by Régis Soavi

While the West has almost entirely converted to the shower, despite the importance the bath has had over the centuries, the East and in particular Japan seems to be taking the same direction. In spite of a renewed interest due to a fashion that has touched the young Japanese, it turns out that the elderly are, almost solely, the only people who retain an attachment to what could be called “an ancestral way of life”. In Seitai, what makes the bath special is that Noguchi Haruchika sensei had made it one of the elements of the terrain normalisation and it was part of the training for the uchi deshi.

Tsuda Itsuo senseï

It is Tsuda Itsuo sensei who, thanks to his books and especially in his fourth volume entitled One, introduced the Seitai hot bath practice in Europe as soon as the early seventies. A seitai technician, who had studied and worked with Noguchi Haruchika sensei during more than twenty years, he started as soon as he arrived from Japan to make known what he translated by the Regenerating Movement: Katsugen Undo.

It was already a bit of a revolution to make a little group of French and Swiss people experience this “exercise of the involuntary system”, to have them admit that it was possible to practice – as he recommended – ‘with no knowledge, no technic, no aim’, but Tsuda sensei did not stop there. He started a long work of education, but also of clarification, which encouraged students to think and experiment by themselves instead of following beaten tracks, ideas or protocols. At the beginning, to concretise this immense work, he published booklets of a few photocopied pages which we used to call “Mr Tsuda‘s notebooks”. It is these notebooks, which we would discover more or less every month, which later became the chapters of his books.

It is on the occasion of a Regenerating Movement workshop, during one of his conferences he would call ‘little causeries,’ that he started to talk about the hot bath. We had no idea of what he taught us, many of us visualized something that was closer to a sauna or hammam. As usual with what he would make us discover, it took him years to get his message through. To admit that a bath did not merely consist in washing oneself to be clean but could have other qualities, as well as other consequences, did not appear to us, young French people, as something obvious.

The bath in daily life

‘Seitai, the normal terrain, means that we constantly maintain the feeling of well-being we have after a hot bath’ ¹ Tsuda sensei used to tell us. To apprehend Seitai, I therefore had to discover this sensation, keystone of the understanding, and this would at least pass through the discovery of the hot bath!

In Europe, there are no or very few Sento², Ofuro³, and even less Onsen⁴, and discovering the Japanese hot bath was already not a simple thing, but understanding what makes the Seitai bath something special, that turned out to be a challenge. In order to have the chance to be introduced with simplicity to the art of the hot bath, one needs to know someone who has already had the opportunity not only to discover it, for instance during a stay in Japan, but also and especially to have made it a daily practice.

What difference is there between a “normal” bath and the hot bath, in particular in Seitai? In the West the purpose of the bath is often washing, or, at best, relaxation, rarely is it precise regarding temperature, but in general it is rather mild and one can lounge in it and stay in the water for a rather long time. In this kind of bath, the water cools down rather quickly of course, but this is not a problem because at the moment when we find it too lukewarm we get out of the bath and that’s it. One of the basic elements to understand the Seitai vision of the bath is obviously the hot bath as it is practised in Japan, and for a Japanese it is way much simpler from the beginning. But this is not enough because the Seitai bath has many specificities which distinguish it from the traditional Japanese bath. Noguchi sensei himself often regretted the lack of understanding his students would show when he gave conferences about the Seitai bath in which he explained its purposes and beneficial effects.

An abyss of details, particularities, divide these two ways of taking the bath. The preparation of the Seitai hot bath requires an attention, which we – many of us – have lost the habit of exerting, and which, for what concerns us, does not usually apply to the bath anyway. The concentration required for its preparation can from the start discourage many people who are no longer accustomed to making use of this capacity outside their work, or who only resort to it during their youth when they are studying. Many students show a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning, but they rapidly get tired of the repetitive aspect and often quickly find another topic of interest that better satisfies their superficial and light side, acquired in a world that often favours this aspect only.

