The daily grind can sometimes be brutal, gnawing away every hour of your work week until you get to savor a day or two of freedom. If you don’t take a few moments every day for self-care, you could find your stress and anxiety overwhelming. Self-care doesn’t necessarily mean self-indulgence where you spend hundreds of dollars on a spa day or thousands on a trip to Bali. Self-care means stepping away from the daily grind. Self-care means slowing down. Self-care means doing something differently (by the way, here are tips on how to establish a self-care routine).
At Health Digest, we’re always searching for ways to do things differently, and we’ve tried viral TikTok trends like ear massage to help us sleep and eating dragon fruit to help us poop. When we came across the “nothing shower,” we were curious.
Remember the everything shower trend, where you take care of all your exfoliation, conditioning, and shaving needs as a means of self-care? A nothing shower is the opposite. You literally stand in the shower and let the hot water do its thing. So I decided to give a nothing shower a try to see what it can do for my mental health.
A nothing shower helps you breathe
My first nothing shower seemed rather pointless. I didn’t know how long I was supposed to stand there, but I did enjoy the hot water trickling down my neck. I moved my neck back and forth, which helped soothe the tension that often hides there.
When I get stressed out, I often forget to breathe deeply. The second time I tried a nothing shower, I decided to use it to practice my deep breathing. To help open up my lungs and sinuses, I used those scented, fizzy tablets to make the shower smell like eucalyptus. Although I’ve used them before, the scent often gets masked by the scent of my shampoo, conditioner, or shower gel. This time, I let the shower tablet fizz for a few seconds before I stepped in.
The shower steam and the fizzy tablet helped open my lungs, and I became mindful of my breath. I began to take deep, expansive breaths. I felt truly grounded in the present moment. The hot water beating against my neck, chest, and upper back seemed to melt away the stress and let it go down the drain. I didn’t want to get out.
Stretch during a nothing shower
I’ve been dealing with tight shoulders for the past few years because I hunch over my desk. As often as I try to stretch, it doesn’t seem to release the tension in my shoulders. I remembered people telling me, “Don’t stretch a cold muscle,” so I decided to take my stretches into my third nothing shower.
While the hot water and fizzy tablet worked their magic on my breathing, I opened my shoulders against the wall of the shower. With each breath, the tension in my shoulders dissolved. I also bent over to stretch my tight hamstrings and swing my hips back and forth.
Although my nothing shower wasn’t completely void of activity, I can understand how this can be an important tool in your self-care kit. A nothing shower can be done at the beginning of the day to start your mind off right. Some people end their day with a nothing shower to rid their bodies and minds of the stress of the day. A nothing shower is a perfect way to remind yourself to slow down and breathe.
