Finding Balance

Achieving balance in New York is a near impossibility. We're always pulled in a million directions. Yet, today, I found balance. Three hours at the Fulton Street Bathhouse and everything stressful slipped away.

I've always avoided bathhouses, as their scandelous pasts were of little interest to me. However, when a couple strong cocktails on Friday night did little to relieve my anxiety and stress from the past month, a friend suggested I meet him at the bathhouse on Saturday morning.

This morning, a group of us spent 3 hours, sweating it out in the dry heat sauna where the "regulars" taunted us for sitting on the lower benches. When this heat became too much, we moved into the steam room, where it was completely acceptable to douse yourself in buckets of ice water when the heat overwhelmed. In a third room, we hid behind clouds of eucylptus-scented steam and wrapped it all up by plunging ourselves into a heart-stopping pool of ice cold water.

It was so un-New York, I felt like I spent the day in Minnesota, enjoying a scandinavian-sauna-and-rinse. Balance achieved.