Take the Waters: The Transformative Power of Our Oldest Ritual

An exploration of how communal bathing has played a vital role in the human experience—and in our connection to community and nature—revealing the social, medical, and cultural benefits of this once-essential pillar of society

For thousands of years, communal bathing was the beating heart of many societies, a time when people gathered to socialize, get healthy, and celebrate moments of transformation in their lives. Yet over the past hundred years, as private bathrooms have proliferated globally, countless bathing rituals have disappeared across the world. Where once there were dozens of people laughing, fighting, and praying in water, today a lone individual stands below a showerhead and fluorescent light.

In Take the Waters, journalist Mélissa Godin embarks on a journey around the world to places that still hold their bathing rituals dear. She soaks in sentōs in Japan, sweats in saunas in Finland, journeys down the Ganges River in India, visits a progressive mikvah in Boston, meets with hydrotherapy doctors in rural France, and road trips to the desert hot springs of New Mexico. Along the way, she chronicles how profoundly bathing connects people to their communities, environments, and bodies. Yet she also shows how forces of modernity are pushing some of these beloved ancient rituals to the brink of extinction.

Combining reportage, history, and nature writing, Take the Waters makes the case that in an ever-polarized, ever-polluted, and ever-lonely world, reviving communal bathing might be what we need to bring us closer together.