Published in Los Angeles Magazine September 2000

Ivan at the Greenhouse worked his fingers into the pressure points at the base of my cranium as though they were holes in a bowling ball.

The greenhouse.

A QUIXOTIC SAJOURN in L.A.’s day-spa world properly begins in Beverly Hills, which has more than its fair share of intuitional pamperers. The Greenhouse Spa has 10 upscale treatment rooms and a mannered sense of privacy. Numbered ’’changing suites’’ are lined up along a corridor like abbreviated hotel rooms, each one tricked out with a pillowed banquette, an upholstered chair and a built-in dressing table. Clients shed street clothes here in favor of roomy blue cotton robes with push linings and slip into rubber sandals.

Bypassing the more exotic entrees on the Greenhouse menu, like the hot-rock massage, which uses warmed volcanic stones in both active and passive roles, I opted for a pair of basics: a 90- minute deep-tissue massage and salt scrub. The way to truly test an ice cream brand, after all, is to try the vanilla. Ivan was my man, a strong, silent type who escorted me to a dimly lit room with a heated massage table, a basil-nectarine aromatherapy candle and the requisite New Age music. Ivan stepped out while I, in that oddly acceptable ritual, stripped down for a complete stranger.

As instructed, I laid myself out flat, face up. Ivan started off with my head, working his fingers into the pressure points at the base of my cranium as though they were holes in a bowling ball.

In short, it hurt. But in a good way. Starting here seems eminently logical: Loosen the head and neck, and the rest of the muscles will follow. Ivan clearly knew what he was doing. Handling my head like a Faberge egg from Brobdingnag, he turned it from one side to the other to address the steel cables running through my neck. Over the hour, he methodically worked his way down, ferreting out hidden muscles with his elbow, to the soles of my feet.

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