Feet Baths: Simple, Natural & Healing Ways to Pamper Your Feet during Summer Season

Your feet deserves love.  In cold season you pack them in socks and shoes and don't really let your feet to enjoy fresh air on the skin. In summer feet finally get it + a lot of dirt, dust and sweat. Wow, that's an incredible mixture... It's not very surprising that exactly during summer season many people fight with cracked heels, skin thickening and Athlete's foot, oh, and those painful blisters...

One basic rule that stays the same in all seasons: keep your feet clean. You are not allowed to forget to wash your feet before going to bed if you don't want to suffer from pain that doesn't let you enjoy summer. Let's keep it straight! Here are some natural treatments that will pamper, support and care for your feet in a pleasurable way:

Stinging nettle infusion

Put in a bowl fresh stinging nettle leaves -> pour hot water to cover them -> let the mixture sit covered for 10-15 minutes -> remove the cover and let it cool down a bit so you can put your feet in -> enjoy! You can also simmer nettle leaves in hot water on low heat for about 10 minutes and then add it to lukewarm water. You can take the herbs out, but I usually leave them inside and play with herbs in the water with my feet. 

Benefits:  Improves blood circulation, so will be useful for tired feet, treats corns, warts and nail

fungus.

A bit more about stinging nettle I've published previously here: Nettle: Vitamin Dose On Your Dinner Table, in a Cup of Tea & in Bathroom

Burdock leaves

The same what you would do with nettle (and other leaves): put fresh leaves in a bowl -> add hot water -> wait -> enjoy!

Benefits: Fights Athlete's foot, helps to treat psoriasis, eczema, bacterial and fungal infections, swelling and skin rashes

Pine needles

Crush fresh needles -> add hot water -> wait -> enjoy!

If you can't get fresh pine needles, pine tree essential oil will help.

Benefits: refreshing and deodorizing treatment, disinfectant and antioxidant, aromatic treatment for reducing stress as well. Used for healing psoriasis, poor skin, itchiness and other skin issues, reduces inflammation and pain.

Birch leaves

The same what you would do with nettle (and other leaves): put fresh leaves in a bowl -> add hot water -> wait -> enjoy! Leave these leaves in water!

Benefits: It has antibacterial properties, helps healing skin issues, ulcers, wounds and inflammations. The best birch leaves are gathered and used until summer solstice. You can also harvest and dry them in little whisks to use all the year round. 

Peppermint essential oil

Prepare warm water for soaking your feet -> add 3-5 drops of peppermint essential oil -> enjoy!

Benefits: truly refreshing, stimulating and cooling feet soak for tired feet. Helps to fight fever, energizes tired feet, will heal sore skin and inflammations, can soothe blisters, oh, and if you inhale the aroma, you might get headache relief!

Tea Tree essential oil

The same what you would do with peppermint or any other essential  oil: prepare warm water -> add 3-5 drops of essential oil!

Benefits: treats toe nail fungus, Athlete's foot, abrasions, blisters, bruises and dry skin, burns and bacterial infections.

Lavender essential oil

Prepare warm water for soaking your feet -> add 3-5 drops of lavender essential oil -> enjoy! You can also apply add a drop of neat lavender essential on blisters and wounds.

Benefits: relaxing and calming to the entire body, will relax muscles and calm down your mind, heal sore skin and blisters. It has antibacterial properties and aids healing scars, wounds and sunburns. This feet soaking ritual before bedtime can prevent insomnia and improve your sleep quality. 

Here are some other ingredients to add to your feet baths together with herbs and essential oils or pamper your feet after soaking or in other ways:

Vinegar
Add 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar to 2-3 cups of water and soak your feet for about 10-15 minutes. You can add vinegar to any of feet soak options mentioned before. 

Benefits: softens skin, so will be helpful if you are using pumice stone for heels, relaxing for tired feet after long walks. 

 

Lemon Juice

Add lemon juice to water and soak your feet in it or prepare a foot scrub with lemon juice. Everything about making your own body scrubs can be found here: Guide to Home-made Body Scrubs

Benefits: softens skin, helps to get rid of thick skin and dead skin cells, helps healing cracked heels.

Coconut oil

Massage your feet with coconut oil after soaking feet and put on clean cotton socks before going to bed. Wash it off on morning.

Benefits: skin moisturizer, helps healing dry skin and cracked heels.

These are my top recipes for summer season, although I often experiment with different herbs, fresh leaves and flowers. What are your favorite ways of pampering feet with natural treasures?

