It’d been nearly 3 years since I’d had anything even slightly resembling the common cold, so I suppose it was only fair to come down with one. Considering all the planes, trains, buses, rented cars, etc that I’ve been in over the past few years its pretty surprising, and a decent testament to what I’ve been doing with exercise and nutrition. Granted, this cold wasn’t all that bad, but I hadn’t had one in so long that it was sort of a novelty. Out of nowhere I remembered seeing and reading about “Halotherapy” and The Salt Room here in Orlando. While I had done some initial research and thought it sounded interesting, up until this cold I didn’t really feel like there was a legitimate reason for me to check it out. Well, in my (sometimes annoying to others) habit of making the best of a given situation, I now saw this cold as a reason to check out The Salt Room. Yes, that’s right, I leveraged my cold.
The salt room picture above is about 1,000,000x more rave-tacular than what I tried…
Interestingly located within one of Orlando’s medical corridors, the Salt Room is actually a collection of a couple of “salt rooms” one is for kids and has little tables, chairs, kitchen sets, and other make believe items inside for them to play with, one was for adults wishing to chill out, and it seemed like there were other rooms for massage etc. while experiencing the salty goodness. The reception area had the feel of a very professional massage therapy office with a medical focus. After some paperwork, I was given a tour. Thankfully, there were some lockers for items we didn’t wish to take into the cave-like salt room. The salt room itself had about 7 of those “high tech” looking no-gravity lounge chairs, similar to what you might have out by a pool or at the beach – but that you bought at Brookstone (see inexplicably colorful photo above). Frankly, this just further fueled my need to save up for one of those Le Corbusier loungers I’ve had my eyes on for a few years. It was the middle of the day, and it looked like a few people had come here on their lunch break for the Halotherapy. Over the phone I had asked what was best to wear, since I had seen conflicting reports of what people wear to these things across the US. Thankfully, we would not have to change into any sort of questionable jumpsuit, or whatnot and were just told to wear something comfortable. I wore some loose fitting bamboo capris and a usual shirt.
Some people brought in books or e-readers, I wasn’t too certain about bringing in electronics as I didn’t want to expose anything to excessive salt. One of the attendants came in and did a brief but really good explanation/demo of Pranayama breathing that we were encouraged to do if we felt like it or remembered to do during our 1 hour session in the salt room. The floor was covered with quarter-sized roughly spheracle pieces of salt, and the walls/ceiling were “frosted” thickly with salt as well. The effect was the look of being in a bright white cave – reminded me of those “ice hotels” you might have seen. The room’s temperature was moderate and comfortable. I opted to grab a blanket and put it on my knees just in case. The door was closed and the salt machine aka a “halogenerator” was turned on – grinding up salt into micro particles and blowing them into the air. You couldn’t really see it at all, but after just a little while, a very slight haze was in the room, and there was a slight hint of saltiness in the back of my throat. Soon, my nose cleared and I was able to comfortably do a few rounds of the Pranayama breathing. Soon, though a few of us had to get some tissues from the large box provided. The one man participating had long since put his lounger way back and was fast asleep. Needless to say it was a relaxing atmosphere, and I may have drifted off a little bit myself.
They had the typical “spa music” playing, the sort of non-descript synthesizer based stuff that tells people “you are in spa-place time to chill out.” Time passed in a leisurely way and I did that sort of meditative breathing more closely associated with my qigong practice. Soon, I felt a gently sort of tingling in my nose and sinuses that wasn’t unpleasant at all. I was breathing very clearly and kind of played with visualizing the cold being “unseated” from my head. Amusingly, I felt like that kind of really happened over the next 24 hours. After the session, the attendant came back, and encouraged us to have lots of water to drink for the rest of the day – as the salt particles would be working their way through our systems. I do feel like it helped and has helped me work through the cold faster than in the past. Wish I had thought of it earlier in the week.
Other reasons that people go to the Salt Room are for other respiratory and skin disorders, I noticed that a scratch on my left arm started healing up a lot faster than before too – so an added bonus. All in all, I would go back for sure – its a nice relaxing time and seemed to help. It’ cost me $45 for the hour, so I may check into their salt room massage services to double up on the value for my time next visit, even thought it would be at an additional expense. For once though, it was great to use a cold as an excuse for trying something new.
Leave a Reply