Global Wellness Rituals That Stand the Test of Time

Which wellness rituals stand the test of time?

Four practices have been kept up for centuries without interruption: forest bathing in Japan, cold water in Scandinavia, gua sha in China and jamu in Indonesia. What they share is not a technique. It is the deliberate pause they force.

Wellness is not one-size-fits-all, and that is what makes it interesting. Across cultures, people have built rituals rooted in nature, tradition and intentionality. While tech trends come and go, the old ways are still here. Sometimes they even resurface, the way cold water reached a new generation through the viral challenges of recent years.

Scandinavian cold therapy: icy plunges, warm welcomes

In the Nordic countries, cold water is a cultural mainstay. Ice baths, cold plunges and sauna-cold rotations have been part of daily and social life for centuries. What people describe:

• A jolt of alertness that is impossible to ignore
• The particular glow of getting warm again afterwards
• A rush that most people find genuinely addictive
• A sense of having done something difficult before breakfast

Western wellness only recently discovered the cold plunge. Scandinavia has been doing it for generations, and doing it socially, which is the part most often left out of the trend version.

Forest bathing and matcha: Japan's mindful rituals

Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, is a walk in which you immerse yourself in the quiet of the forest. You walk, listen, breathe and simply be there. Japan's forestry agency coined the term in 1982, and Japanese researchers have studied the practice ever since.

What draws people to it:

• It is unstructured. There is nothing to achieve and no distance to cover
• It is one of the few activities with no screen involved
• It works in any weather, and arguably better in bad weather

If you would rather stay inside, the ritual of preparing matcha, sifting, whisking and sipping, offers a meditative moment. Steeped in tradition, and a genuinely absorbing thing to do with your hands.

Gua sha: beauty meets ritual in Chinese tradition

Gua sha is a centuries-old practice rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Using smooth stones like jade or rose quartz, gentle strokes are worked along the skin. What keeps people doing it:

• It feels good, in the straightforward way a massage feels good
• It slows a skincare routine down to something deliberate
• The stone stays cool against the skin
• It takes five minutes and asks for your full attention

Gua sha went viral for an understandable reason: it turns a routine into a pause.

Jamu: Indonesia's golden elixir

Jamu is an Indonesian tradition practised since the eighth century, made from herbs and spices like turmeric, ginger, tamarind and lemongrass. On 6 December 2023 UNESCO inscribed Indonesian jamu wellness culture on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Jamu is a ritual of resilience, beauty and balance, most often prepared by women and passed down through generations. The jamu gendong, the women who sell it door to door from a basket carried on the back, are still a familiar sight on Java.

At Good Jamu we carry this tradition forward, with blends made for the way people live now.

Frequently asked questions

What is the world's oldest wellness ritual?
There is no settled answer, because rituals rarely have a start date. Jamu has been drunk in Indonesia since the eighth century, which makes it one of the oldest to have remained in continuous use. On 6 December 2023 UNESCO inscribed 'Jamu wellness culture' on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

What is shinrin-yoku?
Shinrin-yoku means forest bathing. You walk slowly through a forest and turn your attention to what you hear, smell and see. Japan's forestry agency coined the term in 1982 as a name for something people had been doing there for much longer.

Why do people drink jamu?
In Indonesia jamu belongs to the day the way coffee belongs to the morning here. It is mixed at home, sold on the street and handed down through generations. The taste is warm, spiced and fresh at once.

How do I start a ritual of my own?
Pick something small you can repeat at the same moment each day, five minutes with a warm drink before the day starts, for instance. Repetition makes the ritual, not its size.

In short

What ties these rituals together is not only their long history, it is their intention. A forest walk, a cup of herbal tea, a facial massage or a freezing plunge all ask the same thing: slow down and be with yourself. That pause is the point, and it is the part that survives in every one of these cultures. Maybe wellness is not about the next best thing, but about remembering the best things we already have.

Read next: jamu as a coffee alternative, finding your third space and everything about jamu.

Start your own ritual with Good Jamu, rooted in tradition and made for your everyday flow.

Written by Devika Gupta