Body treatments

Body treatments are essentially a facial for your whole body and leave your skin feeling velvety smooth and soft. The idea behind a body treatment is that is just as important to cleanse, exfoliate, and hydrate the skin on your body as it is the skin of your face.

The most popular body treatment is a body scrub, sometimes called a body polish, salt glow or sea-salt scrub. This is an exfoliating treatment that takes place on a massage table covered with a sheet and a large, thin piece of plastic.

As you lay on your stomach, the massage therapist rubs a mixture of sea salt, oil, and aromatics like lemon into your skin. This exfoliates the skin and leaves it feeling velvety soft.

Once your whole body is scrubbed, which takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes, you shower it all off without soap, leaving a nice coating of oil. It’s an invigorating treatment, and it’s a good idea to get your scrub before your massage if you’re having both.

Variations can come from the essential oils or scrub materials: you might get an orange blossom/peppermint salt glow or a cucumber salt glow, or a body scrub done with coffee grounds, finely ground pecan shells or Napa Valley grape seeds. Sometimes a hydrating lotion is applied afterwards.

A body mask and body wrap often takes place after a scrub. After you rinse off the salt you return to the treatment table. If you’re slathered with mud, algae, or seaweed and wrapped in a thermal blanket, it’s a “detoxifying” treatment that stimulates your metabolic system, speeding its ability to carry away waste products. If the product is cream or lotion, it’s a “hydrating” treatment.

A body wrap can also be a wrapping treatment used to treat cellulite. It sometimes has a diuretic effect that aids in temporary weight reduction.

Body Wrap

Body wraps were originally a treatment where Ace bandages or plastic wrap was tightly wrapped around the body to cause quick weight loss through vasodilation. You can still find these types of “slimming” body wraps, which result in the temporary loss of weight and inches, at some spas.

But today a body wrap in a spa is more likely to be treatment where you’re slathered with a body mask made of algae, seaweed, mud, clay, lotion or cream, then wrapped for 20 minutes to keep you warm. Later the product is rinsed off. The body wrap usually ends with an application of lotion (technically not a massage). This body wrap treatment is sometimes called a body cocoon or body mask.

What are the Benefits of a Body Wrap?

Body wraps that use algae, seaweed, mud or clay are detox treatments that help rid the body of toxins through metabolic stimulation. *

Body wraps using shea butter and rich lotions are hydrating treatments geared towards softening the skin.

What Happens During A Body Wrap?

Often a body wrap begins with exfoliation through dry brushing or a salt scrub. You lie down on whatever you will eventually be wrapped in – often plastic or mylar, but sometimes towels or sheets.

I think it’s best when a massage therapist does the body wrap, because they naturally incorporate massage techniques as they apply the product. An esthetician, on the other hand, is not trained in massage. She is simply applying product to the skin.

Once the product is on, you’re wrapped to stay warm, usually for 20 minutes. Oftentimes the therapist leaves the room, but sometimes they stay and give you a scalp massage (much better, in my opinion!)

When the time is up, you’re unwrapped and the body mask has to come off. This is why they often take place in wet rooms, equipped with a shower, wet table, or Vichy shower. You might either jump in a shower or the therapist will rinse you off with a handheld shower or a special Vichy shower that feels absolutely fabulous. It’s like taking a shower lying down. Then you dry off, and there’s usually an application of lotion to moisturize your skin.