Want to be wrapped in a teabag of peat? Caviar massage, madam? Róisín Ingle reports on the mildly relaxing, the wildly invigorating, and the simply ridiculous spa treatments available in Ireland today.
In the beginning, there were gymnasiums where we wore dodgy sports gear and perspired for Ireland while trying not to notice the bronzed, Lycra-clad ladies who managed to look serene on a treadmill and never, ever got frizzy hair. We had just discovered the importance of physical exercise, which some of us took to mean physical punishment - it didn't do you any good if it didn't make you feel bad. Back then it was all about feeling the burn and other American phrases. That was the dark age of self-improvement. Soon we would come into the light.
It was clear the change was coming when you started to hear rumours that people were going for massages in their lunch breaks. So-and-so had taken up Reiki and such and such was just mad for aromatherapy oils. Salons started springing up. Some of them had actual walls, instead of curtains dividing the treatment cubicles. Then the hotels starting getting in on the act. Now, any hotel worth it's bath salts is not actually called a hotel but a destination spa, offering tropical showers - eucalyptus, aloe vera - as standard. If Willy Wonka had ever gone into the beauty business he would have masterminded places like these. "Hey Grandpa, the snozzberry showers taste like snozzberries." These places don't do treatments they do "experiences". This is where we are now.
As a standard spa service, one hotel in the west of Ireland now offers surprisingly affordable access to a room where you lie on real sand in your swimsuit in order to watch a simulated sun rise and set over a 40-minute session. People outside the room won't enter during your session because a light, in the manner of the On-Air light outside a television studio, will warn them that you are in there communing with the sun. There are two possible reactions to hearing about this spa-service - Wow! How wonderful to get the benefits, spiritual and otherwise, of this gorgeous natural phenomenon without having to stand out in all weathers, was what I thought first for example, before wondering if couldn't we all just get up a bit earlier and walk to a nice spot where you can see the real sun rise and return there in the evening to see the real sun set?
But then a drizzly, natural sun outing wouldn't be anything to talk about, and talking about it afterwards is almost as important as the experience in this brave new world. You'll get loads of mileage out of the time you went to a mud room and someone threw mud at you before a sprinkler system operating from the ceiling whirred into to action rinsing it off. You tell friends it was wildly invigorating, but leave out the part where you felt like Carrie in the prom scene of the movie of the same name, and were trying to shake off the resulting nasty cold for a week.
You still talk about the time you were pummelled by two women - twins you think - in a synchronised massage which left you looser about the lower back for a while afterwards, even if it didn't really live up to the hype. When you saved up for months to have a spoonful of caviar-based cream massaged into your back everyone wanted to hear about it, even though you really weren't sure whether it had really been worth the price of a pair of designer shoes. And you are still regaling friends with the story of the time you were cocooned in a giant tea-bag full of peat - flown in from Czechoslovakia, obviously because our own peat isn't good enough - so that all your toxins were taken out and replaced with minerals. Or was it the other way around?
You can do all of the above in Ireland these days. The benefits you will gain vary from the non-existent to the negligible to the noticeable. And while the exorbitant prices of some of these experiences make it easy to be cynical, our busy lives mean these snatched moments of time "just for me" are more important than ever. We are still found in the gyms, but more of us are doing yoga or t'ai chi. Punishment has been replaced by pampering. And if we are going to pay through the nose for such treatments, they had better be ultra-glamorous as well as ultra good for us.
With so many outlandish choices from hot stones on the back to hot wax in the ears, the best thing to do is seek out friends who have tried some of the more outlandish treatments. Ask them to be honest. Was being shoved in an ice room and frolicking half-naked in real snow really marvellous for their pores or just excruciating? Was it worth the money? Is there a cheaper, less crazy alternative?
For the purposes of research - yeah, I know it's a hard life - I recently spent an hour in a floatation tank at Float, a new relaxation centre in Monkstown, Co Dublin. (With centres to help us relax, can it be long before there are centres to help us sleep?) I was suspicious, to say the least, especially when I saw the tank, which looks like a pod from a 1960s episode of Star Wars. Apparently, John Lennon had one in his house, so it must have fit right in with the decor. Lying in the enclosed pod in Epsom-salted water was vaguely boring and I spent the first 15 minutes fidgeting and wondering how I would last an hour. But then a strange thing happened. I relaxed. I went into a kind of drowsy reverie and before I knew it the pod doors were opening and I had to haul my salt-encrusted body out of there. Apparently it's the equivalent of six hours sleep. I will be back.
You, on the other hand, might hate it. You might prefer to relax with a bracing walk or a long soak in a regular bath, with a couple of slices of cucumber on the eyes. If feeling good with must-have facials, massages, colour therapy, ear candles or colonic irrigation is just another added pressure, a way of keeping up with everyone else, then surely we are missing the point?
They have a different attitude in countries like Hungary, where for centuries people visited thermal baths or lakes with the knowledge that the water had healing properties, and that alone was enough. No bells, no whistles just healthy, natural resources used properly and lot's of them. The walls might be peeling, the attendants might look as though they might slap you any minute with a wet towel, but it's all about down-to-earth health and wellbeing. Nothing more, nothing less.
In these frantic times we need to take better care of ourselves, but maybe we should be more discerning. We need to ask more questions instead of being blinded by the artful ambience and water music. We didn't come down in the last tropical shower, so let's not get too carried away just because we are being promised every miracle under the sun. Simulated or otherwise.