When it comes to relaxing, there are few treatments that can beat a long soak in the bathtub. But, with a little more effort, says health and beauty guru Bharti Vyas, it can become a truly memorable experience.
Here's what Vyas recommends:
Start with a comfortably warm room, a book to read and a few lighted candles flickering around the bath.
Rub a mixture of two tablespoons of ground oatmeal and a tablespoon of almond oil into your skin and "you will notice your skin becoming warm and pink." Pay special attention, Vyas says, to the hard skin on the elbows, knees, soles and heels "on which the polish has a remarkable softening effect."
For the bath itself, add two or three handfuls of Dead Sea salt, plus a squirt of bath and shower gel to water that "should be pleasantly warm, so you are inclined to linger." Too hot, and the result can be stimulating rather than relaxing, and you would have an unwanted dehydrating and slackening effect on the skin.
Relax and submerge yourself in the bath for about 20 minutes, then shower and apply body lotion to further hydrate the skin. Then, says Vyas, "go straight to bed and let the therapy go on working overnight."
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