Fitness and Health

In the twenty-first century power is shifting from West to the East and as this happens westerners are getting used to many things that might at first seem foreign and new though they are in fact very old. The term Table showers NYC will, for many, represent this healthy blending of cultures.

In China bath houses are popular and readily available in many towns and cities. In the large range of businesses that offer similar services two broad types may be discerned. The cheaper type may provide washing facilities for poorer people who do not have baths at home. The more expensive spa type are large and opulent buildings with luxury services for an affluent clientele. They are often patronized by whole families who may stay over for one or two nights and enjoy a sort of experience that is not widely available in the West.

Puritanism is a kind of religious philosophy which grew out of a rejection of the lavish and indulgent life styles of corrupt Christians. For Puritans, austerity and virtue are synonymous and hedonism in all its forms is associated with guilt, sin and shame. In the East people have not been exposed to such influences to the same extent and they do not regard hedonism as as a cultural taboo in the same way as their western cousins do. Therefore they do not respond in quite the same way to nudity or behavior that puritans might consider immodest.

A westerner might be slightly alarmed when he enters a bath house and finds himself divested of his shoes first and then all his clothes which are swopped for a small wrist band of the type attached to corpses or hospital patients. In a bath house he first becomes naked as the day he was born and finds himself in a large room with other people of the same gender relaxing socially around pools with water at varying temperatures.

After a shower one can sit about here chatting to other people of the same gender and dipping in to pools of warm or cool water. There is also the option to have a body scrub under a shower to open the pours before a massage and other sensual pleasures.

It is clear that there is a strong link between the table showers offered in New York and the bath house culture in Japan and China. At western establishments that offer Asian massages table showers can prepare a person for a massage by removing dead skin and opening the pours of the skin. A person reclines on a special massage bed that allows water to drain away and a therapist laves the body with water from a shower head whilst rubbing the body. It becomes soft and pliable as the therapist uses techniques that are assisted by hydrotherapy.

Western customers unfamiliar with the Eastern bath house culture will possibly feel embarrassed in the situation of naked vulnerability. This is because they are self conscious and unfamiliar with the culture of public bathing. Though the link between Roman baths and those in the East seems to be lost in the mists of time the practice does have deep historical roots.

In such situations it could be helpful to reflect that such treatments date back for thousands of years in both the East and the West, far beyond puritanism. A customer starts by facing the table so that the back of the body can be thoroughly scrubbed from top to toe. Then the customer turns over and some covering for the genitalia may be offered. It is best at this point to lie back and think, not of England, but of ancient traditions of which one is being part.