Body treatments are essentially a facial for your whole body. It 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 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.

It’s always best when a massage therapist does the body treatment, 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.

After the body scrub comes the body mask and body wrap. 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 wraps were originally a treatment where Ace bandages or plastic wrap was tightly wrapped around the body to cause quick weight loss through vasodilatation.

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.

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.

Benefits of a Body treatment

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

*Body treatments using Shea butter and rich lotions are hydrating treatments geared towards softening the skin.

After the visit to the spa, the body should be well taken care of with the right products to maintain its natural, pure and luscious feel.

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