How Air Baths Should Be Taken

At first expose the nude body to cool air only for short periods at a time, until the skin becomes inured to it.

Likewise, unless you are well used to the sun, take air baths of short duration, say from ten to twenty minutes, until your skin and your nervous system have become accustomed to the influence of heat and strong light.  Prolonged exposure to the glaring rays of the noonday sun might produce severe burning of the skin, aside from a possible harmful effect upon the nervous system.

The novice should protect head and eyes against the fierce rays of sunlight.  This is best accomplished by means of a wide-brimmed straw hat of light weight.  In cases where dizziness results from the effect of the heat upon the brain, a wet cloth may be swathed around the head or placed inside a straw hat.

It will be found very pleasurable and invigorating to take a cold shower or spray off and on during the sun bath and to allow the air to dry the body.  This will also increase its electromagnetic effects upon the system.

The Friction Bath

While taking the air bath, the skin may be rubbed or brushed with a rough towel or a flesh brush in order to remove the excretions and the atrophied cuticle.  The friction bath should always be followed by a spray or a cold-water rub.

At the time of the air bath, practice breathing exercises and the curative gymnastics appropriate to your condition. (See Chapters Twenty-Eight and Thirty on “Correct Breathing” and “Physical Exercise.”)

If the air bath is taken at night, before retiring, the less active breathing exercises, as numbers 1, 3, 7 and 13, may be taken with good results, but all vigorous stimulating movements should be avoided.

As the plant prospers under the life-giving influence of water and light, so the cuticle of the human skin becomes alive and active under the natural stimulation of water, air and sunlight.  From the foregoing paragraphs it will be seen why the air and light baths are regarded among the most important natural methods of treatment in all the great Nature Cure sanitariums of Germany.

Chapter XXX

Correct Breathing

The lungs are to the body what the bellows are to the fires of the forge.  The more regularly and vigorously the air is forced through the bellows and through the lungs, the livelier burns the flame in the smithy and the fires of life in the body.

Practice deep, regular breathing systematically for one week, and you will be surprised at the results.  You will feel like a different person, and your working capacity, both physically and mentally, will be immensely increased.

A plentiful supply of fresh air is more necessary than food and drink.  We can live without food for weeks, without water for days, but without air only a few minutes.