30 recipes

Bath Rituals

A bath ritual is the one category where the point is not the skin at all; it is the half hour. Milk baths, oat soaks, salt and herb bags, shower melts and steamers, foot-of-the-bed warmers — everything here is built to make ordinary hot water feel like an occasion. The recipes are deliberately low-risk: oats and milk soften the water, salts feel good on tired muscles, dried herbs and a very few drops of essential oil carry the scent.

We never put undiluted essential oil straight into a bath; it floats and can burn, so every recipe blends it into salt, oil or milk first. Nothing in a bath will detox you or treat anything, and the pages say as much. What you can expect is warm, softened skin, a bathroom that smells lovely, and better sleep afterwards because you actually stopped for a while. Keep the water warm rather than hot, skip strongly scented soaks if you are pregnant or have sensitive skin, and rinse the tub so oats do not block the drain.