Laura TannaWITH ONLY a towel draped over my hips, I'm lying face down on a table in a cave-like room, whitewashed but darkened, save for slivers of light sneaking through louvred windows, which otherwise open to mountain greenery. I'm about to have a body elixir and if you'd told me before what it all entails especially the part about getting my hair soaking wet I would have refused. And I would have been so wrong. Nothing, nothing can begin to describe the absolute other-worldliness that this procedure is going to produce.
It starts with strange music, some sort of Oriental/Arabian sound that isn't loud enough to come from anywhere specific, but it's there. Haunting, softly.
Told to choose either a salt mixture or a lightly scented body lotion that will be rubbed in to exfoliate any surface dead skin, I rely on Marva, the expert, who suggests the flower-based scrub is easier on sensitive skin. She shows me a scotch hose that will drench all the lotion off after she applies it, and then explains that the seven small silver shower heads dangling from a line above the table will be concentrated on spots from the base of the spine to the crown of my head.
She explains everything before she starts but it looks clinical and sterile until I'm actually on my stomach. I don't remember the body rub well, just the darkness and this strange music making me think of filmy silk. I'm in a Persian garden with peacocks and a harem of ladies in soft fabric and then the warm water starts. Where have I heard this sound before? Yes, inside a car wash, except I'm the car. The torrent of pulsating warm water grows into rain, up and down my body, drenching my back and head, grows until I'm in an Amazon rain forest. I'm a log floating on the river. No, I AM the river, a torrent of warm, warm water from the womb to the wide world, nothing exists but this journey of the senses.
I don't ever want it to end, but when this all encompassing total relaxation retreats with the cessation of water from the wide hose, the hanging faucets start to work their magic, up and down the spine, applying specific water pressure first to the base and then working up, lingering on the base of the skull. Who cares if one's hair is wet, how could you feel these sensations unless you gave yourself over totally to the pulsating warmth for 45-55 minutes of this hydrotherapy that leaves body and mind floating for hours afterwards.
While I consider a massage, manicure and pedicure a luxury of life that every woman should experience at some time - well, all right, in this gender equal world why shouldn't men have the same experience. I've never been attracted to the idea of a 'spa'. Spa sounds suspiciously expensive, the kind of place where they persuade you to wallow in yucky mud or wrap you in foul smelling seaweed. So when Jenny Wood, resident manager of Strawberry Hill above Irish Town in the Blue Mountains, suggested I should come try out the Aveda Spa, I rather made excuses and put her off.
I know Jenny because Sunday Brunch at Strawberry Hill is our family's favourite treat for special occasions, especially at Christmas time or when relatives visit. The food is superb, but more than that, the view is spectacular, with all of Kingston Harbour and the sea beyond the foothills on one side, Newcastle and mountains on the other and 360 degrees of natural beauty wherever one looks. One reader suggested I should occasionally cover some of our local beauty spots as well as writing about foreign travels, so I thought: "Let me see what all those movie stars who come to Jamaica experience at Strawberry Hill besides the fabulous food and peaceful setting."
That's how I found myself having the body elixir. When Janist Harris, spa supervisor, told me that since the spa opened officially in January 1999 they've had the likes of Louis Gossett, Richard Gere, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Gwenyth Paltrow, just to name a few of the celebrities who've enjoyed Chris Blackwell's mountaintop retreat, I have to admit that I was slightly awestruck to know that I was standing where Louis Gossett had actually been. I saw him perform in Athol Fugard's play Bloodknot, at the Little Cricket Theatre, off-off Broadway at St. Mark's place in Greenwich Village circa 1964 in the most powerful night of theatre I've ever witnessed. I'm not sure if he's ever again acted so well as that incredible night. I digress.
If you want to feel like a movie star for the day, in the most serene of settings, the spa isn't inexpensive but they do offer special local packages and any number of treatments for both men and women. The body elixir alone would make an unusual birthday or holiday gift for anyone willing to risk a journey through their senses, to total relaxation, right here in the Blue Mountains.
