Bath Shower Home Design

Finnish cabinet ministers do it, Russian hockey players do it, Koreans do it on a first date. Social bathing—known as "naked communion" in Japan—is an integral part of several cultures, strengthening bonds between family members, colleagues, and heads of state. In many countries it's also considered the proper way to welcome a foreign guest. Whether sauna or sento, banya or hammam, the shared bath is society's great leveler, its group hug, its collective sigh. "Not sampling the local bathing culture would be like not trying the local cuisine," says Melisse Gelula, co-founder of Well&Good NYC, an online wellness guide . And like any other institution integral to a society, this one has its rules, the first of which is to behave with churchlike decorum. In Finland, the sauna is the church, says Joonas Berghäll, co-director of the Finnish documentary Steam of Life. (Statistics bear him out: With just over five million inhabitants, Finland has roughly...

I’ll be the first to admit that based on the number of times a week I say, “oh my god, this thing changed my life,” it would seem as though I’ve had approximately one-million life-altering revelations so far. But, if we’re being honest, I can say that I’ve truly only ever had one. And it wasn’t over the insanely good pizza I ate last week, or the airbrushed-looking foundation I just bought—it was the time I got my skin scrubbed at a Moroccan bath house , and it really, truly, completely changed my life. Or, at least, my skin. When I visited Morocco while studying abroad last spring, I got the chance to go to a hammam, a.k.a. a public bath house , and it was pretty much the most culturally different, eye-opening, and skin-softening experience I’ve ever had. Seriously—my skin felt like a newborn baby’s after being slathered in vaseline and kissed by a bunch of clouds. Think of a hammam like a spa, a public jacuzzi, and a steam room, all rolled into one, mixed with a bunch of nudity. Tho...

Similar Documents How to Improve Your English ...1. Switch operating system to English. Changing the operating language of your mobile phone, video recorder etc. to English can be an easy way of making sure you use the language everyday. 2. Set goals. Deciding how many hours you want to study, how many words you want to learn or what score you want to get in a test are all good ways of making sure you do extra study. 3. Learn as many words as you can of one category, e.g. animal words. Learning similar words together can both expand your overall vocabulary and make them easier to learn by forming links between the words in your brain 4. Listen to the radio news in English. You can make this easier by reading the news in English first, or even just by reading or listening to the news in your own language. 5. Read English children 's books. This is very similar to watching English children 's movies, but with the added advantage of there being more illustrations tha...