My mom's mom, Grandma V., introduced me to massages 14 years ago in Hot Springs, AR. Grandma always loved getting massages when she and Grandpa would go to Hot Springs, so even though Grandma was no longer able to go get one for herself, she insisted that my sister and I both go and be massaged. As I said, Marti, my sister, and I had never had massages before.
The place that we went to in Hot Springs was an old school "spa" with the mineral baths and hadn't really been upgraded since they opened in like the 1920's (I kid, but still). So we go down and check in and we are pointed to these little closets and are told to put our clothes on the hooks there and somebody would come and wrap a sheet around us and take us to the relaxation area. Mind you Marti and I are the only people in the spa area that are under the age of 50 in the whole place. Well, I'm in my little closet area and the person comes to wrap my sheet around me, what I didn't know is that I was supposed to turn around and face the wall, but I didn't. So, I'm standing there facing the little spa lady full frontal and she starts yelling me to turn around. That was discomfort moment #1. She wraps the sheet around me escorts me to the waiting area and then takes me back to this big room that has the mineral baths on one side and little cubicles with massage tables on the other. There are all these older women wandering around in their togas moving from salt scrub to mineral bath to God-knows-what. I lay down on my table and the wiry little masseuse starts giving me an old school rub-down. It was really not all that relaxing and very uncomfortable especially since I had to go to the bathroom the entire time.
I didn't go back for another massage for many, many years.
I was thinking about this today as I was having a wonderful massage at La Belle Spa by Donald and I started thinking about how much my Grandma would have loved this place. It started out with a nice foot soak with some crackers and nuts while I stared into a fire. Then Donald came and took me into a private room, with soft lights and soothing music being piped in...so very different than my first experience.
And as he proceeded to work the knots out of my back, I slowly began to relax and stopped resisting, and as I did so I tried to silence the running discussion in my head. I couldn't quite silence the voice in my head completely because as I lay there being kneaded like bread dough, I was thinking "how do I want to phrase this in my blog...."
2009...I'm promising myself more massages. They are SOOOO worth it!!
6 comments:
I love Hot Springs!!!!! As a kid we thought is was so cool that we could be in water temperatures that my mom would normally never let us venture into.
My first massage was at the Pointe. NO complaints there :)
I love massages! I am a junkie. My team at work gets me a gift certificate for every major holiday and they act like I'd somehow be bored with receiving one. Nope!
I love them too, but don't go near as often as I should. Too much of a guilty pleasure for me I guess.
sounds like you liked the Spa:-) hmmm... They give great facials too. My lalt massage was up at the fairmont sonoma mission inn and spa. I still need to take you up there.
Yay - I'm glad you had some rest and relaxation today.'
I have had one massage in my life. It was very nice, but eh... I think I'm too impatient for massages. Check my post for today for my on certain personality traits that I have that would also prohibit my enjoyment of massages.
So....do you want to be a masseuse in order to get full frontal views? :) had to bring that up :)
I need a massage right now! Great post1
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