A spa helps you boosts inner beauty

A spa helps you boosts inner beauty

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): "To be pampered like one there is no need for
you to be born a princess," says Ida as she emerges from a local
spa glowing like the full moon on a midsummer's night. A modern
day Javanese who spends long hours at her public relations
office, the thought of working out at a fitness center seldom
inspires her. But with many health clubs in Jakarta converting
their premises into spas, she feels better coaxed into visiting
one.

One of her favorite haunts is the newly opened LifeSpa at the
Hilton Hotel where a 50-minute aromatherapy massage after a
herbal drink brewed from ginger is enough to revive her exhausted
limbs. As a central Javanese, Ida was always aware that different
kinds of baths and massage practiced within her family helped
relieve stress and beautify women. She has faint memories of
corners of her home wrapped in the scents of exotic oils and
elders often being scrubbed, masked and kneaded with creams of
mysterious odors.

As she has spent much of her time abroad, before returning to
work in Jakarta, she was left with little time to indulge in the
luxuries enjoyed by her ancestors. For centuries, the Javanese
have lived with the philosophy of inner and outer beauty or
rupasampat wahyabiantara as cosmetic queen Martha Tilaar calls
it. It gives the example of the legendary princess Ken Dedes,
whose secret of her exquisite beauty and strength lay in the
herbal and floral treatments she routinely treated herself to.

But the modern day Indonesian woman prefers to deprive herself
of all this goodness as she has lusted for decades for a body
like Jane Fonda's instead, and for creams and perfumes made only
in Paris, London and Rome. Besides, it was impossible until only
a few years ago to get Javanese royalty to share the secrets of
beautifying the body with natural ingredients with those who did
not belong to the court.

When she first offered creams made from pulverized rice and
crushed jasmine petals, high society called her kampungan (from
the village), Martha never tires of saying. But she continued to
research and finally released at least some of the rejuvenating
recipes to the average woman whose health and beauty she found
was fast withering away with stress, pollution and the work
pressure of modern life.

Mooryati Soedibyo of Mustika Ratu cosmetics has gone a step
further and has brought to the people a small slice of the palace
itself. She has designed Taman Sari, The Royal Heritage Spa like
a water palace used by members of the royalty of a bygone era.
Now anyone can walk into this lap of luxury and be transported
for a few hours at least into a world reminiscent of the regal
boudoirs of Javanese kings and queens.

Spa is little else but one village in an eastern province of
Belgium. The popular mineral springs found there earned the
reputation of having magical powers that could cure disease and
inspired all health resorts thereafter to be called by the same
name. Already known in Roman times, the springs were rediscovered
in 1326 and have been visited since the 16th century, reaching a
zenith in the 18th century when they were visited by European
royalty. For centuries after, bathing in, and drinking mineral
water was believed to promote good health.

Today, many a medical authority feels that most of the
beneficial effects of spa therapy are indirect, resulting from
relaxation of the patient facilitated by the environment of the
spa.

Once Brian Billdt of LifeSpa was convinced of the logic of the
above argument he was quick to redesign his health club at the
Hilton. He expanded the 450 square-metre premises to more than
double that size. He separated the men's sauna from the women's
and stretched the opening hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

He hired spa therapists to help guide clients to choose the
right treatment of the day and offers four different kinds of
massage, from reflexology to the traditional local massage that
works wonders on the blood circulation as thumb and palm pressure
is firmly exerted on aching muscles. He dimmed the lighting and
ensured that the place always smelled of a bouquet of fresh
flowers.

"What the work out machines do is to keep the body fit. What I
have done now is to help both the body and mind to unwind, to
relax in an atmosphere that is charming," Brian told The Jakarta
Post.

An important activity at all spas is the bath. Bathing is
something that has always been popular, whether for enjoyment,
health or hygiene.

It is true that water not just quenches the thirst but also
cleanses the body and relaxes the mind. A jacuzzi with jets of
hot water propelled around the body is both soothing and
stimulating while just the sound of a gurgling stream is enough
to calm raw nerves.

But there is a difference between bathing out of necessity and
being in water for the sheer pleasure of it. At a spa, bathing
becomes an entire experience, similar to that of creating a
symphony.

Highly popular with those who believe in such an indulgence
now and then there are different types of body scrubs applied
after a massage and before a bath. Concocted from the Dewi Sri
range of aromatics inspired by the rice goddess of fertility of
the same name, the scrubs are a mixture of the finest rice
combined with a variety of pure essential oils whose sweet
smelling and penetrative properties remove dead skin cells,
leaving the body feeling soft and supple.

That women around the world have been using organic potions to
care for themselves for centuries is something that Anita Roddick
of The Body Shop respects very much. In her 1992 autobiography
Body and Soul, she says that when she first visited Tahiti she
found women straight out of a Gauguin painting. Despite all the
exposure to the sun and the rigors of their lives, their skin was
exceptionally smooth and elastic because they constantly rubbed
cocoa butter on themselves, on each other and just like their
mothers had done before them.

Roddick, whose spa essentials were launched here recently, is
currently in the midst of a vigorous campaign to bring the
bathroom alive again by adding to it a few spa essentials to
boost one's well being. One of her suggestions to all those
having to juggle home, careers, child care and social agendas is
that they do not have to go out to a spa when they can stay in
and have one.