nor the gay bathhouses of the world’s metropolises, but real public spaces: cheap, multi-purpose and accessible to all.
Today, many people are turning to yoga, mindfulness and other mind-body practices as a private means of resolving the sense of ‘disembodiment’ that can arise from a cramped life spent in metro carriages and hunched over computer screens. The bathhouse could provide a similar space to focus on the body but, crucially, it would do so at the collective level, bringing corporeality and touch back into the sphere of social interaction.
This is a simple principle: that being physically present with one another makes us more aware of ourselves, and those around us, as biological – not purely linguistic and intellectual – organisms. The ghostly figures that slide past on trains and buses can, in such a space, cease to appear as abstract ideas or numbers and become human once again. It is often forgotten that the Roman baths were a space where people of different social classes would wash side by side....
