Zen Water Experience

When I think about pure relaxation, serenity and one-ness with the universe, I typically envision myself on a warm, well-cushioned massage table with numerous strong hands kneading out every single point of tension in my soon-to-be-knot-free body.

Water normally doesn't play into my blissful relaxation fantasy. But maybe it will now.

For my first blog entry, I decided to try something a little different. Not the usual deep tissue massage I so enjoy receiving. Not a facial. But a slightly unusual path to unwinding. I visited Skin Deep in Huntington Beach, a 7,800 square-foot day spa in its 17th year, which just opened the Zen Water Experience -- a multi-room 45-minute water and mud therapy session for both the mind and skin.

I begin my zen experience with a guide leading me through the spa's hallways for what seems like several minutes of turning this way and that. It's a little disorienting, which I imagine is the point. It does cause me to feel more in the moment. I'm more preoccupied with where the hallways are leading than with all of my day's stressful events. We stop in a small room so I can remove my shoes ... and my daily concerns and stress, as my guide informs me. Then I'm led into a curtained changing room where I can put on my bathing suit and a sarong that my guide has handed me.

My guide leads me into a cavernous room with a rock-like facade for walls, reminding me of The Flintstones' cave home. There's a low wooden stool set in the middle of the room and a circular array of shower heads spewing warm water from above. A small plastic container filled with a body scrub sits on a tall stool off to the side of the low stool. I'm instructed to sit or stand beneath the shower heads and lightly massage the aromatic scrub on my body.

I'm a little discombobulated at first. After all, it's not every day I strip down to my bathing suit, walk into a cave and rub an exfoliant on myself while water streams on me from overhead. Takes some getting used to, but not too much. I stand at first, but the angle seems wrong and I keep getting water in my eyes. I feel like I'm in a waterfall. So I sit down, and then the water magically falls on my body without drowning me. So I sit and exfoliate. At first I feel a little like Jennifer Beals in the scene in the '80s movie, "Flashdance," where she douses herself with a bucket of water during her dance sequence -- only not nearly as sexy. The thought makes me chuckle. But soon, I start to forget there's a rain of water coming down on me, and begin to feel more at ease. My 10 minutes are soon up and my guide takes me into the next phase of my water-filled journey.

Now that I'm clean, I get to get dirty. The guide hands me a small container full of therapeutic mud, which I dutifully apply from head to toe. There are no mirrors in here, so I can only imagine what I look like. When I'm nice and muddy, I move into the steam room, where I sit for about 10 minutes. Typically, I end up getting too hot in steam rooms. In this case, the temperature is warm enough to make me sweat lightly but not feel like I'm suffocating. By the end of the steam phase, I feel completely relaxed.

Next up, more showering. I get to wash off all the mud in the Cascade Cleanse shower, with multiple shower heads positioned at different points on the surrounding wall. Finally, the experience ends with a 10-minute soak in a warm mineral pool -- my favorite of all the rooms. Hovering between 95 and 98 degrees, the pool is not too cold or hot, but just right. Spa owner Deborah Woods says anything warmer than those temperatures overheats the body. And when the body gets too hot, body functions slow down, the heart rate increases and people can get dizzy or nauseous. "We did not want a Jacuzzi," she says. "We want someone to sit in it longer than five minutes and let the heart rate slow down."

After drying off and changing into some comfortable clothes I brought along, I leave the spa feeling mentally lighter and more at ease than when I first entered. My skin is soft and I feel content.
For more information on the spa or Zen Water Experience, visit www.e-skindeep.com. The Zen Experience is $45 per person.

Posted on Monday, February 18, 2008 in Permalink