The Art of Bathing

There isn’t really a good word for some who soap or soak, the bather turns down the burner enjoys bathing – “ablutophile” has unnecessary on conscious thought and is free to daydream. sexual connotations – but perhaps that’s because Or, in neuroscientific terms, the brain enters most people enjoy a good bath. History is littered what’s called the “default mode network”, a kind with famous examples. Gustave Flaubert, the of state of resting engagement. The prefrontal unsurprisingly libidinous author of Madame cortex, the area of the brain tasked with Bovary, took very long hot baths before settling in executive functioning, is relaxed; the medial to work, though never before 10 in the morning. frontal cortex, however, the area of the brain Agatha Christie ate apples and plotted murders implicated in association, connections, emotions, in her tub. Winston Churchill strategized is more active. Meanwhile, the warmth of the from the bath, dictating to secretaries as he water facilitates a flood of the neurotransmitter soaked. Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted Hollywood dopamine, the brain’s natural reward chemical. screenwriter, wrote in the bathtub at night, Dopamine makes us feel good, of course, and a smoking and tapping out screenplays on a small 2018 study by the University of Freiburg in typewriter perched on a crowded bathtub tray. Germany found that a warm, relaxing bath in the He wasn’t alone though: He had a parrot actor afternoon lifts the spirits at least as effectively Kirk Douglas had given him for company. Pablo as exercise. But this also tallies with research Picasso reportedly took a bath when he was in demonstrating that a positive mood enhances, need of ideas, unknowingly following the advice you guessed it, creativity, and that dopamine of legendary American actress Mae West who itself is implicated in the creative process – said, “When in doubt, take a bath.” the more dopamine released, the more areas Baths are not only places of inspiration, of the brain become active. Finally, the bath they are often also the subject – witness the offers a place where ideas are not only more countless artistic depictions of bathers, by likely to happen, but are also more likely to be turns erotic, quotidian, vulnerable. Rembrandt's incubated. Researchers have found that creative voyeuristic Bathsheba at her Bath portrays the breakthroughs on thorny problems require both object of adulterous King David's obsession as intense concentration on them and distraction he would have seen her, while artist Natalie from them, allowing your brain to process and Häusler's 10-meter-long free-standing pool connect all of the things you’ve been thinking in a disused tunnel under the Rhine literally about. rewrites Bathsheba's story, on the tiles the tub We know this intuitively, even without the is made from. Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans' neuroscientific explanation. Paul Valéry, the Jochen taking a bath is an intimate portrayal, French poet and philosopher, described the bath but in a qualitatively different way to Pierre as “the pure and shining sarcophagus”, where Bonnard’s paintings of his nude wife (who was “light and free, the nude settles down and is hardly ever out of her bath, judging by the assuaged.” The bather is nearly weightless, “the number of paintings he made of her in it). The heat of the blood being hardly different from that artist's love of the bath is cross-cultural -- Edo- of the contiguous water”, and feels themselves era Japanese woodblock prints of bathers range “being gently dissolved”: “The mind opens its from the private to the public, the absurd and veins in a dream.” the border-line obscene. Virtually every major We live now in the era of the shower -- arts' movement has done the bath, while in film, some 57 percent of Brits and 90 percent of a good bathtub scene has likewise always been a Americans prefer the more efficient shower plot staple in everything from Scarface to Pretty to the bath. But to the bath, efficiency, even Woman, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to The cleanliness is rather beside the point. The bath English Patient. presents the perfect cocktail for something more What baths offer, according to researchers important -- inspiration. and experts in creativity such as psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, is a mindful break. Linda Rodriguez – journalist for The Boston Globe, Bathing is meditative in its routine; as they the Guardian and Smithsonian.com amongst others.