My visit to a Korean Spa in Duluth, GA
The name of the spa is Jeju. This is from my visit on August 15th, 2019.
It costs $30 to enter.
They give you a uniform and a key/money bracelet to track purchases and use a locker.
The men go one way and the women go another, to their changing rooms. Once inside, you first put your shoes in your assigned shoe locker. Then you pad over to your bigger locker for anything else you may have brought with you. You can spend 24 hours there, so some people bring laptops and sleeping gear.
What you should bring:
Water bottle
Reading material
Towel
Swimsuit
Of course, I didn’t bring any of those things on my trip. But those are the things I wish I had.
You’re gonna see a lot of naked bodies walking around, showering, and maybe even with legs splayed to shave their lady parts. It’s very down-to-earth. Everyone has to shower in the public area before entering the hot tubs, and no one bats an eye about it.
From the hot tubs and locker rooms you continue on into the common area, wearing your orange uniform to mingle with both genders. There’s a little cafe serving Korean food, 9 saunas, massage therapists, reflexologists, benches, and drawers offering pillows and blankets. I stood outside the reflexology room, half reading the mostly Korean descriptions of the feet, half waiting for my friend to come out of the men’s area. An employee burst out of the room and quickly started trying to escort me into the room. He didn’t speak any English, so I couldn’t explain I was waiting, but he vigorously pointed at the photos with some English descriptions of the benefits of reflexology, and motioned me to come inside.
I had decided before entering that I will get more than one treatment while we were there because it costs $30 to enter, and 45 minutes to drive there, so I don’t plan on returning for several months. I had also heard great things about the reflexology treatment, so I finally let the man usher me to his chair, without waiting for my friend.
Reflexology Treatment
He motioned for me to lay on an oversized recliner covered in towels, so I did. He then roughly tucked a folded towel over my eyes and under my head, bumping me around and pulling my hair until I assisted his efforts. I then lay there awkwardly for about 5 long minutes. He eventually came back to put my feet in a tub of hot water, then left me again for an uncomfortably long period of time. I was glad for the tub, and it had a spiky texture on the bottom so I could use that to sort of entertain myself while I waited, listening for my friend and hints on what the guy was doing. I finally started taking the blindfold off because I just felt so uncomfortable, and I don’t know if that was his cue or what, but he sat down by my feet the moment I did that, and began the treatment.
It mostly felt good, and it was a positive reminder that you can do the same stroke over and over and over again and it doesn’t get old. He was a bit rough on the insides of my toes, but it didn’t feel bad. I didn’t recognize anything as specifically reflexology vs a foot massage, and he worked a bit on my calves as well. The person who recommended it to me described it as a massage that covers everything from the hips down. I did not have that experience. He mostly stayed on my feet, worked a bit on my calves, and then it was just at the very end of the session when he roughly manipulated my thighs, rotating my femur in the hip joint, and did quick, hard compression strokes up and down my adductors and IT band. I could barely handle the IT band work, and when he repeated it on my adductors, I had to tense up to protect myself and just grit my teeth for a couple seconds, because he wouldn’t understand me if I tried to speak anyway.
I don’t think I’ll do that treatment again. However, in his defense, in massage school I was taught to treat a client as if they were completely relaxed, and we practiced manipulating each other without assisting each other at all with movements such as putting a pillow under the head. Most clients are not relaxed when you start to put a pillow under their head, and they always lift their head to help. I was being abnormal by not lifting my head in the beginning, and he had probably never tried to put a towel under someone’s head without them helping him out. I have to admit I have lost the skill of lifting someone’s head with one hand and placing a pillow beneath with the other. But I communicate to my client what I want them to do.
Hot Tubs
I learned about Contrast Water Immersion in massage school when we were studying plantar fasciitis. So every time I go somewhere with hot tubs and cold tubs, I submit my body to a few minutes in the hot, then about 30 seconds in the cold, then immediately back to the hot, several times. As far as I can tell, the idea is that it’s exercising your blood vessels and increasing blood flow where it might otherwise have been restricted.
Ever curious to find evidence, I found several articles in journals such as Physical Therapy in Sport, Journal of Science and Medicine and Sport, and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Several studies have been done to test if contrast water immersion speeds recovery for athletes or for people with injuries. It appears to be true that CWI does speed recovery. I did not find anything regarding what it would do for a healthy female spending a day in the spa, however, nor the theory behind exactly why it’s therapeutic.
Alternating hot and cold water immersion for athlete recovery: a review
Darryl JCochrane Feb 2004. Physical Therapy in Sport.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1466853X03001226
Contrast water immersion hastens plasma lactate decrease after intense anaerobic exercise by R. HughMorton in Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport December 2007
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1440244006002301
Effect of water immersion methods on post-exercise recovery from simulated team sport exercise
May 2009. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport
Jeremy Ingram Brian Dawson a Carmel Goodman a Karen Wallman a John Beilby
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1440244008000388
Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation July 2005, Pages 1404-1410
Changes in Lower-Leg Blood Flow During Warm-, Cold-, and Contrast-Water Therapy
Kimberly A.FiscusMS, ATCaThomas W.KaminskiPhD, ATCbMichael E.PowersPhD, ATC, CSCSc
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003999305001863
VASODILATATION IN THE LOWER EXTREMITIES IN RESPONSE TO IMMERSING THE FOREARMS IN WARM WATER By JOHN H. GIBBON, JR., Aim EUGENE M. LANDIS 1932
https://dm5migu4zj3pb.cloudfront.net/manuscripts/100000/100456/JCI32100456.pdf
