and relax...

just back from one of the last hotel reviews i will do in my current incarnation as someone with a job.
just back from a weekend in a swanky spa hotel. i've been going to spas and having various treats and treatments for a while now and have noticed an alarming trend in these pamper palaces, which i once again observed this sunday.
no longer is ti possible to go and merely have a facial or a massage.
oh no. these days you go 'on a journey' or you are treated to 'a ritual'.
i remember the first time it happened: i turned up at my selected salon for a men's facial and was instructed to 'strip down to your underwear and slip on this gown'. but i'm here for a facial, i protested (to myself, silently, natch). as in face, as in above my body, as in not covered by clothes!
so, these days, whenever i go for a treatment i know it will invariably begin with stripping off, down to 'my underwear' (never pants; far too vulgar), before i am escorted, clad in a lovely white towelling gown to the 'relaxation area' to get myself into the 'holistic zone'.
invariably the 'relaxation room' is my mum's idea of chill out: massively uncomfortable sofa loungers, which, once they have you in their grip, are almost impossible to get up from, plinky plonky music (one lounge i once sat in had individual music choices, which, i swear to god had three options: birdsong, classical or enya!) and a table with jugs of water with lemon slices and some herbal tea bags.
oh, and other people looking really uncomfortable on loungers that they're not sure they are ever going to be able to get out of.
now, i don't know about you, but strangers in white towelling dressing gowns do not figure in my idea of relaxing! i don't find laying in close proximity to someone i've never met before worrying that my dressing gown might flap open and reveal my 'underwear' especially 'holistic'.
but anyway, with a little luck you won't have to endure enya for long before your 'therapist' (whatever happened to beauticians?) comes to get you and take you on 'your journey'.
so you go into your individual room, oops, i mean 'spa pod' and in that lovely, low voice therapists use when they are 'holistic, looking after your mind, body and spirit' she (or he) begins to explain to that 'your ritual' will begin with a foot blessing or some such, which has little or nothing to do with what you've signed up for. and on it goes.
my most recent treatment was a 'chakra balancing facial' which, for anyone who's ever heard of chakras, is quite hilarious.
my pubescent therapist explains to me, in her lulling tones, which for some reason go up an octave at the end of each sentence, 'uses the energy and vibrations of the earth to energise and relax you'. Energise and relax? like a speedball?
anyway, stones are laid beside me - on a towel! - by 'your energy centres, each one charged with a special energy... ' etc.
so, i enquire, how are they infused with energy?
oh, the earth energises them. it's totally holistic etc etc
if, by energising them in a totally holistic fashion, the earth was aiming to send me into a coma in about 20 seconds flat IT WORKED because i was indeed asleep in no time at all. and enjoyed a lovely nap until my lovely therapist woke me up by pressing her fingers into my eyes as part of the head massage that is also part and parcel of any facial worth its salt (even though, last time i looked, my face wasn't actually on the top bit of my head - which is where i keep my hair).
as a contact lense wearer i'm not a huge fan of people poking their fingers into my eyes, which is why i'd notified my therapist of my visual impairment before we embarked on 'my journey' but then i suppose once you've handed yourself over and laid down on their bench, you don't have much say in the route!
om shanti
ps Pearl Lowe is on TV talking about fashion and how she 'used to be in a band'. she's really getting on my nerves!