Given the unprecedented levels of pandemic-related stress pervading our lives, is it any wonder some of us just want to float away? Baths offer a moment of escape and solitude when getting away from it all feels impossible. According to Pinterest, searches for “spiritual cleansing bath” rose 180 percent last year. Baths have been shown to actually make us feel calmer: Research has linked hydrotherapy with everything from lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol to higher levels of the mood-stabilizing hormone serotonin. Those mood-stabilizing benefits may seem more urgently needed than ever, but various cultures the world over have long relied on the healing properties of the bath. Here, what we can learn from their traditions to take better care of ourselves, inside and out.

The Art of Ayurveda

UMA Pure Calm Wellness Bath Oil

“Baths are knitted into the cultural fabric of India,” says Shrankhla Holecek, the L.A.-based, India-born founder of Uma Oils. (The company creates its own line of products, but it is also revered as one of the world’s best suppliers of organic oils to other luxury brands.) “In Ayurveda, bathing is seen as a way to cleanse the body but also bring your entire being into balance.” Communing with nature is an essential part of the ritual, says Holecek, whether that’s done by taking daily ablutions in a body of water with friends or soaking in a plant-steeped bath made from a centuries-old recipe—rose and jasmine before a wedding night, for example, or eucalyptus and ginger to soothe aches. Holecek’s Uma Oils Pure Calm Wellness Bath Oil feels especially right for these times. It’s a 300-year-old blend of vetiver, chamomile, sandalwood, and lavender that was first used by Indian royalty, and Holecek says the oil helps to unravel inner and outer tension. Add two tablespoons to running bathwater. Before dipping into a warm bath, Holecek likes to gently exfoliate with a gommage mask or dry brush. Taza Ayurveda Loofah Bath Brush, a next-level dry brush, stimulates lymphatic drainage while sloughing off dead skin with woven agave leaves and soothing the senses with vetiver root.

The Hammam at Home

Hammams have remained a sacred space to purify body and soul for millennia in eastern Mediterranean and North African cultures. Often located near mosques, “hammams are visited weekly by most Moroccan people,” says Wafaa Yaggout, a spa therapist at El Fenn, a Marrakech hotel renowned for its signature oversize tubs. The practice, which you can easily adapt for your bath, begins by warming in a steamy room before slathering your body with the traditional black soap, or beldi—a viscous, caramel-like blend made with olive and eucalyptus oils that melts into skin. “After 10 minutes, you rinse and exfoliate,” says Yaggout, using a kessa, a glove that leaves no rough patch behind. “The ritual is quite robust,” admits Yaggout, “but it will leave you feeling relaxed and invigorated at the same time.” 54 Thrones Beldi Moroccan Body Mask has a taffy-like texture that cleanses and exfoliates. (Let it sit for three to 10 minutes.) The crepe fabric of the Zakia’s Morocco Kessa Royal Exfoliating Glove leaves skin incredibly soft to the touch, and using it is part of the fun; it’s oddly satisfying to watch the dead skin roll away. Smoky and ceremonial, Senteurs d’Orient Hammam Cedar of Lebanon Spiritual Body Soap offers a Lebanese take on hammam with the chicest soap-on-a-rope imaginable.

54 Thrones Beldi Moroccan Body Mask

Zakia's Morocco The Original Kessa Hammam Scrubbing Glove

Senteurs D'Orient Hammam Soap - Cedar

Vitamin Water

County Sligo, Ireland, may be best known as Yeats Country—but it’s also known for its seaweed. During the Victorian era, people headed to the coasts in droves to bathe in the mineral-rich seawater and fortify their bodies for the winter. “At the turn of the century, there might have been 30 people living here year-round, but there were nine bathhouses,” says Mark Walton of Strandhill, known for the famous Voya Seaweed Baths. The ritual hasn’t changed much: You sit in a cast-iron tub of hot seawater and freshly cut moisturizing seaweed while the howling transatlantic winds provide white background noise. Now, however, you don’t have to be in Ireland to experience it, as Walton’s team dehydrates the seaweed (without losing its nutrients) within hours of harvesting and packages it into portable blocks. Voya Lazy Days Detoxifying Seaweed Bath makes getting tangled in the weeds a skin-softening, mind-tingling joy.

