Traditional healing: a spotlight on Turkish hammams

Wellness

By Issy von Simson

August 20, 2024

The vulnerability that you place yourself in at a spa – removing your clothes, handing yourself over to a therapist, trusting in them implicitly to make you feel better – reaches its zenith in a hammam. There you lie on a heated marble plinth to be lathered up, soaped and scrubbed, polished and buffed like a baby at bath time. It is infantilising, but in the purest, most elemental way.

The ancient tradition of hammams, where heat and steam and warm and cool water are used for all their myriad therapeutic benefits, goes back thousands of years. The Romans, of course, were splashing about in thermal pools from the 3rd century BC, gathering to soak and wash and, most importantly, catch up on day-to-day goings on. The bath houses were the social hub of the community.

By the time the practice had migrated across to Turkey in the 7th century AD, the focus was more spiritual. In Islamic culture, the use of the steam bath became a means to cleanse and purify the body, to rinse off dust and dirt, but also to quieten the mind in preparation for prayer at a nearby mosque. Men and women were separated into their own areas. Rather than the hubbub of gossip, the hammam soundtrack was of trickling water and hushed voices, but it was still a place of communal connection, providing social sustenance as well as physical and mental wellbeing.

The traditional ritual has evolved very little over the centuries, with no need for intervention or improvement via modern tech or skincare formulations or other such complications to meddle with the simplicity of the process. At the heart of the hammam is heat, but not the searing relentless temperatures of a sauna. Here the main space, traditionally a marble steam room with a large central plinth, will range from 40°C to 48°C. It is the humidity, at up to 100 per cent, that is the key. This is where the action takes place. Where you allow your body to warm up, pores to open, muscles to relax, skin to perspire.

Photo credit: Alamy

In a public hammam, the gentle chatter continues as bodies acclimatise. And on the marble platform, attendants will work their way around, scrubbing and soaping the visitors. The natural olive oil-based soaps used are based on time-worn formulas (in Morocco, macerated olives are added, which makes the soap black). Either way, it froths up like bubble bath and, as it is taken off by the vigorous strokes of a coarse kessa glove, it removes grime and dead skin cells and leaves skin exquisitely clean and soft. This is exfoliation that no body scrub can compete with.

Hair is also part of the ritual, and the shampoo, often argan oil, along with the head massage lifts all impurities from the scalp and helps remove the build-up of silicone (from off-the-shelf products) that makes hair dull and flat. This deep cleanse from top to toe is relaxing, in a lively, robust sort of way, as you give yourself over to the therapist to guide you through the process. But the proper mind-melting wind-down comes from the soothing massage afterwards.

A hammam session is a properly holistic experience, combining cleansing, deep relaxation and restorative massage in a powerful sequence. Anxiety levels drop immediately – the low-level physical engagement needed as your arms are raised above your head, or you turn over on the platform, is enough to push thoughts of anything beyond the marble walls away, if only for this short time. Tension in the muscles ebbs away, and with the scratchy rub of the kessa comes improved circulation and lymphatic drainage. On the surface, skin is brightened and refreshed, with pores cleared and toxins removed, and it’s nourished and rehydrated, too. At the two Mandarin Oriental hotels in Turkey, Mandarin Oriental Bosphorus, Istanbul and Mandarin Oriental, Bodrum, there are hammam rituals on offer in the spas. It is an ancient, brilliant way to get immediately under the skin of Turkish wellness tradition (and to rinse off jet lag, too).

About the Author

Issy von Simson

Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of Loupe and Editor of Condé Nast Traveller, Issy writes for T+L, The Times, The Telegraph, BOAT and ES magazine and is the author of Secret Stays, published by Assouline.