The Allure Of Communal Bathing

The Allure Of Communal Bathing

I’m floating in a communal pool that’s heated to a balmy 34C and I couldn’t give a stuff about anything. All the usual stressors like deadlines, bills and traffic jams melt away under the mineral-enriched jets pummelling my lower back at Soak Bathhouse on the Gold Coast.

But I vowed to try everything during my 90-minute “soak and sip” session – and that includes the icy cold plunge pool. I brace myself. It’s like leaping into Antarctica. Catching my breath, I hastily retreat to the steam room, where the more sensible bathers are breathing in warm, eucalyptus-scented mist.

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In this time of contagion, it might seem odd that public bathhouses are back – but they’re booming. Despite Delta and Omicron’s best efforts, at least four major new facilities opened in Australia last year, including Queensland’s Soak, the Bathhouse and Talaroo Hot Springs and Melbourne’s Sense of Self. This year, another communal bathing facility, also called the Bathhouse, opened in Douglas Park, south-west of Sydney.

Operators including Soak’s CEO, Alexis Dyson, claim that after 18 months of wearing masks, dodging hugs and handshakes and hunkering down at home, people are yearning to get up close and personal with others. “We’re seeing a huge focus on wellness and mental health generally,” she says. “In particular, people are feeling the need to connect with others.”

Communal bathing dates back to Neolithic times, when nomadic tribes sloughed off the strains of the hunt in natural hot springs. This time-honoured tradition finds contemporary expression in many different cultures – think Turkish hammams, Japanese onsen, South Korean jjimjilbang and Finnish saunas. For many Australians, though, the closest we’ve come to communal bathing is sharing the childhood tub with a sibling, or standing under beachside showers to banish sand and salt. For the most part, bathing is a solitary, functional activity, often performed under time pressure, as we prepare for something more important – a date, a meeting, a day at work.

But what if bathing was the main event? Melbourne’s Sense of Self co-founder Mary Minas still recalls the wonderment she felt as a 20-year-old entering a hammam at a Paris mosque with a French-Tunisian friend. “We did a ritual that she would do with her mum weekly as a kid growing up,” Minas says. It stretched over six hours instead of the one Minas had banked on, and aspects of it were confronting.

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