The kind that, that for free or fee, you just go to soak with other strangers, sometimes with steam bath and/or massage offered? What were your experiences, and would you do it again if you could?
Naked in a hot tub with strangers, no, I can’t imagine doing that. Steam bath at the local health club/gym, sure, why not? For me, a steam bath is for muscle relaxation, it’s all guys, and there isn’t much socializing that goes on while I’m there. Perhaps in Finland, but not so much in the US, at least from my experience.
Well, unless you need to see someone’s tattoos.
[Warning: you’ll never want to go to a steam bath again.]
Stranger
I used to do volunteer work for an organization helping the terminally ill, and they used to sponsor occasional weekend retreats for the volunteers and staff at a place out in the hills above Russian River. This place had a swimming pool and a large hot tub, and it was mixed gender. The hot tub was all nude (I suppose one could have worn a bathing suit or something, but no-one did) and I think the swimming pool was clothing optional. Those were the only times I participated in anything like that. Everything was very low key and nothing happened in general view.
Some years ago I was traveling with a cousin to a hot springs area where participants frequently did not wear clothing. After reading some of the reviews we decided it was not for us.
I am just not comfortable participating in public water activities without a bathing suit.
I have not, but I’d be willing to do it if it was traveling in a place where it was a common, accepted thing to do (and preferably gender-segregated, or at least something that everybody in that culture considered nonsexual). The US is … not that culture, so I probably wouldn’t here.
Yes, a few times; always as part of a more general nude swim (so some time in the pool, some time in the hot tub). There was a sauna: is that what you mean by “steam bath”? No massage, though.
It is exactly like going to a public pool or hot tub where people wear swimsuits, but with less cloth. Contact with said strangers is just polite chit-chat. The nice thing about it is that most people in our culture are freaked out by non-sexual nudity, so it’s much less crowded than the pool normally is.
(Edit: in Canada, and swimming nude at a nude beach in the UK. Never in the US.)
I went to a public bath at a hotel in Japan. It was all women, and all nude. It was an interesting experience. You had to shower before entering the pool, of course. But the showers were set to “squat” height. They were adjustable, though, and i don’t think anyone was bothered that i adjusted the shower so i could stand as i cleaned myself. Once in the pool, some of the women chatted me up. Maybe they just wanted to practice English.
I’ve also accidentally wandered onto a nude beach, but because it was an accident, i was wearing a bathing suit. It was mostly old people, and i realized that most people look better with their clothes on.
A steam bath is somewhat like a sauna, but with steam supplying the heat. That is, it is usually a closed room clad with wood and with wooden bench seats, and there are steam vents. I prefer steam to dry heat, it feels better to my lungs.
I don’t even like hot tubs when I’m wearing a suit. Smegma soup, no thanks!
I’ve been to the hot springs in Saline Valley a number of times (well, most of the time they’re actually more like warm springs). They’re clothing optional, but every time I’ve been everyone is naked. The upper spring where we would go is just one large pool, so it’s mixed gender. It’s interesting how easily you adjust to being naked when everyone else is, too.
I’ve never been comfortable being naked in public which probably stems from some childhood trauma so I will likely never experience a naked pool.
I went to Greece in the early 2000s and my Greek fiance at the time took me to a secluded nude beach. There were only a few people there at the time but I had a traumatic breakdown which was unpredictable and severe. I learned my lesson then.
Yeah, that’s different.
While it has not been documented in the Saline Valley, Naegleri Fowleri (more salaciously known as brain-eating amoeba) has been found in nearby Mono County hot pots, so take care not to dunk your head in the water.
I have stayed out of hot tubs ever since someone remarked “You know that foam in hot tubs? It’s Preparation H.”
So I used to go to a ski club on Lake Tahoe when I lived in San Francisco in the 2010s. It was an big house right next to the lake, near a bunch of ski resorts, with dorms communal kitchens, etc. it had been brought for next to nothing in the 70s and run as a non profit cooperative.
There was hot tub that was technically clothing optional but almost everyone wore swimming costumes. The only people who didn’t were a couple of the old timers who’d been going there since the 1970s (there was a bit of a generation gap between the older generation who’d been going there since back in the day and us “young folk”, as in 30-40 somethings).
One time I had a couple of acquaintances come with me who were thinking of joining, we were hanging out in the hot tub (in our swimming trunks) and I was explaining how cool the club was and how they should join. At that exact moment one of the old timers came in totally butt naked climbing over the side in such a way as my friends were looking directly into his nether regions. They did not end up joining 
Things have changed since I was a young adult. Back then (70’s - 80’s) nudity was very common and comfortable. Now, even in California where I grew up, young people are much less relaxed about it. I don’t know what we did to cause that shift. It makes me sad.
I think once gay people were more open and out, suddenly same-sex nudity was no longer safely non-sexual (even though we were always there!). That’s when urinal dividers started appearing, though it took 20 years or so post-Stonewall.
Exactly. And you also adjust easily to everybody else being naked if you’re around naked people at all often.
Just think how just about everybody posting on this board has adjusted easily to seeing knees and even thighs and armpits of people of any gender. We’re used to it. It’s not actually harder to get used to asses, female breasts, and genitalia; it’s just that most people in this society aren’t used to it, and are instead carefully trained to think of it as shocking.
Back in the 1970’s I knew a batch of people who were casual nudists: often naked at home, always naked when swimming if anywhere there was a reasonable chance of not being arrested (and such places were sought out.) I’ve also been to a hot springs where everyone was naked and most of them were strangers; and to more than one nude beach, ditto.
People IME are generally better behaved while naked, not worse. Everybody who ever hassled me did so while they (and I) had clothes on.
What strikes me as oddest about it is that this modern terror of nudity goes along with a much greater acceptance of near-nudity. In the 70’s, you didn’t walk arund downtown with half your bare ass hanging out of your shorts. Not everybody does now, of course; but it’s common enough in my small-town heavily conservative area that nobody blinks.
I think that’s part of it – but the 70’s public nudity was mixed-gender. (And also IME non-sexual, whatever the participants might get up to later in private.) But that may well be what happened to the single-gender naked swimming and/or locker rooms occuring at and sanctioned by a lot of schools and public pools.
I had the opposite reaction in Japan. The Japanese ladies avoided me like the plague! I’d been warned that that might happen, however. And I got lost on the way to the large pool/onsen, so I actually put on my most pathetic face and a young (naked) woman took pity on me and pointed the way in English.