The bath – user guide

It is almost impossible in France to have a ready for use bathtub, always full with lukewarm water, that we would only need to warm up, as it exists in Japan. The first move therefore consists in filling it with hot water, and according to the room temperature, the tension, the tiredness we feel, the atmosphere of the house, the quantity will differ to allow us, after adding a little cold water, to obtain the desired temperature. We do not a priori and peremptorily adjust the thermostat according to an idea or a protocol. The bath temperature is never an objective value. Although it is measurable, it still remains entirely subjective and depends on each person’s feeling, on their own perception when they enter the bath. It is a knowledge that expresses itself in the form of sensations, that builds up, and develops gradually as one discovers what the hot bath is. The first times, if only as a security measure not to risk burning oneself, it is necessary to dip a hand into the water to feel if the temperature suits us, but it is extremely difficult to know, even approximately, if it is right or not, the main thing, which is experience, is lacking. If one is not accompanied in this discovery it turns out rather difficult and often, the first times, the bath is somehow a failure, even though it was pleasurable, it relaxed us, refreshed us, and even invigorated us.

Temperature!

It is the first information we look for as a neophyte and I was no exception. In addition Tsuda sensei carefully avoided making it easy for us, he would simply write:

‘The sensation of heat differs according to the individual,’ ⁵

‘The hot bath causes the blood channelled to the brain to flow to other parts of the body, but the effects can be risky for Europeans, who are not used to it.’ ⁶

‘The bath thermometer, even if it is true and accurate, has the following defects: the temperature rises quickly but falls slowly; it only shows the temperature of one area of the bath. There is nothing better than a good sensitive hand.’ ⁷

‘What a lot of harm I would cause if, for example, I declared it essential to take the bath at such-and-such a temperature! We are flooded by rubbish science that removes any chance we have of exercising our ability to focus our attention and to feel.’ ⁸

My personal bath temperature is generally around 43°C to 44°C though it can, sometimes, still vary by 1 to 2 degrees higher or lower depending on the day. This, I could observe over the years when I was still a neophyte, because I would control each bath with one of the thermometers I had tested. I kept the one that seemed the most accurate and the closest to my sensation. I continued to verify the accuracy of my sensation with respect to the bath heat during almost twenty years, among other things by measuring the bath temperature when I considered that it was ready, that there was nothing to add, neither hot nor cold water. Even today each time I need to do a “technical bath” for someone of my family, I am particularly careful both to the temperature and to the way to enter or get out, as well as to the duration. For this, only one instrument, the concentration nourished by the sensation which is itself fostered by experience.

Experience

It is in the last two chapters of his ninth book Facing Science that Tsuda Itsuo sensei reports in a few lines one of the conversations I had with him about the Seitai hot bath before publishing two of my letters on the topic. The title of these chapters ‘Experience is the mother of intuition’ had at that time touched me very much and I am still moved and grateful for the trust he expressed towards me given the few words he wrote as a header and at the end of the text⁹.

Entering “this world of the hot bath” has not been simple and it would be too long to explain here all the processes, the experimentations, as well as the verifications I made during this period of time, on the way to enter, the moment to get out, as well as to find the right temperature, the one that fitted my body temperature at a given moment, and what the consequences were on my organism, my sensibility.

The starting point of my research on this path consisted in finding the way to stimulate my organism, so as to allow it to normalize. The hot bath belongs to the techniques used in Seitai to make the body’s terrain become more sensitive. I therefore started as an autodidact, and mainly on myself, by following the few observations and recommendations from Tsuda sensei. I needed a bit more than three years taking the bath every day, this means it was necessary to prepare about a thousand two hundred baths, not counting those I prepared for my partner, before reaching something convincing, something that allowed me to verify by myself that what I discovered was reliable, and that I could rely on my sensations, on my intuition. Sensei’s reactions and reflexions, which he made about the anecdotes I would tell him on this matter, in the morning or when I was driving him home after the aikido session, were particularly valuable to me. In this way I could check that it was valid and my master, Tsuda Itsuo confirmed to me his attachment to the development of this research by publishing these few lines on my experience in 1983.

