Ayurvedic massage tables look a bit like wooden pool tables, I have discovered. They are rock hard, dead flat, and have holes at the corners. These are for drainage purposes.
You clamber aboard in a paper loin cloth (basically a bit of string and a length of loo roll) which has no discernible function and last about three seconds, lie on your back quivering slightly, and then two nice ladies (or gents, if you are of the gent persuasion) pour a gallon of toffee-smelling oil over you and make vigorous synchronised circular and up-and-down movements designed, I believe, to loosen deep seated toxins.
They certainly loosen something. Your job is to slither around bashing into the edges and trying not to think about what this must look like. Your last shred of dignity departs when they've finished your front and want you to turn over. There is no purchase to be had anywhere, so you flail helplessly while farty oil sounds emanate from the small of your back.
When they're done with you (and not all of it is vigorous pumelling, some is delicate circumnavigation of the navel which is strange but very pleasant, like being tickled with many small rubbery funnels) they help you up and then leave you with a bucket of hot water, some twigs ("scrubbing!"), a bag of brown powder ("also scrubbing!"), a tiny pot of brown goo ("hair!), a mini bar of soap and a large-ish tea towel. You therefore come out of the bathroom covered in nearly as much oil as when you went in.
Never again, you think, and then two days later you have another one.
joella
1 comment:
It wasn't attractive, believe me. And nor were the surroundings - I don't know about the average Ayurvedic hospital but this one felt like it was in the land that time forgot, full of rattling drip stands, empty beds with stained mattresses (all that oil, I hope) and apparatus whose use I couldn't even guess at.
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