Sometimes you do not feel like taking your daily bath in the morning, either feeling cold or fever-like. But bath should not be avoided. You would have experienced that, on the day you go out for work without taking bath, you will not be feeling fresh and in winter, a sort of shivering, because the morning cold bath produces sufficient heat in your body to keep you fresh during the clay.
Thus, to remove your hesitation on such a day, you are advised to take a hot-and-cold water bath, which gives you quite the same benefit as a purely cold-water bath. This is also given in case of illness.
Baths are generally taken in a closed chamber, or bathroom, to have longer benefits of the cold water. Keep two buckets in the bathroom, one full with hot water (tolerable) and the other having the usual cold running tap water.
Before starting the bath and after removing your clothes, have a dry massage of the body, that is, rub the body with your hands in the usual way, rubbing the parts of the body in the direction of the heart. Sit down for the bath and gently pour hot water, about two mugs.
Then pour four mugs of cold water. Repeat this process, first hot and then cold water, concluding with cold water. After having a thorough towel bath, that is rubbing your body dry with a towel in the manner of the dry bath, put on the clothes.
Generally hot bath is not recommended in Nature-cure, except in special cases of illness, like body aches and pains, etc. That is why a hot-and-cold bath is considered a better alternative. Hot bath weakens the inner flow of blood, causing sluggishness, instead of freshness.
If taken at all, the temperature of water should not be much above the body temperature. Hot bath may be taken only in case of fatigue after work, while going to bed or on a cold attack. In place of hot bath, hot-and-cold bath if taken, has a very good effect in toning up the tissues of the body.