A growing disenchantment with a disconnected modern lifestyle has finally left Western societies acknowledging what ancient communities have known since time immemorial – the natural world is a healer, and our connection to it is essential for our wellbeing. As a result, we’ve seen a rising interest in medicine that strays away from the mainstream and towards Mother Earth, from herbalism to Ayurveda, Chinese medicine to shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). Often forgotten in these alternative explorations, however, is the fact that civilisations have been turning to their geological environment as a form of therapy for millennia.
The Romans built a culture around “taking the waters” and were firm believers in the values of thalassotherapy and balneotherapy – a medical approach based on the use of seawater and shore climate, as well as baths. The term spa springs from the town of the same name, situated in Belgium, where the health-giving properties of the spring water have been famous since the 14th century.
But perhaps the most intimate way to reconnect with our Mother Earth is to get down and dirty in the mud. Mud isn’t simply miraculous because it’s life-giving, it can be medicinal too, and its use as a treatment dates back to ancient Egypt. Pharaohs’ doctors used Nubian earth as an anti-inflammatory agent, and Cleopatra’s beauty regime included a regular dip in Dead Sea mud. Aristotle even references humans’ conscious eating of soil, which explains children’s natural inclination towards mud pies. Earth-eating is still practised today – in Peru, the Aymara people of the high Andes use clay to detoxify wild potato species.
Not all dirt is created equal, and only certain forms of it are therapeutic, such as peat, mineral spring mud, estuarine mud and medicinal clays. The medical term for the application of healing mud is peloid therapy. Peloids are natural products consisting of a mixture of sea, salt, lake or mineral-medicinal water, with organic and inorganic material produced by biological action and geological action. Today’s popular peloids can be found in masks, powders and creams scattered across the cosmetic industry. However, to be genuinely sustainable, this sticky substance should be enjoyed in its natural habitat. Today, you can find miracle mud-seeking pilgrims wallowing in the visceral volcanic baths of South America or floating in the salty shallows of the Dead Sea and coastal lakes beside the Black Sea.
Atanasovsko and Pomorie Lake lie adjacent to the Black Sea in Bulgaria, transformed in 1906 from swamps with malaria-mangled mosquitoes to one of the most valuable wetlands and salt-producing lakes in Europe. Dotted across this sliver of coastline, people lie sprawled out on the beach like seals. The dark mud caking their bodies is almost indistinguishable from the sands, made coal-black by iron. Visitors and locals make the pilgrimage here annually, travelling from neighbouring countries such as Romania and Russia. “We’ve been coming for 20 days every year for 24 years,” twins Paraskeva and Vitka tell me jubilantly. Alongside many others, they’re here coating themselves in therapeutic mud and lye. “Doing this means that later in the year, we don’t get ill. We feel 70 going on 17,” they laugh.
The therapeutic mud here is a sedimentary product of the salt lake, formed over millennia by the decaying of various organisms, such as algae, fish and crustaceans. It’s rich in chemical and biological ingredients that can treat dermatological diseases, alleviate pain and inflammation,
improve blood circulation and metabolic processes. Those that use it swiftly become devotees, returning, again and again, to heal ailments like muscular injuries. “I’d rather take control of my health than wait until it’s too late,” explains Simeonka, taking the sulphurous-smelling substance from the lake and applies it to her legs like a second skin. As she totters from the lakeshore to the beach, it oozes off her with soft squelches, drying in the sun then cracking like elephant hide. After a time, she washes it off in the sea.
Across this sliver of coastline, people lie sprawled out on the beach like seals. The dark mud caking their bodies is made coal-black by iron
“The healing effects of this process can be felt around the sixth procedure,” says Radostina Tzenova, communications officer at the Lagoon of Life Project, a conservation organisation that protects Atanasovsko Lake. “For continued progress, a visit must be made once a year,” she adds.
The mud is a natural cosmetic, and visitors travel here to plump, preen and perfect their bodies. The beach is like some surreal beauty pageant. Wide-brimmed hats are worn with red lipstick, the flourish of human-made colours strange against the monochrome mud and salt. “It’s important for older people to look after themselves in this way,” Simeonka continues. “Women in the West are considered to have a shelf life and not appreciated with age.” This mud acts as a conditioner. Micronutrients and minerals, such as calcium and phosphorus, penetrate through the skin, which serves as a membrane. “The skin lets in precisely what’s necessary for the body,” explains Radostina. “When we take minerals orally, we overload the body with an excessive quantity.” Perhaps it’s time to skip those vitamin pills and dive (literally) into the gifts nature’s bestowed upon us?
However, this beauty ritual isn’t just enjoyed by humans – wildlife flourishes in this environment. The flamingo-pink tones of the shallow salt lakes are caused by enormous blooms of microscopic algae. This algae and brine shrimp form the diet of the lake’s inhabitants. Atanasovko sits beneath Europe’s second-largest bird migratory route, and 333 out of Bulgaria’s 420 species of bird can be found here. As Radostina acknowledges, “by demonstrating the value of the lake through exposing these therapeutic services and by engaging with cosmetic businesses who bottle up the natural resources, we secure the future conservation management of the lagoons.”
This form of health tourism, where visitors come for a particular environmental climate, results in the de facto protection of that landscape. Natural beauty and sustainable travel go hand in hand when it comes to mud bathing, wherever you are on the globe. “I don’t want to take medicine from a pharmaceutical company,” Dobromir tells me, while heating himself on the rocks. “Being close to nature is the best thing you can do for yourself, that’s why I come here. People shouldn’t be afraid of it.”
However, as modern living continues to untether us from the natural world, this viewpoint is becoming rare. For many, organic substances such as mud are dirty and undesirable. “I’d rather stick to what I know,” mutters a tourist from western Europe, visiting for the day from Sunny Beach. “The claims about the mud seem like a marketing ploy.”
Although there’s a rising interest in skincare, with more and more Western consumers using clay or mud masks, it seems very few would be up for really getting down and dirty. In today’s capitalist world, we trust corporations and modern science more than we do our Mother Earth. As a result, we’rve becoming disconnected from where all our products are from. But if you truly want to engage in natural beauty, then you should do so in the product’s natural habitat, even if that does mean wallowing in oozing mud.
