This story is a part of Picture’s October Abundance situation, reveling in indulgence, maximalism and the deliciously impractical.
On the Correct Resort in Santa Monica, an worker in a white polo and khaki slacks guides me from the lodge concierge by means of the vaulted-ceiling foyer, circumvents the restaurant’s chicly-dressed noon diners, previous the out of doors consuming terrace, and stops at a curved entryway. There he opens the door to Surya Wellness Spa and a pleasant face greets me. I’m proper on time.
The aroma instantly strikes me. It smells like a kitchen — earthen, dry, ethereal with a touch of spice and pepper. I’m guided down a wood-flanked hallway, an array of round 80 spices and herbs displayed in massive jars at its finish. Some are crammed practically to the brim, others virtually empty, conveying use over decor. Within the meditation/ready room, I’m delivered a cup of cumin-coriander-fennel tea whereas I look over the OMG (Oh My Goddess) readability oracle playing cards, their gimmicky aura misplaced within the grounding atmosphere. They have to be working, although — I’m describing playing cards as having an aura.
I’ve been wanting to come back to Surya because it opened within the bleary-eyed re-emergence of 2021 as a beacon of peace and calm. Martha Soffer, the proprietor, is taken into account the western chief in fashionable Ayurveda — taking 10,000-year-old Indian practices for bodily, emotional and religious concord and wrapping them in a California sensibility. Touted by luxe wellness royalty like Gwyneth Paltrow and the Kardashians, Surya has garnered a desirous following. Its Instagram-ready design (by none aside from Kelly Wearstler) is as envy-inducing as its choices, particularly the Panchakarma sequence consisting of about 4 hours of day by day companies (massages, cleanses, enemas, yoga, meditations and delicacies) for 3 to twenty-eight days straight. I’m right here for his or her signature Abhyanga service: a four-handed, light-touch therapeutic massage with a lot of heat herbalized oils which were steeped in a single day (the ultimate vacation spot for these massive jars).
I’ve not too long ago begun my very own coaching as a therapeutic massage therapist, eager to study a ability that has nothing to do with a pc however all the things to do with individuals. I’m inquisitive about this kind of therapeutic massage, the sort that mixes pampering with historic information — escapism meets medication. At $350, the 60-minute Abhyanga can also be the most cost effective gateway into Surya’s world (and my likelihood to steal as many methods as I can). I’m keen to find the therapeutic massage that can lastly permit me to totally yield, as a result of at any time when I’m the one on the therapeutic massage desk, I’ve this unusual sense that I’m not “doing it proper.” I discover it extremely tough to calm down. Since starting to study the apply, I acknowledge how noticeable that is. The extra I take within the science of strokes, the programs of the physique and methods of listening to muscle tissue, the clearer it’s that I give resistance. There are occasions you must coax a physique into trusting you with the intention to deal with it.
After a couple of minutes with the oracle playing cards (Divine Timing and Divine Female Vitality), considered one of my therapeutic massage therapists involves get me. We make small discuss as I’m escorted with my tea. Sure, that is my first time right here. No, I’ve by no means had an Ayurvedic therapeutic massage earlier than. Mmmhmm, I’m excited to expertise leisure on this means. My second therapeutic massage therapist is ready to greet us on the finish of a small hallway. I get butterflies of welcome anticipation. 4 fingers massaging me is imminent.
The 2 practitioners stroll me by means of what to anticipate, taking care to spotlight that they may accommodate my consolation stage however advocate I’m nude with a small towel protecting my nether areas to keep away from oil damaging clothes and permit higher lymphatic methods across the chest. They go away me to arrange myself within the hooked up full toilet, with partitions and heated ground tiles in a dusty cobalt harking back to the sky simply earlier than daybreak in spring.
My physique sinks into the cushioned platform extra prefer it’s a great sofa than a therapeutic massage desk. One practitioner wraps sizzling, damp towels round my toes whereas the opposite is at my head, fumbling a bit with my loc’d hair earlier than getting it in the correct place for the work. I inhale important oils by means of a sheet, a refined however impactful solution to sign the start of the expertise to my nervous system. A tender hand takes the place of the towels at my toes and calves whereas heat oils are concurrently dripped onto my hair and massaged into my scalp. I shortly forgive the follicular fumble. As my extremities are warmed and touched in synchronicity, I give up. The scent of my chosen oil swirls round me: a pitta-kapha mix, relating to 2 of the three Ayurvedic “doshas” or governing life energies. I selected pitta for its transformative, cooling properties, and kapha for its stabilizing, anti-inflammatory ones.
I’m afraid that, even on this sanctuary of submission, I’ll do it “incorrect” once more. I concentrate on my respiration and inhale the pitta-kapha components. I search out that in-between limbo conscience {that a} therapeutic massage can so deliciously lull you into. I vow to retailer the path of their fingers someplace at the back of my thoughts whereas it additionally constructs summary dream photographs, signaling a point of letting go. Gentle chants taking part in from a speaker someplace within the room cheer me on into launch and I’m hopeful to realize it.
Heat oil is being poured throughout my physique and 4 fingers run over my complete size in unison, one pair on either side, earlier than returning to the middle of my again to start the crux of the Abhyanga choreography. It’s a cautious dance of mirroring each other, not solely in motion however in strain, pace and intention. When the fingers are centered on my again, I’m awash in a full-body buzz of calm, as if my complete nervous system had been a purring cat. The information of 1 hand are gently urgent on the nape of my neck, the opposite on the very high of my sacrum — near the 2 ends of my backbone — whereas two different fingers criss-cross in between. It’s by no means overstimulating, solely a number of, soothing contact factors. I really feel my guard drop as 4 fingers rhythmically flow into above my lungs, coronary heart and digestive organs. That is it. My complete physique is elongating. A pulse emanates from inside me that’s deep and sluggish as if my coronary heart is an eighth depend, my lungs a fourth, and this new tempo is the true conductor that I’m sometimes too distracted to note.
Therapeutic massage generally is a disarmingly profound apply. It honors the truth that we are able to heal one another, handle each other with little greater than centered consideration. I believe the presence of 4 fingers, quite than the standard two, doubles down on this intention — the way in which our bodies can efficiently sign to at least one one other to loosen up, unclench, permit circulate. This explicit therapeutic massage, with its copious use of oil, is much less about concentrating on muscle teams than gliding by means of the interior workings of the physique, with out friction. It reminds the physique of itself.
Heat towels on my toes once more sign the tip of my 60 minutes that felt like solely 20. I’m softly given directions to make use of as lots of the towels as I need within the toilet to pat myself dry. However I’m additionally inspired to depart some oil on — If doable, they are saying. After I hear the door shut from their exit, I peel myself up from the nice and cozy desk and marvel on the oily define my physique has left on the sheet.
My physique retains the heat from the 2 others even when I’m alone and off the heated desk. I can really feel the floor of my pores and skin tingling, as if trying to find the corporate of these 4 fingers once more. My joints really feel lighter. I really feel like I’ve misplaced 5 kilos from my body as I comment on my extra swish, flowing motions. Much less like I’m maneuvering my physique by means of life and extra like it’s carrying me by means of it. I really feel like a vessel for a soul quite than a corpus burdened by physics and gravity. I did it, I notice — with the assistance of 4 fingers.
Nereya Otieno is a author centered on intercultural areas and the methods by which music, meals and the humanities are types of storytelling. She co-founded the Rising Artist Basis nonprofit and presently lives in Koreatown.
