Today I visited an onsen in Yokosuka and omg, I will never recover from the healing, mysticism, and embodiment I experienced!

What is an onsen? Onsen are hot springs that naturally occur in Japan due to it being a volcanically active country. To qualify as an onsen, hot water, mineral water, water vapor, or other specific gas gushing from underground must be present.

No clothes allowed. My primal and sensual selves were triggered as I was in the company of other women in the nude. I saw so many beautiful female forms and felt fully entrenched in femininity.

It felt spiritual walking completely naked in the cold to step on steamy stones, but my feet were on fire the second the heat hit them, so I went to the sauna to heat my entire body before attempting to submerge it into the hot springs.

When I stepped outside again, the cold on my warmed skin caused tingles everywhere and it was a lot easier to dip my goosebump covered body in the hot water, lay on the steamy stones, and soak in the heated pools.

Everywhere I looked, steam was rising up like smoke, and like the steam, I felt the tension lifting from my body—my worries about what to do with my life, where to live, the mistakes I carry with me like folded up old photographs… everything evaporated.

All that was left was me—me and my body, me in my body, my mind and my body united as one.

As I breathe in the steam, the cold air caressing my shoulders, neck, and earlobes, I realized how beautiful it is, this life that I’m already living. How lucky I am to be here. How grateful I am for this experience, and the people I was sharing it with, how lovely it is to be alert and alive.

It’s the kind of healing the body doesn’t realize it needs until it experiences it.