Therapeutic waters: Ode to soaking

My GF Susan wrote me today, "Two more sleeps until Body Blitz!"

Full disclosure: the traditional beauty spas make me really nervous. I find the treatments overpriced or silly, the atmosphere pretentious; the whole experience is not a treat for me.

Then I visited the hammam at the Mosque of Paris, and I went into the zone. In the exquisitely mosaic-tiled baths, I drifted, relaxed, experienced the exfoliating scrub (gommage). A simple, spirit-lifting, deeply female experience.

In this blissed out zone, I passed several hours, and left serene in the Paris twilight. I looked for a hammam in my city, and one day a woman old me about Body Blitz, which is similar: an all-women therepeutic water spa.

Aside from the waters, they offer only a few treatments: massage, exfoliation, mud wraps. No Chocolate Chakra Thermal Stone foo-faw, no mani-pedi, and (yay) no Anti-aging Cellulite-blasting Bull-S.

You enter, turn off all electronics, shower, change into your swim or birthday suit, and begin a circuit (without strict time requirements) of salt-water pool (shown in the photo at top), steam room, cold plunge pool, sauna, green tea pool and finish in the salt pool.

You're surrounded by natural stone and wood, immaculate rooms. Graceful attendants bring you tea.

If your city has a hammam or a therapeutic-water spa, try it. Every friend I have taken longs for a return visit.