Rewiring yourself, wellness style

There’s something about a deeply restful weekend that changes a person’s face. Days after returning from a weekend in Mandala Spa and Villas in Boracay, friends still stared at me quizzically, trying to figure out what was different. Reshaped brows? No. Chubbier cheeks? That’s not it, either. “Calmer,” someone proposed, still unsure, “and stripped of a busy furrow between the eyebrows. Really, what did you do?”

There’s no one-word answer, so instead I launched into a long narrative.

Imagine this: It’s the middle of the week, and the sheer amount of work is blurring your view of the weekend — in fact, the weekend doesn’t look like it’s going to happen at all. Shoulders stiff from tension and anxiety, work multiplies (in that sly way it usually does when you look away for one second) like gremlins growling and popping onto your desk. By Thursday, you begin composing a little obit to the weekend and kiss it goodbye (for the 10th time). The deadlines are making you sour and angry, and then the guilt — so many are losing their jobs, after all — turns you into a grateful, earnest work machine now showing a lot of kinks. It’s quite bipolar, really, and it’s beginning to freak out some of your work mates and friends a little bit.

If this scenario is in any way familiar to you, if you’ve ever grown a second set of stiff shoulders from being hunched over your desk all day, then you must have had either or both of these thoughts cross your mind. One: that come Judgment Day nobody will ask you how many hours you spent at work, so why spend more than four a day? And two: Will the world end if you, say, get up from your seat, take your bag, wordlessly walk out the door, into the sunshine, and into the airline ticket office where you then purchase a ticket to Boracay for the same day, and then fly off to the summer island capital in your dark suit? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate renegade act? If you find yourself crossing the channel from Caticlan to Boracay in your sensible office heels and nothing else but the clothes on your back and your completely inappropriate leather handbag, you know you’ve thrown caution, not to mention all sense of dress, to the wind.

It didn’t quite happen that way for me (for one thing, I don’t own sensible office shoes), although I was pretty tempted to say that I zipped out of a meeting, took a plane, and just disappeared into the cool, enveloping foliage of Mandala Spa, not to emerge until three days later. But the truth is not so far from it: One day, feeling the stress pinch on my second set of shoulders, I took to the couch and channel surfed. I found Elizabeth Gilbert on Oprah talking about the “small, big life” she now lives as she traipsed through a wooded area that was her New Jersey backyard. It was the serenity of her life that worked better than any tourism ad for me. Three days and a careful turnover of work pabilins later, I was off to the island in sandals and shorts.

The six-year-old Mandala Spa is one of those Boracay institutions, known for its luxurious massage treatments, baths and body wraps, that people often make the trip to the island for. Russian tourists escaping oppressively cold winters have been known to come in couples and tick off one treatment after another until they have to ask the staff for something new to try. They’ve got it right, these Russians — reportedly staying seven to nine nights at a time, they return home sun-kissed and thoroughly massaged, perhaps enough to last an entire season or year, before they return.

Tucked away in Angol Point, Mandala’s spread of spa cabanas blend in with the lush greenery that it’s not unusual to hear references to Bali’s Ubud from first-time guests. Walking along entrance, a stone-laid pathway with a canopy of vines, puts you immediately on meditative mode. As the noise of rattling tricycles from the main road fades away, a soft symphony of tinkling chimes and a cool breeze set the mood: You’re going to get some peace and serenity here, dear frazzled one.

That’s exactly what I got and what, according to resort manager Bong Evangelista, the Mandala has in mind for its guests. Two years after opening the Spa, the owners opened Mandala Villas — a sprawl of 12 well-appointed villas among trees, bamboo, and shrubs, on a slope. Some of the villas have a view of the sea, and others look out into gardens, but their interiors alone are something to see and experience. The glass-walled bathrooms in the roomy villas are almost as spacious as the living area, and the tub and shower are straight out of a high-life fantasy: when you first walk in, there are gumamela blooms floating on clear water in the tub. Turning Mandala into a full-fledged wellness resort, with a spa on one side and a villa adjacent to it, has made perfect sense; after a long and deep massage that can turn your knees to Jell-O, when all you really want to do is turn over and snooze, it’s not particularly fun to have to trek all the way back to your hotel.

There’s something to be said about their massages that I’m sure has been said many times before (they’ve earned rave reviews and awards from the critics for it, so what I’m about to add is, shall I say, a personal first-hand touch): I could feel my whole body sink into the bed, and melt. I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen into such a deep state of relaxation halfway through what they call the Mandala Signature Massage until I kind of yelped in my sleep, and startled myself awake. This has never happened before, so that goes into the high score-to-beat on my record meter. The last great massage I remember having was in Jakarta, when I awoke completely disoriented and transported that it took me 10 minutes to realize the therapist was speaking to me in Bahasa.

Then there was the one-on-one yoga session with yoga instructor Chinggay Rebusora who coached me through an hour-and-a-half of poses until I made it to a shoulder stand. At this point, after several treatments, the tension-filled set of shoulders had disappeared and I could feel the nerve endings on my real shoulders again.

Wellness weekends of this caliber naturally come with a corresponding price tag, so it pays to be strategic about your vacation — if you find yourself in Boracay this month or in March, the Mandala’s Valentine’s promotion will still be up. The spa offers a discounted rate for their signature massage, but if you want to stay over in the resort as well, there’s a package that includes romantic perks — a sunset sail with cocktails, candles and roses in your room. And because it takes more to please the jaded out there, the resort also offers something new — dinner for two in a cool, candle-lit shallow cave along a quiet stretch of beach on the other side of the island. You can visit their website www.mandalaspa.com” for more details.

But whatever you do in Mandala—whether it’s getting cozy with your lover in a cave, or feeling a lightness of mood and spirit from the yoga sessions, or feeling healthy care of the haute vegetarian cuisine at the main restaurant called Prana — there’s one thing you shouldn’t leave the premises without trying: the Watsu, or water shiatsu. I waded into the small, shallow heated pool with Watsu giver Karen Reyna (who also co-owns Mandala) not knowing what to expect and thinking I was about to get another massage, but this time in water, but hours and days after the treatment, my mind was still reeling from the experience —floated about in the water for 50 minutes with only my face breaking the surface, I felt a strange calm I can’t remember ever having consciously felt in the past. My eyes were closed, but every now and then, the sunlight that broke through the foliage overhead, fell in chips on my face and cast bursts of warm light in my darkened vision. At some point, the water no longer felt like water but like wind, high up in the atmosphere, and I felt like a leaf swaying, completely without resistance, wherever the wind blew.

And when I awoke, my face had changed.