Children

I had practised the Regenerating Movement and Aikido with Tsuda sensei for almost ten years, and my sensitivity had developed a lot, when Manon my first daughter was born. Thanks to my experience with the bath, I was ready to accompany her for her first bath after birth. Tsuda sensei writes about this:

‘The first bath after birth should be regulated according to the temperature of the mother’s womb, to which the newborn had been accustomed, so we begin at 37 degrees and go up to 38 degrees. The temperature can be increased by another half degree. We need to be careful not to clean the vernix all at once, that is, the layer of fat that covers the baby, for it continues to protect him after birth. It is better for it to disappear by itself after a week of soap-free baths, without too much washing.’ ¹⁰

I accompanied her as I later did for my other children, until their adolescence, an age when, having acquired the capacity through daily experience, they started to prepare their bath by themselves and for themselves. It is essential in Seitai, when one wants to use the hot bath, to do it in the respect of the biological speed of the individual, and especially of course for a child. Tsuda sensei explained to us that Noguchi Haruchika sensei, to solve the problems when his children were too nervous, anxious, had a cold or had to go through an infant disease, used the variation and modulation of the bath temperature, its duration, as well as the way to enter into the water. This is of utmost importance in the case of babies, hence Tsuda sensei explained:

‘What matters is not so much the bath temperature as how to dip the body in the bath. The decisive moment is when the baby is put in the hot water, because one is making use of the reaction of the musculature, produced by the body temperature change in moving from the open air to the bath water. The body contracts temporarily on contact with hot water and gradually expands. We must choose the precise moment, when induced relaxation is not yet complete so that contraction resumes, to take the baby out of the bath.’ ¹¹

The vocation of Seitai is to allow individuals to live fully without having to worry about their health, to go through diseases, life accidents, to react in an adequate manner to all that directly or indirectly touches us. Restoring the body’s good condition, recovering a good sensitivity, all this starts early, very early. Acting so that children, as soon as they are born, can maintain the balance in the functioning of their body is not an easy task, the Seitai hot bath if correctly used can be of great help for parents who already know it for themselves and have understood how to use it.

Therefore, the hot bath is a kind of gymnastics that affects the entire being, rather than a cleansing of the body.’ ¹²

Without a personal research in this domain it is impossible to understand what I am talking about, the concrete sensation of the bath itself, as well as the after-bath sensation, will always be missing. This knowledge cannot be only theoretical, else one could say this would correspond to knowing all about swimming without ever dipping a foot into the water, and intending to teach other people to swim.

In Seitai, to each situation corresponds a precise bath, if we are very tired, if we have eaten or drunk too much, if we are chilled or have caught a cold. There is no user guide, it all depends on the age, health state, the period we are going through and a thousand other details, all of which have their importance. In Seitai, there is no science of the general but only a science of the particular, Sensei would tell us.

A vademecum for the bath

Once again there is no manual that would allow to take the bath with 100 % guaranteed results, with complete safety and impeccable reliability. It all depends on they way to prepare it and on the state of mind. If one is presumptuous, or absent-minded, better not to try, else it is at your own risk! It is almost impossible and even dangerous to give advice to someone who is not used to the bath. It is most often the less competent persons who try to teach the hot bath “vademecum”. Presenting themselves as knowledgeable they discuss their ideas on the topic article after article, or on the social networks, give recipes supposed to solve all health issues, all difficulties. They even indicate all the so-called precautions that have to be taken with “The Hot Bath”, unfortunately forgetting most of the time some notions of utmost importance. The consequences can be serious, and accidents, even not severe, can sometimes turn out worrying for people who have no habit of the hot bath. Yet, it is most of the time a matter of having a bit of common sense and not playing the jack-of-all-trades or the careless pretentious.

The foot-bath

There are a lot of technical baths in Seitai: the leg-bath, the bath in case of food poisoning, the bath to eliminate an excess of alcoholic drink, the bath in case of brain fatigue, the bath to balance the baby’s nutrition, etc.

Here is an example of technical bath which Tsuda Sensei revealed to us with the purpose to allow us an approach of this know-how:

‘Foot-baths, whose principle I have explained, are starting to become widely used among practitioners. It is a matter of soaking your feet to above ankle depth in a bath that is 2 degrees warmer than a usual bath, which makes it unbearably hot for a normal body. After two minutes, we take our feet out and dry them. They have become red. When a person has a cold, one foot remains pale. We re-soak it in the bath, adding hot water before, until it also turns red.’ ¹³

When you read it for the first time you may think that the aim of the technique is to cure the cold whereas once more, according to the Seitai approach, it is a matter of stimulating the body to go through the cold, speeding up the bodily reactions so that you get out of the cold stronger and in better health when it is finished. This technique seems very simple, but if you reread the short text with care before starting you will realize that, though it is precise, there are a lot of unknown details which are far from trivial and require some thought before you make the attempt. Nevertheless you will realize later, after having made a lot of experiences, that it is not so complicated when sensitivity is our guide.