Cold Plunge

Swedish Dream Swedish Dream Sea Salt Sea Foams

Further north, cold baths, or kallbad, are a chilly Scandinavian bathing tradition, says Santa Monica–based, Stockholm-raised aesthetician Natasa Bose. “The old-fashioned way was to just take a dip in the ocean or a lake,” she says. Then that was followed by a trip to the sauna. It sounds intense, but it’s believed to have health benefits like enhancing cognitive function, boosting energy levels, and improving mood through the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. To make the experience more accessible, Bose suggests beginning with a warm bath and ending with a burst of cold water from the shower head. Some of our favorite Scandi imports include L:a Bruket 196 Detox Seaweed Tonic, rich with algae and spirulina, Swedish Dream Sea Salt Foams, which evoke a dip in the Baltic, and Skandinavisk Hav Body Wash, which has a blend of sea kelp and beach rose.

At the Onsen

Morihata Binchotan Activated Charcoal Body Scrub Towel

Japan’s volcanic terrain boasts upwards of 3,000 onsen—mineral-rich hot-spring baths popularized by the island nation’s first Buddhist monks. And the communal baths are not only plentiful but also accessible, says Nachi Kanemaru Glick, a Miami-based, Miyazaki-born facialist: “It costs only a couple of dollars, so everyone goes once or twice a week.” At home, bathing is treated as a mini ritual to be respected. “You can’t just hop in,” says Kanemaru Glick. Instead, you wash thoroughly outside the tub with soap and an exfoliating mitt or binchotan towel first, getting “behind your ears, between your toes, and the bottom of your feet.”

At home, it’s common to use mineral salts or soaks that evoke a true nature bath. “The French have lavender,” says Kanemaru Glick. “We have hinoki.” Jodie Webber, the creative director and head of healing arts at Shou Sugi Ban House, a Hamptons wellness resort inspired by Japanese principles of wabi-sabi, also emphasizes the importance of hinoki. "Hinoki wood is highly therapeutic," she says. Bathing in traditional hinoki ofuru tubs (tubs made of hinoki wood), or even simply bathing with hinoki oil or wood chips, can confer benefits, Webber says, like "the physiological effect of calming the nervous system" as well as soothing irritated skin as "it’s gentle yet anti-bacterial." Te Plus Te Hinoki Wood Chip Sachets add the soothing scent of Japanese forests and calming benefits to bathwater. Morihata Binchotan Charcoal Body Scrub Towel gently exfoliates the body with a tightly knit weave that leaves skin ultrasoft. Kotoshina's Jojoba and Bamboo scrub gently exfoliates with jojoba beads and bamboo, and is scented with green tea. To mimic the thermal waters of the onsen, Kanemaru Glick turns to magnesium- packed salts like Chidoriya Higashiyama Bath Salt. MyKirei by Kao Pampering Yuzu Foam Body Wash is infused with yuzu, which is added to winter baths as a wellness booster.

At the Bathhouse

“In Hungary, if you have eczema or arthritis, a doctor will prescribe a form of thermal-water therapy,” says lldi Pekar, an NYC-based aesthetician born and raised in Budapest. “It can be drinking the water or soaking in a bath.” That’s why the Hungarian capital’s pharmacy shelves are lined with thermal waters with varying concentrations of sulfur, magnesium, calcium, and more. But the best way to absorb them, she says, is transdermally with a trip to a bathhouse—packed every weekend with people taking the edge off a long week or late night. “You could wear the most expensive face cream, but it won’t make much difference if you’re stressed,” says Pekar of the country’s inside-out beauty philosophy. At home, she soaks in a Hungarian thermal-water-infused bath for a minimum of 15 minutes. “Afterwards, I always have the best night’s sleep.” Pekar also suggests soaking in a hot bath with one or two spoonfuls of Hungarian thermal mud powder, like that found in Eminence Organic Skin Care Hungarian Herbal Mud Treatment. For the most decadent treatment, buff your body with Omorovicza Gold Sugar Scrub, which blends Hungarian thermal water with cane sugar and colloidal gold.

Eminence Organic Skin Care Hungarian Herbal Mud Treatment

Omorovicza Gold Sugar Scrub

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