Leisha There is another project quietly taking shape here at Living Ground, and this one has actually been circling around us for about a year. We are creating a small spa area with a sauna, hydrotherapy baths, herbal baths, Epsom salt baths, oils, herbal body treatments, Ayurvedic-inspired treatments, facials, clay treatments and body wraps based around a person’s dosha. It is still very much in the building and developing stage, but the walls are already changing, spaces are being opened up, and what started as somebody else’s idea has somehow become another Living Ground project.
The idea was originally presented to me about a year ago, and I thought it was a great idea. The problem was that I knew exactly how much I already had on my plate and I could not wrap my head around initiating another project, particularly something that would need people, training, renovations, equipment, systems and somebody to actually run it. The person who originally brought the idea to me seemed very committed to operating it herself, so my feeling at the time was basically, yes, absolutely, if you want to do it, go for it. I could see how well a little spa could fit into Living Ground, but I also knew that I could not stretch myself any further at that point.
The idea faded into the background for a while, as ideas sometimes do here, but it did not completely disappear. Then we held our Live Blood workshop, which was very successful and also an enormous amount of work for me. Once that workshop was finished and I had come out the other side of all the preparation, teaching and organizing, the conversation about the spa started surfacing again. I think I had a little more room in my head by then to actually look at it and think about what it could become.
Of course, once I started looking at it properly, I realized very quickly that this was not going to be a tiny project where we put a bathtub in a room, add a few herbs and call it a spa. If we were going to do this, I wanted to do it properly and create something that made sense as part of Living Ground. That meant looking at the building, the flow of the rooms, privacy, light, water, drainage, treatment areas and how people would actually move through the space.
In the meantime, some walls had already started coming down, and this is where the story becomes a little more interesting. There was an old hallway running through the back area, and once we started opening things up we discovered a little room hidden behind the main part of the building. I already knew bits and pieces of the history of this site because the buildings were originally constructed about ten years ago to house the men working on the highway project, but I certainly did not know we had inherited what we are told was the snake room.
Apparently, one of the foremen involved with building the site was a snake collector. He had created a little addition at the very back of the property with a somewhat secret entrance, and this was where he kept his snakes. I have absolutely no idea what kinds of snakes were living back there or how many there were, and perhaps I am quite happy not knowing, but what he left behind is actually a really beautiful little room.
We are now looking at that old snake room and deciding what it wants to become in its next life. It could be another treatment room, it could become a quiet little tea room, or it may eventually become part of the bathing area. There is something rather funny about a room that once housed a collection of snakes possibly becoming a peaceful place where somebody sits drinking herbal tea after a sauna or an herbal treatment.
The whole spa area is at the other end of the Project, and we are trying to create a very different feeling there from the busier areas of Living Ground. Some of the windows and doors that open to the front are being closed because the area needs to feel quiet, private and tranquil, while the windows across the back are being opened up to allow in more natural light. I do not want to create a big commercial spa, and that really would not suit us anyway. I would much rather have a handful of lovely spaces where we can offer thoughtful treatments and where people do not feel rushed from one appointment into another. I just purchased many meters of plushy material and Maritza is making us bath robes.
What interests me is what we can actually create ourselves. We already work with herbs, oils, clays, plants, minerals, food, fermentation, soil biology and the microbiome every day, so there are many treatments that naturally connect with what we already do.
I am particularly interested in developing herbal body wraps according to the Ayurvedic doshas, where different herbs, oils and preparations can be chosen depending upon the person and what we are trying to support.
I also want to explore different herbal baths and hydrotherapy treatments, along with Epsom salt baths, sauna, oils and clay treatments. Facials are another area I think could be really beautiful because we have access to so many plants and ingredients, and we can make many of the preparations ourselves rather than simply buying commercial spa products and putting our name on them. There is so much we can do with plants, clays, oils, herbal infusions and simple preparations, and I think that is where the spa can become quite different.
Another part of this that excites me is being able to train some of the local women who already work with us, as well as other women or men in the area who may have an interest and a natural ability for this kind of work. I have already started quietly looking around at the girls and thinking about who has the right personality, hands and sensitivity for working directly with people. These are skills that can be learned, and training someone to do herbal wraps, facials, bathing treatments and other spa services gives them another skill that they can carry with them.
If there are local people who would genuinely like to learn this kind of work, I would be very happy to talk with them. We are still at the stage where I will be developing the treatments and training people, so it is actually a good time for somebody who is interested to become involved and learn along with us.
Then, of course, there is another idea I have been playing with, and this one will probably make a few people stop and ask whether I have completely lost my mind.
Mud baths!
And because this is Living Ground, I am not particularly interested in buying a bucket of anonymous packaged spa mud and calling it something exotic. I started thinking about our compost.
Yes, our compost.
Before anyone imagines being dropped into a pile of half-rotted vegetable scraps, that is not what I mean. The compost we create at Living Ground is something I know extremely well because we make it specifically to develop biological diversity, and I look at it under the microscope. I can see what is living in it, I can evaluate the biology, and I do not have to rely upon a label telling me that something is “natural” or “organic.”
That is a very different relationship with a material. I have actually said many times that once I have tested a properly made compost extract or tea under the microscope and I know what I am looking at, I am comfortable with what we have created because I can see the biology for myself. And, I have no issues drinking this compost tea.
So naturally my brain went from that to another question: could we develop a Living Ground mud bath?
There would obviously be more involved in developing something that is going to sit against somebody’s skin for an extended period than simply looking at compost under a microscope. I would want to work out exactly what material we use, how it is prepared, how it is combined with clay or mineral components, how it is handled and how we make the experience both beautiful and sensible. I am still researching and developing that part, so nobody is going to arrive tomorrow and unexpectedly find themselves sitting in a bathtub full of compost.
What I find fascinating about mud bathing is that humans have been putting earth, clay, mineral muds, herbs, oils and water on their bodies for a very long time. Warm mud holds heat beautifully against the body and creates a completely different sensation from simply sitting in hot water. There is the warmth, the weight of the mud against the skin, the minerals, the moisture and the simple fact that you have to stop moving for a while and allow yourself to be covered in Earth.
There is also something here that connects strongly with everything we do at Living Ground. I spend so much of my life looking at the soil biome and thinking about the communities of organisms that make healthy soil possible, while also looking at human health through the microbiome and understanding that we are biological ecosystems ourselves. The soil biome and the human microbiome are not the same thing, but they are both living communities whose health depends upon relationships, diversity, environment and balance.
That connection is probably what interests me about this spa more than simply creating another place for people to have treatments. I want the spa to grow out of the same thinking that runs through the gardens, the café, the herbs, the soil work and the workshops. I want it to feel connected to Living Ground rather than feeling like we added a completely unrelated business onto the back of the building.
So that is where we are right now. We are knocking down walls, closing other walls, discovering secret snake rooms, figuring out baths, thinking about herbs and oils, planning treatments and looking at who I can begin training.
And because apparently building a spa is no longer enough, I have also started considering whether we might put in a swimming pool.
I know. That is another project.
But a year ago I was saying that I could not possibly take on a spa, and now we are building one, so I have learned not to make very firm statements about what I am definitely not going to do next. For now, we will get this little spa created and see where it takes us, and I am really quite excited to see what grows out of it.
