The bliss of the spa day alone

Dear reader,

Twice a year I take a full day, alone, at a small bathhouse on the western edge of the city. The day starts at ten in the morning, when I arrive at the small reception, and ends at five in the afternoon, when I leave. The cost is one hundred and twenty euros for the day, which includes the entry, a small lunch, and unlimited use of the small facilities. The booking is by phone, two or three weeks in advance, and I always book on a Tuesday when the place is quietest.

I am writing about this today because the most recent such day was last Tuesday, and the small effects of it are still propagating through the week. I want to record, while the memory is fresh, what a full solo day at a good small bathhouse can do for a life that has been, in the months before, busier than I would have liked.

The structure of the day

Arrive at ten. Change into the small white robe that the bathhouse provides. Spend forty minutes in the warm pool, slowly. Twenty minutes in the sauna. Five minutes outside in the small courtyard in the cool air. A short cold dip in the small cold pool. Forty-five minutes lying on a heated stone bed in the resting room. By this point it is about one in the afternoon. A small simple lunch — vegetable soup, bread, a small salad — eaten slowly in the small café area.

The afternoon: a long ninety-minute massage with a practitioner who works at the bathhouse two days a week. A short rest. Another forty-five minutes on the heated stone bed. Another sauna and cold dip. A long final hour of nothing in particular — sitting in the small reading room with a cup of tea, looking out the small window, slowly putting on regular clothes when the time comes to leave.

What seven hours does

Resets the body in a way that no shorter intervention can reach. The first two hours are mostly the body shedding the small accumulated tensions of the months leading up to the visit. The middle three hours, including the lunch and the massage, are when the deep restoration actually happens. The last two hours are the small integration, when the body absorbs what the day has given it.

By the time I leave at five, I am in a state that I cannot achieve through any number of shorter practices. The combination of the heat, the cold, the bodywork, the simple food, and the seven hours of complete absence from the small concerns of normal life produces a small physiological recalibration that the body, for several weeks afterwards, draws on.

On the case for the twice-a-year solo day

Twice a year is the right cadence for me. More often, the small private investment of the day would not be sustainable. Less often, and the small intervals between would let the accumulated tension build up further than I want. Twice a year is the small dependable structural commitment that holds the rest of the year in shape.

If you have not done this kind of full solo day at a good small spa, I would recommend it. The cost is not trivial but is, in proportion to what it provides, one of the better investments you can make in your own ongoing health. The investment is one day twice a year, plus the cost of the entry. The return is the kind of small structural restoration that no daily practice quite reaches.

Until the next one,

M.