The Healing Virtues
Soaking for Spiritual health
Ben and Wyn at Riverbend Hot Springs, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
When the pressures of life begin to make your bones ache, it’s time to slow down and realize where you are.
In the great scheme of things, your troubles are insignificant. That’s not meant to belittle; it’s cause for relief.
We humans live on a speck of a planet in the backwaters of a galaxy amid billions upon billions of other galaxies in a universe too vast for human reckoning.
The average span of a human life is somewhere around 80 years, give or take, on a planet that’s over 4 billion years old.
That doesn’t mean your life is insignificant, because it’s not. The fact that you can even wonder at the mystery of it all is the key to unlocking the mystery of existence and your place in it.
There’s no better place to do that than in a natural hot spring.
It’s In The Water
For thousands of years, people around the world have traveled to natural hot springs for rest and renewal. The healing virtues of natural hot springs aren’t some New Age invention.
They are real.
Long before the commercial rise of modern spas and wellness retreats, mineral-rich hot springs were revered as gifts of the earth.
Wyn and I love the southwest, where the Apache hold a deep reverence for natural hot springs to this day. One tribe, whose members include famous chiefs Victorio and Nana, is called the Warm Springs Apache.
U.S. Hot Springs
Native American tribes across North America saw the hot springs as sacred places for both physical and spiritual healing. The area now known as Hot Springs, Arkansas, once served as a place where enemy tribes could lay down their weapons and soak in peace.
The sacred essence of natural hot springs isn’t unique to the Americas. In ancient Iceland, thermal areas played a key role in Norse mythology. The Māori people of New Zealand built communities around geothermal zones because they were attracted to their spiritual significance.
The common denominator between all these cultures is that the people saw hot springs as places where the body could relax, the mind could soften, and the spirit could breathe.
Nothing’s changed. A comprehensive history of hot springs could never compare to simply soaking in them yourself. It’s a powerful and relatively easy way to reconnect with nature in a manner that reveals your own significance in the grand scheme of things.
The Scientific Perspective
It’s a no-brainer that hot springs can lead to deep physical relaxation. The warmth of the water helps loosen muscles, allows joints to operate more fluidly, and eases the stiffness caused by stress or prolonged periods of sitting behind the wheel or in front of a computer.
As the body warms, blood vessels dilate, leading to greater circulation. This increased blood flow delivers oxygen and nutrients more efficiently throughout the body. This contributes to a feeling of lightness that can stay with you long after the soak ends.
One thing that distinguishes natural hot springs from ordinary hot baths is their mineral content. The natural waters, depending on where they are, can contain magnesium, calcium, sulfur, silica, or lithium.
Magnesium helps with muscle relaxation and nervous system balance. Sulfur-rich springs support skin health. Silica is associated with its positive impact on hair, skin, and connective tissue.
You don’t need to know all of that to reap the benefits of a soak. But knowing these things can contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between sentient beings and inanimate objects like minerals.
Soaking in warm water can lead to a parasympathetic state in the nervous system. Your heart rate slows as your breathing deepens, and your mind grows quiet.
In a culture bombarded with constant stimulation, hot springs offer stillness. From stillness arises spiritual awakening. Contemplating your connection to the water, which comes from the bowels of the earth, your spirit rises on the steam rising towards the heavens.
You realize you are significant, that your life has great meaning, because you are aware of your connection to something beyond: the mystery of being.
Nature plays a critical role in this connection. Hot springs can be found in canyons, forests, deserts, or mountain valleys, far from the hubbub of artificial light and digital noise.
Soaking under an open sky while listening to a breeze sashaying through the trees awakens a sense of belonging that modernity disrupts.
Always remember that natural rhythms are much older and wiser than our modern-day schedules.
The primary virtue of soaking in a natural hot spring is its simplicity. You can realize your significance by slowing down and by simply being still. Stillness is sacred if you allow it to flow.
This is health.