“How are you feeling?” a soft voice asks in the darkness. The words wash over my body like a warm wave. Cherished, calm, uplifted, refreshed. I attempt an answer, but I’m unsure if she hears me with my face pressed downward into the sheets; I don’t bother to lift my neck.
Half asleep on an inversion table in a private room at the newly opened Spa at Séc-he in Palm Springs, I’m midway through the 90-minute Quartz and Poultice treatment, which incorporates poultices of varying size (essentially, tightly bound balls of quartz sand that are wrapped in linen, heated, and used in place of hands for compression and kneading). Under me, beneath the bottom sheet, a layer of warmed quartz and amber grains contours to my form, as if I’ve snuggled into a desert dune that’s been baking in the sun all day.
Maybe it’s the cucumber vodka I sipped an hour or so ago by the pool or the welcome break from a busy workweek. Maybe it’s the fact that this facility was built on ancient tribal land by the Agua Caliente people to commemorate a deep heritage — the 73,000-square-foot spa is only one part of the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, set to open in full sometime this fall — and consequently, I’m hyperaware that I’m decompressing on sacred ground. But in this moment, I feel that I finally understand why they call it massage therapy. I feel healed…”