DIY: 4 Original Soap Recipes (with organic soap base)

I'm not an expert soap maker, but it happened that I bought 330 grams (about 11 oz) of organic soap base* with a thought that once I'll melt it and add different herbs and oils to make special soap for myself and for gifts to give others. This day came when I understood that I need a gift for my sister for the next day. And so I invented 4 kinds of different soaps (probably someone has made similar soaps previously,  but I definitely feel like inventor because I didn't follow any specific recipe)!

My recipe was absolutely easy: cut soap in smaller pieces, melt it in a water bath over fire, add herbs, peels or spices necessary for each kind of soap, let other ingredients soak in melted soap for a minute or more, before removing from heat add essential oils and stir in well, then transfer to containers to cool and harden. That's it. I also covered some of the containers with foil from inside to make it easier to get the soap out of containers when it's cooled. 

I'm absolutely satisfied with the results! They smell nice, feel nice and oh, they look so tasty! And without adding any special coloring I got 4 different colors!  This is what I made and in pictures you can see what I got in result: 

Orange - Rosemary soap:

- organic soap base*

- grated orange peel

- dried rosemary (I guess fresh rosemary will work as well)

- few drops of orange and rosemary essential oils (you can go without them as well)

Orange and rosemary both are know as natural anti-cellulite ingredients, both are good for relieving muscle pain and work as antidepressants as well. I simply had to put them together in this soap. It really looks good and positive enough to scare away all possible depressions and orange peel in it makes it a very gentle body scrub as well.

Peppermint soap:

 - organic soap base*

 - dried peppermint (crushed), I'm pretty sure you can go with fresh peppermint leaves as well

 - peppermint essential oil (I guess you can go without this one if using fresh peppermint leaves)

Last summer I got a peppermint shower gel and in unbearably hot summer days a shower with peppermint shower gel was truly refreshing and leaving the entire body lightly, pleasurably tickling. 

Peppermint is another antidepressant that also relieves pain and headache, it's aroma is uplifting, helps for emotional overload, tiredness, skin diseases, relieves menstrual pain, helps to normalize menstrual cycle, and is cooling and antiseptic as well. A perfect summer season soap!

Bees pollen -Lemongrass soap:

- organic soap base*

- bees pollen

- lemongrass essential oil (could live without this one, because the scent is sweet already from pollen, but lemongrass adds some freshness to it)

I'm not a fan of bees' pollen in my diet although I know that it's healthy to get it there as well, but bees pollen helps for irritated skin, looks really good in soap, it gives the soap golden-brown color and smells as sweet as honey. You could actually enjoy this gentle scrub-like soap without adding lemongrass essential oil, but I just felt that a few drops of it will complement the composition. 

Lemongrass essential oil has uplifting scent, it is antiseptic, eases headache, helps to control appetite, relieves muscle pain, and is good for disinfection as well. 

Cinnamon-Vanilla soap:

- organic soap base*

- cinnamon (spice)

- vanilla infused oil

- coconut oil (you can go without it as well)

Adding cinnamon essential oil wasn't a good idea here because cinnamon essential oil is strong enough to irritate skin, but milled cinnamon was exactly what's necessary. It gave the soap such a great chocolate look and vanilla infused oil perfectly complemented the aroma. Cinnamon also improves the circulation of blood, strengthens nervous system and is antidepressant that gives the feeling of warmth and comfort. So it makes a perfect cold season soap!

I added also a bit of coconut oil because of it's health benefits for skin - it helps for dry skin,  prevents skin dehydration, nurtures skin and protects it from the negative influences of external environment - sun, wind etc.   Just one thing to add about this soap: it seemed like a very gentle soap, but when I finally tried it I got to discover that it wasn't gentle at all - that's a scrub, and definitely not as gentle one as orange-rosemary soap.

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When the soap was ready I simply cut soap in smaller pieces, wrapped each piece in parchment paper, tied with woolen yarn and added a little paper with names to know which soap is inside in each little pack (although it would be pretty easy to recognize each of them by the scent as well). For one "gift set" I'm putting together a piece of separately packed all 4 kinds of soap I made. Doesn't it make a nice, small assorted-soap gift?  

Now I'm impatiently waiting for summer to make firstly my own rose infused oil and then rose soap with that oil and rose petals! Yeah, I know it sounds very romantic - and that's exactly how it is! :)

Feel free to share your thoughts of my soap recipes and you are also welcome to put in comments links to your soap recipes! 

*Ingredients of the organic soap base I used: Aqua, Glycerine, organically obtained Sodium Palmate, organically grown Sucrose, organically obtained Sodium Cocoate, Decyl Glucoside, Sodium Chloride, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Palm Kemelate, organically grown Aloe Barbadensis