ediblesf.com | 25 6 under my skin It’s late winter. I’m ready for days to grow longer. We drive north 47 miles. Eventually hitting winding roads that telegraph we’re somewhere else. Trees blur by. I don’t know where we’re going until a handful of minutes before we arrive. I read various phrases online. A bathing ritual, an enzyme bath, a therapeutic body treatment. Am I dressed right? It doesn’t matter because soon I won’t be wearing anything at all. Soak. Heat. Immerse. Cover. These are some of the words that drift by when I recall my experience bathing in wood. But this further obfuscates. I didn’t bathe in wood. I wasn’t clean when I finished, and wood, the word, evokes hard edges when instead it’s soft. Cozy. Cocoon. Envelop. Shroud. The material, the mass, the stuff I climb into is made of ground cypress, rice bran, and enzymes occurring naturally. Young cypress trees are shaped like a pyramid. Later, they turn into majestic columns. Cypress needles, when crushed, evoke Hinoki, a prized Japanese tree. How could I forget scent? The aroma of wood shavings is universal. So evocative of context. Can you hear the blade grinding away? Other thoughts waft through my nose like astringent and pungent. Rice bran is the edible husk of brown rice. Enzymes are fundamental to life. We have enzymes in our bodies, bark, and leaves. Once blended, the mass will ferment and heat up. Sam, my bath attendant, shapes my “curated seat in the bath” with a decades-old redwood paddle. This indentation is what I lower myself into. I use my hands to move the heavy material onto my body to cover myself up. Sam finishes the task using her hands, which are expertly manicured. She buries me. I’m at Osmosis Spa in Freestone, California, a former stone and logging town in Sonoma County. Inspiration for this enzymatic “bath” traveled here from Japan. It came out of monasteries, but it also popped up at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. Over 2,000 athletes, some with medals, and various officials simmered their bodies in wood. Can you think of anything nicer than following an intense competition with a dunk in hot fluff meant to calm nerves and equalize neurons? The enzymes are a catalyst to change, and my internal temperature gradually rises. My core ignites but not from my usual workout. Core, a word with many definitions including “meaning the heart or inner part of a physical thing,” but also “the center, the most important.” Slowly, I get hot. Then, hotter. When I breathe, the reddish-brown mass billows up and down. Sweat drips down my face and I repeat a Zen mantra I learned from Michael, the founder of Osmosis: “When you are cold, be a cold Buddha; when you are hot, be a hot Buddha.” After 20 minutes, Sam tells me it’s time to get up. With difficulty I move the material off. I didn’t think it could get hotter but as I do this the heat intensifies. Finally out, I exit to the garden and stand blissfully naked on a wooden platform. Before I scrub my body down, I breathe in the cool air. Now I am a cooling down Buddha and everything is perfect.
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