Hot rocks and happy dreams....

[fajrdrako]

An amazing morning.

Six weeks ago, a friend treated me and maboroshimaki to a wonderful deep-tissue massage with her therapist, as a quasi-Christmas present. It was a wonderful massage. The therapist is Denyse Joly-MacLean, a small, bright French-Canadian woman who is so good I'd recommend her to anyone.

I noticed she also did hot rock therapy, and that intrigued me, so I made an appointment for today.

It exceeded all expectations. It's amazing. To get a sense of it you can have a look here, though I assure you there are no palm trees in the Vanier district of Ottawa. No. Snow, the Grotto of Lourdes, and a few strip malls, but no palm trees. I wish.

First of all, the sauna-like heat of the room was a joy after walking around outside. It's a part of Ottawa I don't know well and I wasn't sure where exactly I was going, so I was careful to leave plenty of time for bus connections and getting lost. I didn't get lost; the buses, amazingly, were on time; the result was that I arrived half an hour early, so I went for a walk. I was listening to Neil Gaiman's American Gods on my walkman. It was a clear, sunny morning and warmer than it had been - which means only that I had little fear of frostbite and didn't have to wear insulated sunglasses.

The rocks are heavy and hot. You're lying on some, in rows by the spine - I was thinking vaguely of the ida and pingala. Others are piled on top, on your front- the rocks on the front are set at the chakras. There are rocks under the wrists and palms of the hands, between the toes - and the amazing thing is, once they are there, you don't feel them. It's like floating. It's like acupuncture in that it's perfectly comfortable as long as you're relaxed and don't move, and it's so relaxing, that part is easy.

I had the impression - or maybe it was a vision, a memory, or a dream, or a confused reflection of X-Files - that I'd done this before, in a dark room smelling nicely of smoke, with many people there. Not in this lifetime, for sure.

The difficult part was getting up again, and waking up enough to go back outside. But by then I felt so relaxed and happy that it was beautiful. All week I've felt overtired and miserable, held back and held down by the cold weather. After that therapy I felt wonderful and bought groceries with a sense of joy.

This could be addictive. I want to do this every week. If only....

Comments

"Do It Yourself"

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

It just seems to me... this would be something rather easy to do on one's own. To first inquire about the necessary precautions, of course -- temperature safety zone, variety of rock to use (some will fracture when heated -- nix on chert nodules, for instance), length of time for proper heating as well as for suitable "soaking up" of the heat from the nested rocks... but it just seems to me that this is something that one could do on one's own. Thus the happy solution to your yearning to do it more often than just once in a very great while.

Looking forward to your having devised a story which will include this, and indeed looking forward to Lex's (or Clark's) (or Chloe's!) thoughts in reaction to enjoying it....

Re: "Do It Yourself"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It just seems to me... this would be something rather easy to do on one's own.

Well, it needs a fair amount of equipment, and I can't think how one could place the rocks without moving. Once you're on the table, you're immobilized. (For instance, you couldn't place rocks between your toes without sitting, and you can't sit with a rock on your forehead.) And the rocks have a specific timing, need to have the heat gauged, etc. And you couldn't do the massage part alone.

I like the idea of using this in a story!

Re: "Do It Yourself"

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Well, no, sorry there, you took me a bit too literally. I did not mean "do it alone by yourself." I meant, probably, enlist someone else equally interested in it, and all together now do it on your (plural) own. Because I find it fascinating, too, and would be quite willing to explore it further... in fact, I may have access to a rudimentary set-up, through the Chinaberry people. Let me look through the catalog I have here, and get back to you? Or, feel free to go browse their website (www.IsabellaCatalog.com) and see what you can see! These are the people from whom I got your neti pot, fyi. Lovely place to explore. If anyone would have a way to do the hot-rocks massage in a well-informed-amateur way, it would be they.

(I eagerly await any story with this in it...!)

Re: "Do It Yourself"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And here I thought I must have described it really badly!

As for a story - I think I'd rather experience it than write about it, but you never know what will turn up in a story.