To get the maximum benefit from your ordinary bath of the day, rub the body first with your plain hands. This is called—the DRY MASSAGE. This is as useful as any massage with oils, etc. recommended for specific ailments.
Oil massage just before the bath carries no meaning, because oily hands cannot cause friction in the body. The element of friction in such oil massage is absent. That is useful only in activating muscles and bones.
Since we are to take ordinary bath in cold water, it will be more useful if we warm up the body before the bath for comparatively greater effect of cold on the body. The proper process of massage is to start rubbing from the head downwards to the heart and from the feet upwards to the heart, that is, in reverse directions in the upper and lower parts of the body.
Slight rubbing of the body with only dry hands, four or five times warms up the body. This is the right time to take cold bath. Even during the bath, one should massage the wet body two or three times, to keep up the warmth of the body for greater effect of the cold water.
Even after finishing the bath, rub your body dry with a towel in the massage fashion. This is called for its importance as the TOWEL BATH. The real benefit of bath is lost, if towel bath is not given to the body after the bath.
Your body’s warmth is then guaranteed, and you can walk out of the bath-room with a freshness and renewed energy for the day. But keep yourself in clothes for some time to adjust your warm body with the weather condition.
Do not put on the fan after the bath till that time. Thus, taking your daily bath with full consciousness of the way it is taken and its effect, you are sure to develop a liking for it and to continue it for the whole of your life.