Perhaps our grandparents knew something we have forgotten.
Long before wellness retreats, hydrotherapy pools and recovery spas entered our vocabulary, generations of Goans had a far simpler prescription:
Go to the sea. Sit in the water. Let the waves do their work.
And they did not do it randomly.
Every summer, particularly in April and May, before the monsoon arrived, older Goans would make their annual journey to the coast. Some stayed for a few hours. Others returned for several consecutive days. Families even rented houses near beaches such as Colva and Calangute for what was called a mudança, literally a “change”, not merely of place, but almost a resetting of the body and mind.
A 2024 academic study of Goan sea-bathing traditions confirms that therapeutic bathing traditionally took place during the summer months, roughly March to May, and was intertwined with Goa’s seasonal and agricultural rhythms.
But what is the sea actually doing to us?
The interesting thing is that you don’t even have to swim.
The moment you stand waist or chest-deep in water, buoyancy begins taking weight off your joints. Your knees, hips and spine suddenly carry less of you.
The pressure of the water also changes how blood and fluid are distributed through the body. And then the waves add something a swimming pool cannot: continuous, unpredictable movement. Your muscles are constantly making tiny corrections to keep you balanced.
So that elderly Goan standing in the surf wasn’t necessarily exercising.
But his body was.
Add walking through sand, movement against the waves, fresh air, sunlight, conversation and hours away from normal routine, and the old-fashioned “sea bath” starts looking suspiciously like a modern wellness programme.
What about the salt?
Here science becomes more interesting, and more cautious.
Mineral-water bathing has shown potential benefits for pain and physical function in conditions such as osteoarthritis, although researchers say the quality of evidence is still limited. Certain mineral-rich salt solutions have also been shown to affect skin hydration and barrier function.
Which brings us to another piece of grandmotherly advice:
“Put some salt in the bucket and have a bath.”
Was she recreating the sea at home?
A bucket of salted water is obviously not the Arabian Sea. But conceptually, our grandparents were trying to reproduce one characteristic of seawater at home: turning ordinary water into mineralised water.
Perhaps that handful of salt thrown into a bucket was not superstition at all. It was an imperfect attempt to bring the sea home.
Warm water itself relaxes muscles and changes circulation. Adding salt changes the mineral concentration and the way the water interacts with the skin. But a bucket of ordinary salt water is not chemically equivalent to seawater.
The bigger idea may have been more intelligent than the explanation.
Immersion. Warmth. Minerals. Rest. Repetition.
Our ancestors bundled them together without needing a scientific paper to name them.
Today we call versions of this balneotherapy, hydrotherapy, thalassotherapy and wellness.
In Goa, perhaps we had another name for it.
May.
And every year, when the summer became hottest and the monsoon waited just beyond the horizon, an entire generation quietly went back to the Arabian Sea to reset itself.
Maybe they weren’t simply taking a bath.
Maybe they were practising wellness before wellness became an industry.
There were three practical reasons:
- The body had just been through hard labour. April and May were intense months for harvesting and processing paddy, cashew, mangoes and preparing for the monsoon. After weeks of physical work, people went to the sea for several consecutive days, believing the salt water and waves relieved aching joints, muscles and rheumatic pain.
- It was Goa’s hottest period. May is generally Goa’s hottest month, with temperatures above 35°C. Before air-conditioning and modern leisure, spending mornings and evenings immersed in the sea was an obvious form of physical cooling and recovery.
- It had to happen before the monsoon. Once the southwest monsoon arrived around June, Goa’s sea became much rougher and the agricultural calendar began again. April-May therefore formed this small seasonal gap between harvest and monsoon.