Multicultural Healing

Remember back when anything exotic and luxurious had to be French. Spas had pink walls and Greek statues in alcoves and offered things Vichy and Parisienne: facials, massages and whirlpool baths--the water flecked with glitter if you were at a really classy joint. These days, French manicures are about as exotic as French fries, and the simple townsfolk of Beverly Hills are flocking to local spas that offer Balinese Lulur and Ayurvedic Shirodhara treatments.

In Bali, the Royal Lulur is a 40-day-long ceremonial treatment originally reserved for royal brides-to-be, and involves multi-stage rice rubs and massages with spices, yogurt and frangipani. Presumably this long ordeal of beauty is meant to traumatize and/or hypnotize the poor young thing into tolerating whatever royal pain-in-the-side she’s being hitched to.

At Lulur, a spa in West Hollywood, the authenticity of the experience is certainly open to question, and this is probably a good thing. At the very least, your Royal Lulur will be a merciful 39 days shorter than the real thing.

But rather than indulging in ersatz ethnicity, you might try venturing into some of Los Angeles’ more exotic venues, to experience some real multicultural healing at the hands of people who come from--or at the very least have been to--the mystical lands where hedonistic therapy is considered normal.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t blink at using your Thomas Guide to reach a mini-mall in Alhambra for a bowl of authentic Vietnamese pho, then you might want to take yourself a few miles north to experience some authentic spa treatments in equally esoteric surroundings. Tucked next to a freeway exit in downtown Ventura is the Lu Ross Academy, an ordinary beauty school whose students have become the spa world’s equivalent of Harvard Business School grads under the direction and ownership of Chrys Huynh, a Vietnamese refugee who piloted her own fishing boat out of Saigon in 1978.

You enter Huynh’s spa through a rather bleak Formica-encrusted beauty salon where students are catering to senior citizens in for their wash ‘n’ sets. But back in the treatment rooms, the atmosphere and the service are indistinguishable from any high-end day spa.

Huynh has developed a signature service she calls the Tibetan Eye Treatment that is meant to reduce puffiness and rejuvenate the eye area, but the treatment itself is a whole-body experience. First a warm, heavy, herb-infused pillow is laid across your stomach, then warm stones are placed on your feet. An acupressure massage of the head, shoulders, hands and feet follows, and the face is massaged with a jade roller. “The treatment pulls heat away from the eyes, calms the stomach and drains the lymphatic system,” Huynh says. The only things to touch your eyes are a couple of slices of cucumber.

Recent graduates are set to offer the Tibetan Eye Treatment at the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Ojai Valley Inn, but why go there when you can get it done at Lu Ross for $30, and you may even meet the master?

If you want an authentic Asian treatment that is obscenely luxurious, you need go no farther than Koreatown’s spas. The Aroma Wilshire Center is a Korean American mini-metropolis, a complex with shopping, dining and a multi-level rooftop driving range. For $20,000, you can become a lifetime member, or for a more conservative $35, you can get a day pass to the Aroma Spa and experience the Korean purification ritual known as the body scrub.

After basking in a series of tubs, pools, saunas and steam rooms designed with the austere elegance of a stone temple, you enter into a brightly lit white-tiled room where spry, elderly Korean women in black lace bras and panties work over their clients’ naked bodies, vigorously slapping, pummeling and scrubbing every inch of flesh.

If you are not shy, then the Korean body scrub as performed at Aroma Spa is something like having every inch of your public and private skin worried until your naked soul shines through. If you’ve ever seen a mother cat lick a blind newborn kitten all over with her 80-grit sandpaper tongue, then you’ll have a general idea of the nature of this experience. It is rough and yet comforting, and leaves you feeling as if you have just been born.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Polynesian sumo wrestlers are so much suppler yet tougher than the Japanese guys, you should pay a visit to Wesley Sen, a practitioner of authentic Polynesian Lomi Lomi, a form of therapeutic massage that is a carefully guarded secret passed on from master to apprentice. Sen, who lives half the year in Hawaii, demonstrates his art at the Burke Williams Day Spa in Sherman Oaks, techniques he learned from his master, a round, jolly 68-year-old named Uncle Freddie, who has a velvety singing voice and legs like tree trunks. Freddie is a crown prince of the Cook Islands, but he chose to spent the ‘60s in Vegas, hanging out with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra instead of assuming the throne. Now he is working on a project to bring cellular service to Polynesia, in addition to coaching Wesley in the art of Lomi Lomi and giving massages to private clients. Freddie claims that he can make me an inch taller, then he and Wesley walk up and down on my spine, expertly kneading my muscles with their powerful toes. It’s wonderful. Brutal, but wonderful. And worth it afterward, when Uncle Freddie shares his secret of staying in shape the Cook Islands way, by jumping across the floor like a frog twice a day.

By far the most ground-trembling, body-altering treatment I’ve ever had is one where the practitioner never so much as laid a finger on my person, and it comes via Africa. Traveling drummer Toby Christensen, who books sessions locally through Yoruba House, has developed an African-inspired technique he calls Sound Attunement Therapy. Christensen is a handsome blond guy with surfer-dude looks, but he has studied African drumming and shamanic healing more than a decade, and has come up with what I can only describe as a sound-wave body massage that is as ecstatically pleasurable as it is therapeutic. Christensen begins a typical healing session with a Native American hoop drum, which he plays close to your supine form. It functions almost like a shamanic stethoscope; the reverberating tone of the drum indicates where your problem areas may be. He stands over you, with the base of his African djembe drum centered over your heart, and begins to play. What follows is the most shockingly sensual full-contact concert experience one could possibly imagine.

Though Christensen never touches your body save with the waves of sound emanating from his drum, the sensation is extremely physical. The drumbeat seems to paralyze, then liquidize, then vaporize your flesh. And then it melts your bones. Christensen carries around a sheaf of research studies on the healing properties of sound, and drumming in particular, especially for people suffering from chronic illnesses, but the proof is in the experience, as you feel the song of the djembe calling your body’s rhythm to fall in step with the soothing beat of his drum.

The song Christensen plays for each client is unique. “Everyone has his own rhythm, and part of my job is to find it and bring it out,” he explains. During both the sessions I had with him over a two-day period, I experienced almost hallucinatory dreamlike imagery. Although I initially went to Christensen mainly out of curiosity, after each hourlong session, I walked away with a pleasant buzzing sensation coursing through my body, a feeling that lasted literally for days. More curious was that the muscle cramps that had been bothering me for years had seemingly disappeared.

So unless I’m suddenly invited to marry into the Balinese royal family, you’ll find me spending my spa dollars in the global village’s raucous marketplace, where a little sense of adventure goes a long way, where crown princes do turn into frogs, and where miracle cures can happen.