Seitai, a special understanding of hygiene

The vision Seitai has of hygiene is indeed different but more modern from a certain point of view, in spite of its anteriority, than the one disseminated in most media. A conception of cleanliness which meets not only ecology but also the leading studies on symbiosis, like those collected by M.-A. Selosse, which have led him to the notion of “clean filth”. Here are two extracts:

‘The reconciliation with the microbial world flies in the face of our codes of cleanliness.’ And offends ‘education and good manners. But here cleanliness (a social code) no longer overlaps hygiene (the medical practice which optimizes health). Yesterday, one thought wrongly that there was no hygiene without sterilization, which led to a counter-productive vision of cleanliness regarding diseases related to modernity like diabetes, overweight, allergies.’ ¹⁴

‘The hygienist theory then encounters the notion of “clean filth”: a certain degree of contamination is necessary for a good development and a good functioning of the immune system.’ ¹⁵

The hot bath in the first place affects the skin. It is important to realize that the skin is the largest organ of the human body, it accounts for 16% of its total weight, it is not just ‘a kind of leathery bag that contains the body’ ¹⁶, a mere shell with a complex makeup, it interacts with the environment and has vital functions.

The epidermis includes immune cells and that’s where you find the cutaneous microbiota, filled with billions of micro-organisms. The hot water stimulates the immune system of the skin without attacking it with etching or bactericidal reagents like those in shower gels or other detersive soaps. The heat stimulates sweating so much so that we even sweat in water, which facilitates the activity of the autonomic nervous system and the elimination of toxins and other impurities through the sweat ducts. Facilitating discharge through sweating also eliminates bacterial macerations and therefore unpleasant body odours.

Modern living conditions – work, transport, excessive mediatisation, thus stress of all kinds – cause tensions in individuals which are prone to make everybody sick. The suggested answer is often medicalisation. Against sleeplessness sleeping pills are proposed, against nervousness tranquilisers, to deal with apathy stimulant drugs, with depression euphoriants, etc. The hot bath as Seitai understands it is not a cure-all, it is an opportunity to regulate the body, a tool to retrieve one’s balance, one’s autonomy, thanks to the relaxation and at the same time the stimulation of the whole body. The well-being that one then feels comes from the relaxation brought by the energy circulating afresh, and from the clarity of mind one feels because the “head” is cleared of the concerns which accumulate in everyday life. One then discovers what it means “the sensation of after the hot bath” of which Noguchi Haruchika sensei and Tsuda sensei would talk, this sensation being one of the keys, one of the impalpable but major instruments for who wants to have an approach not only intellectual but more concrete and practical of Seitai.

The hot bath in everyday life

The hot bath is always a huge pleasure, everyone in the family expects it, when the time comes, no one would want to skip it, much to the contrary, the opportunity is so great and yet so simple, to relax, to recover after the fatigue and the tensions which are hard to escape from during the day. The children are never reluctant at taking it, all the more so if they know it since birth, but whatever one may think, it is more than a daily habit, for them too it is part of a rebalancing moment which they intuitively feel.

The bath often becomes an axis in the family life, a moment unlike any other thanks to which everybody gets together for this activity regardless of age or occupations. It is for example around bath time that rituals are renewed, as well as a certain type of communication between parents and children; it’s a moment when they can get together outside social contingencies imposed by society and its codes.

The bath is generally prepared in the evening, without haste, and everybody after washing comes to dive into the hot water. The ones to go first will be those who take it the hottest, for it is easier to cool the water than to warm it in the present conditions of Western urban life. Yet each person has her own suitable bath temperature, which is different from that of the others, even if the difference is very small, a few tenth of a degree sometimes, but the satisfaction of this need of the body that we feel requires an adjustment which is very precise, though subjective. Since the temperature of the water tends to decrease, one often has to warm the bath in order to get the satisfaction.

