Episode 9: The Bathroom Queen - House Therapy Discover More Of You At Home

Robert Sudha Hamilton's Podcast

Let us move now to another room in your house or apartment, the bathroom. If the living room was home to our king or dominant self, then the bathroom is the province of our queen. For it is our queen who is concerned with those things most keenly represented by the bathroom in our home – our body, beauty, health and mortality. These four riders in the storm are all inextricably linked with each other, and for our queen self, are forces of nature which must be met, managed and alas, ultimately surrendered to.

The bathroom, in the 21C, is a more private room than the living room. Therefore, we meet a more private version of you within the confines of the bathroom. Bathrooms are places of intimate perspectives upon our self. Close your eyes now and imagine yourself standing inside your bathroom before the mirror. Feel your gaze upon your naked body in the knowledge that you are completely alone within this room inside your home. You are safely ensconced in the privacy of your own bathroom. Sense the voice or perspective engendered by this experience of physical examination of your own body.

We meet our body in the bathroom, pretty regularly I would hope and imagine. Our five senses engage with our physical self as we observe it, evaluate it, clean and repair it; and finally accept it. In the bathroom, we as queens of our senses, are firmly focused on a layer of our identity – through our bathroom mirror and through touch we self-examine our physical selves. Our inner queen knows that the world judges us on our appearance and our beauty. For it is beauty which has remained unchallenged, as the most desirable feminine quality, throughout the ages. Even today, with all the knowledge and nuisance inherent in sophisticated modern twenty first century life, what other characteristic shines out like beauty? A beautiful face, a beautiful body, beautiful eyes, a beautiful smile, beautiful hair, even a beautiful nose can inspire actions and life changing events to occur.

Great Art most often concerns beautiful representations of the human form and there are of course countless examples of this throughout the recorded millennia of our existence. Michelangelo’s David, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, the sculptures of Praxiteles and the too numerous classical statues of antiquity whose artists are largely unknown but are sublimely beautiful to behold. From the East the stunning examples of carved wall reliefs on Buddhist temples and religious statues from Hindu, Sikh and a myriad of other examples – all reflecting a deep appreciation of the beauty and symmetry of the human form. For many people and even for some great philosophers, beauty is god or a clear sign of god’s presence. We are often inspired in the presence of beauty and many of us have devoted our lives to various manifestations of it.