Salt water therapy … at home!

Often people think about wellness/illness like an on/off light switch: everything is fine and then *boom!* one day you’ve got the flu! And they are surprised … “where did that come from??”  Well, our health is more like a dimmer switch, sometimes at 100%, but most of the time somewhere in between that and the onset of a symptom.  Think of the battery indicator on our cell phone.  When we check it at the end of the day and it’s at 14%, we make sure to plug our phone in and give it a chance to recharge to 100%.  But what about ourselves?  When we are feeling exhausted at the end of the day, and we go to bed … how many people actually sleep well enough to recharge themselves to 100%?  That’s where the salt bath comes in.

Salt has been used for therapeutic purposes as long as there’s been salt (sodium chloride … table salt/sea salt).  Think of how relaxing a weekend at the beach is, swimming in the ocean, walking on the beach, breathing in the salt air.  Think about how well you sleep at night being that relaxed, and how refreshed you feel in the morning.  Now, imagine bringing the benefits of that weekend at the beach into the comfort of your own home, in a manageable 15 minute practice:  the salt bath!!

The best time to take a salt bath is  … anytime!  It’s great as a regular maintenance for wellness, so you do what you can in advance to avoid getting that flu that’s floating around the office.  But if you do start to come down with a symptom, that’s also a great time to take a salt bath, even on consecutive evenings, until those symptoms are cleared.  Salt baths are most effective when you can be proactive  — while the symptoms are small, when you feel symptoms just starting at the edge of your energy field, you have the easiest job of re-balancing and restoring to 100%.  A scratchy throat is MUCH easier to deal with than full blown pneumonia. 

Here’s what you do:  draw a bath, put 4-5 pounds of table salt, add the bubbles of your choice, maybe some essential oil like lavender, and sink in! Spend about 15-20 minutes just relaxing.  You can enhance the bath by doing some gentle abdominal breathing, or visualizing the area of the symptom being cleared of dark stuck energy and becoming bright.  If you don’t have time for a bath, you can get a similar benefit from doing a salt-water foot soak.

Taking a salt bath or a salt foot soak right before bed optimizes your energy, helps you release stress so you can sleep better.  And when you sleep better, you feel better in the morning.  Imagine if everyone in your office took a salt bath tonight and came to work relaxed, refreshed and restored tomorrow morning!  So make it a practice to evaluate your energy:  what percentage charged are you?  Give it a number, and then take a salt bath!