Sometimes also at the end of one’s bath, one gets out and adds some burning hot water which is mixed in the bathtub to prepare a “reactivation:” as the body has cooled down, when you get into the water again, the difference of temperature between the air and the water which the skin feels is all the greater, one stays just a few minutes and one comes out of the water again.

This method is well known in Seitai because it stimulates the organism much more and it can be used to help the body go through an illness or a little accident of daily life. Still, it is better not to do too many reactivations and not too hot ones, because if one thinks that in this way the reactions will be stronger and therefore more efficient, this is a mistake. Too much power often impairs the strength of the reaction that we had hoped for and it sometimes turns it into an opposite reaction. Everyone already knows his own habits, his own tendencies regarding the heat of the bath, but one is sometimes surprised by the bath one has prepared for oneself. That is why it can happen that even afterwards one should think to oneself: ‘ah, but today I really felt like a much hotter bath’ or ‘it’s strange but I need a relaxing bath these days, I take it really mild.’

Studying Seitai

The art of the bath was part of the study of Seitai for Noguchi sensei’s uchi deshi. The student had to prepare his master’s bath so that it was ready when he would come back after his trips, lectures or encounters outside home. This does not seem so difficult if one does not know the conditions the student had to face.

First he did not know when Noguchi sensei would come back from the visits he made in town because his hours were never the same, he did not know either if his day had been difficult or rather pleasant and so if he was tired, tense or relaxed. He had to anticipate the moment when he would be back to have time to prepare the bath, which in particular required at the time to fuel a wood stove especially designed to warm the water and bring it to the right temperature. He had to guess in what mood he would be, with no information at all, to know what the temperature of the water was without a thermometer. How could he manage?

Should he wait until Noguchi came back and talk with him?

Explain to him that the conditions he demanded were inhumane?

Appeal to the uchi deshi union, if such a thing existed?

Or give up everything “because it was too hard”?

All these reactions would be perfectly understandable, especially if you know what Noguchi sensei’s final recommendation was: the most difficult, the worst from a certain point of view, the student did not have the right to touch the bath water, even with the tip of a finger. That was so whatever the difficulties, the conditions, the need to check etc.

What was left for him to do? One single solution to continue on this path: use and develop his intuition.

Régis Soavi

‘The art of the hot bath in Seitai’, an article by Régis Soavi published in October 2021 in Yashima #13.

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Notes:

1. 1. Tsuda Itsuo, One, Chap. XIV, Yume Editions, 2017, p. 105 (1^st ed. in French, 1978, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 103)
   2. Japanese public bath
   3. Refers to the Japanese bath but also to the bath tub
   4. Japanese hot-spring bath
   5. Tsuda Itsuo, One, ibid., pp. 104–105 (1^st ed., p. 103)
   6. Ibid., p. 106 (1^st ed., p. 104)
   7. Ibid., p. 109 (1^st ed., p. 107)
   8. Ibid., p. 105 (1^st ed., p. 103)
   9. Tsuda Itsuo, Facing Science, Chap. XIX & XX, Yume Editions, 2023, pp. 145–158 (1^st ed. in French, 1983, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 140–152)
   10. Tsuda Itsuo, One, ibid., p. 108 (1^st ed., p. 107)
   11. Ibid., p. 109 (1^st ed., p. 107)
   12. Ibid., p. 108 (1^st ed., p. 106)
   13. Ibid., p. 107 (1^st ed., p. 106)
   14. Marc-André Selosse, « L’Homme augmenté… grâce aux microbiotes » [‘Humans augmented… thanks to microbiota’], Pour la science Hors-Série [For Science Special Issue] n° 105 (pp. 58–65, available online), Nov.–Dec. 2019, p. 62
   15. Marc-André Selosse, Jamais seul [Never Alone], pub. Actes Sud (Arles, France), June 2017, p. 186
   16. Noguchi Haruchika, Colds and their benefits, Zensei Publishing Company, 1986, p. 105 (available online). (Compiled and translated from edited transcripts of lectures delivered in the 1960s.)