Bath Time With... is a new series from 39BC. We visit the bathrooms of our muses and friends — and find that a private space has a way of unlocking a uniquely intimate conversation about routines, rituals, and the objects they can't live without.

This week: Nieve Tierney, Modern Energy Healer, Reiki Master, and the leader of Energy Tank – a monthly energy activation designed to detox and raise your frequency.

My earliest memory of water is the sea.

There’s a photograph of me, completely naked, standing on a beach at maybe two or three years old, just staring out at it in total awe. I remember my parents showing me that photo and laughing, but what it really captured was that feeling of vastness — the shock of how enormous the world is when you first encounter it. I think that moment stayed with me. Water has always felt like something bigger than me. Something intelligent. Something that can hold emotion, memory, and wonder all at once.

I also remember being in the bath with my little brother, making hairstyles out of bubbles and laughing hysterically at what we thought were our masterpieces. Bath time felt playful and imaginative. It wasn’t just about getting clean.

I grew up in London, but my mum is from Madagascar and my dad is Irish, so our home never felt culturally straightforward. There were things in our house that I slowly realised other people didn’t have in theirs. Crystals everywhere. Music playing late into the night. Dancing, singing, adults talking and laughing while you drifted off to sleep somewhere nearby. Schedules weren’t rigid. Bedtimes weren’t particularly strict. There was a softness and looseness to the atmosphere that I didn’t see in all my friends’ homes.

My mum always described herself as spiritual rather than religious. She would speak to the ancestors. She had rituals. She moved through the world in relationship with unseen energies, and that was just normal to me. My dad, on the other hand, was completely atheist when I was growing up. He was open-minded about different cultures and belief systems, but when it came to spirits or ancestors or speaking to the land, that was very much my mother’s world, not his.

It’s funny, because now he’s in his seventies and doing ayahuasca and mushroom journeys and calling me to say, “This stuff is real.” So perhaps we all arrive in our own time.

For me, that journey didn’t really begin until adulthood.

As a child, I was around rituals, but I wasn’t yet connected to them in a way that felt personal... That changed in 2016.

I would go to ceremonies and observe. I would go to church. I would witness people speaking to ancestors, honouring the dead, connecting to something beyond the visible. But it wasn’t yet mine.

At the time, I was working in fashion and living what looked like a very normal, high-functioning, busy life. I was doing all the things people tell you to do to sustain yourself — trying to meditate, trying to stay healthy, trying not to burn out — but none of it was really reaching the root of what I was experiencing. I wanted balance, but not in a superficial way. I didn’t need another green juice. I needed something deeper.

So I started working with a Reiki healer, and over time, something began to open. I started seeing colour auras. I began learning how to meditate without an app. I started to understand that energy can be moved, changed, transmuted. In meditation, I would see symbols appearing clearly in front of me, but I didn’t know what they were. Then one day I was in a yoga class and saw a woman covered in tattoos. I asked her about them, and she explained that they were Egyptian symbols — the Ankh, the Eye of Horus. All these images I had been seeing internally, without context, suddenly had names.

From that point on, it was as though a whole hidden world was waking up around me.

Now, as an energy healer, my work is about helping people understand how to improve their energy, their frequency, and their relationship to what surrounds them. And I really believe beauty, bathing, wellness, and energy work are all connected by one thing: they offer us a moment to pause.

That pause is everything.

We live in a world obsessed with speed. How do I optimise this? How do I hack that? How do I get there faster? But beauty rituals, baths, energy work — all of these practices ask a different question. They ask: how do I connect inward? How do I feel right now? What belongs to me, and what doesn’t?

That distinction is at the centre of my work. So many people are moving through life carrying energy that isn’t theirs. They’re overwhelmed, but they think the overwhelm is their identity. They’re exhausted, but they don’t realise they’re sitting in someone else’s emotional field. They’re numb, or chasing, or depleted, and they haven’t had a moment to ask what they actually need.

Bathing, for me, can be one of the fastest ways back to self.

I’m generally a morning shower person. I like the feeling of waking up, getting the day started, water hitting the body and moving everything into motion. But baths, for me, serve a different purpose — and I tend to use them in two very distinct ways.

The first is what I think of as a functional bath.

If I’ve been holding space for people all day — running events, working with clients, helping people shift their energy — I need to come back into my own field. So I’ll have a salt bath at the end of the day, and it’s very intentional. No phone. No schedule-checking. No multitasking. I get in, and the whole purpose of that bath is release.

I consciously let go of any energy I’ve picked up that doesn’t belong to me. Then, when I’m done, I stay in the bath while the water drains. I watch it leave. I visualise everything that isn’t mine moving down the plughole like smoke. I let the water carry it away.

There’s something very powerful about staying until the end and witnessing the release. It becomes less symbolic and more physical. The bath becomes a container, and the water becomes a transporter.

The second bath is completely different. That one is slower, softer, more devotional. It’s what I think of as my mermaid bath.

This is when I bring in petals, scents, candles, salt — all the goddess elements. I take more time. I let it become an actual ritual. The reason I connect this with mermaids is because, to me, mermaids are deeply attuned to emotion, to water, and to the power of frequency. They understand intention. They understand vibration. There’s something about the mythology of the siren — the precision of voice, the potency of sound, the power of calling something in through tone alone — that really speaks to me.

So in those baths, I work very intentionally with affirmations. Sometimes I go in knowing what I want to affirm. Sometimes the affirmation arrives while I’m already in the water. But I become very aware of every word I say, every ripple I make, every energetic choice. It’s about clarity. Precision. Frequency.

And yes, I say the affirmations out loud in the bath.

The flower I return to most is rose.

Rose is massive for me. It carries such a high frequency, but more than that, it has taught me so much about boundaries. A rose opens completely. It shows its most delicate inner petals. It lets the world enjoy its scent and its beauty. But it is also incredibly clear about how it expects to be treated. Its thorns are not hidden. It will protect itself.

I think that’s such a profound lesson, especially for women. The rose doesn’t dim itself in order to stay safe. It shines fully, and it keeps its boundaries visible.

That, to me, is the energy of the bath as well. A place where you can soften without disappearing. A place where you can open without collapsing. A place where you can reconnect to your own frequency.

Lately I’ve also been thinking a lot about how easy it is to change your energy — and how few people believe that.

People think transformation has to be dramatic. They think you need a breakdown, a retreat, a complete life overhaul. But often it begins with subtle shifts. With noticing where your energy leaks. With learning what you’ve absorbed. With asking yourself whether you’re magnetising what you want, or chasing from depletion.

When you change your energy, everything changes. You become more magnetic. More honest. More available to what is actually meant for you.

That’s really what I’m working on right now — helping people understand that energy maintenance is not indulgent, it’s essential. Just as you would care for your body, you have to care for the energy your body holds.

Photos: Suzannah Pettigrew