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JANUARY 2012
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
IT’S ACHALLENGE
to cultivate anxiety
in a Mandarin Oriental spa treatment
room—what with the Tibetan chimes
and panoramic view of Manha an—but
I was managing it just fine. While the
therapist set up a pre-treatment foot
bath, I eyeballed the bedside table.
Beyond the standard candles, towels and
precious unguents, it was stocked with
some alarming additions: glass cups,
alcohol swabs and—gulp—forceps.
The therapist sat cross-legged on the
floor in front of me. “So, we’ve got three
hours together,” she said. “What are you
looking to get out of this treatment?”
Fair question. Having never experi-
encedmany of the components of the
procedure for which I was scheduled—
which included two types of massage, a
salt scrub, a mud wrap, two showers and
an ancient Chinese practice called fire
cupping, in which heated glass cups are
placed on the back to increase circula-
tion—what I was looking for was to leave
the spa feeling be er than when I came
in. Which, judging by the implements laid
out before me, seemed less than assured.
I was hardly alone inmy pre-treatment
bu erflies. These days, people dropping
$600 on a spa trip expect more than
fleeting sighs of pleasure. They want to
look or feel appreciably be er a erward,
preferably for a long time, and they
understand that they may have to
undertake feats of physical hardship to
get there. In a growing phenomenon that
many experts are calling the “extreme spa
treatment,” saunas that maintain a frigid
110 degrees below zero, massages that last
seven hours and facials that incorporate
electrical current have crept onto spa
menus, drawing in customers for whom
the cushy, rarefied world of conventional
spas holds limited appeal.
I had launchedmy investigation into
these treatments just a few days earlier,
stopping by the Upper East Side office of
impossibly tiny French epidermologist
Isabelle Bellis for her signature buccal-
technique facial. Borrowing from a
popular and similarly extreme body-
realignment technique called rolfing (not
to be confused with ROFLing, which you
will manifestly
not
be doing while the
therapist is realigning your ligaments
with her elbows), Bellis’ facial technique
involves enthusiastically massaging the
face … from the inside.
“The buccal technique improves circu-
lation, reduces puffiness andmakes the
face glow,” she explained, her latex-gloved
hands making a squeaking noise as she
rubbed the inside of my cheeks with
nontoxic lotion. She restored the massage
table to a si ing position, and handedme
a bowl and some mouthwash. “Now spit.”
Now, I’m no stranger to harrowing
pursuits. As soon as I heard there was an
extreme sports bandwagon, I jumped on
it, tackling a grueling 12-mile mud race
almost before training for it. One time, for
a story, I even spent a weekend alone in
the forest with li le more than a machete
and a guide from the Air Force SERE divi-
sion. Still, the combination of beauty and
dentistry was near the top of my list of
potentially traumatic experiences. A er
Bellis finished with my face—inside and
out—I lay blindfolded on the massage
table, desperate for relief, feeling as if my
sinuses, ear canals and entire sense of
balance had been completely, wrench-
ingly readjusted. I felt like I was floating.
And it was amazing.
The next day my new face and I met
Bob. A no-nonsense scrubs-outfi ed mas-
seur with a shock of white hair, Bob was
tasked with introducing me to the new
extreme sports massage at Bliss Soho. He
coatedmy back in hot paraffin wax and
then began a deep-tissue massage that
was all thumbs and knuckles. I groaned
as he shoved what felt to be his entire
hand under one of my scapulae, but
hours later I was still smiling giddily from
the release of tension inmy back.
Which brings us back to my Clearing
Factor treatment at the Mandarin Orien-
tal. The suction from the glass cups didn’t
hurt nearly as much as I’d feared, but it
was without question intense, resulting
in a just-woke-up-from-a-12-hour-nap-like
endorphin high I enjoyed onmy way back
to the locker room. There, in the mirror, I
checked out the state of my back, hoping
to find some evidence that a change had
taken place somewhere inside my body.
What I found was this: Instead of the
immaculate glowing tan I’d seen so many
times in spa brochures, my skin was
do ed with eight of the kinds of bruises I
might have had if I’d been thwacked hard
with tennis balls. “Score!” I thought, now
a decorated veteran of the extreme spa
movement. “Ba le scars.”
Hemispheres
senior editor
JACQUELINE
DETWILER
can’t wait to tackle her next chal-
lenge: the British sport of extreme ironing.
SERENITYOW
One woman’s journey to the farthest reaches
of extreme spa culture
BY JACQUELINE DETWILER
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