Mud

Yes - I had a bit of a new experience over the last weekend, where Whitney and I stayed in Calistoga, a town known for its hot springs and spas. In addition to having the biggest jacuzzi in the world right in our bedroom, we went in together to have a mudbath treatment at Golden Haven spa.

On coming in, you're shown into a room that has a sign saying "MUD ROOM - DO NOT ENTER", which sort of ramps up any sense of nerves that you may already be having. The room is like an industrial shower area, tiled with grips on the floor and a sunken tub in one corner - but the most striking feature in it is the row of three six-foot-long waist high vats full of mud, which is made of peat and clay (and not concrete as Xaq speculated earlier, due to the former not having the inconvenient gradual hardening and encasement issue).

You're left to undress, and shown the best theory on how to get in - to sit on the edge and then swivel around and roll to sort of... splat face-up on top of it. I have to say that I had some hesitation on the precipice, looking down about to propel myself into a vat of muck - there's a moment where you touch the spongy surface and it feels... dirty, just if you dip your fingers in, but once you take the plunge (literally) and are absolutely, unavoidably wrecked by it, you sort of... succumb and relax into it.

The mud is a bizarre substance halfway between a solid and a liquid - you don't sink into it all the way like a water bath, you have to work your way down by scooping your arms along the sides and piling mud on to yourself like a spider trying to hide. The temperature increases quite rapidly as you go down further, so once you've got yourself submerged and at a comfortable heat level, you can just... lie these suspended, among a soft warm blanket that's hugging you everywhere from all angles. Or look down fascinatedly at the surface buckling and shifting if you wriggle under it, poking your feet up through the surface like Dadaist impressions of plants growing in a time-lapse video.

You only stay in for about fifteen minutes due to the leeching effect that the mud has on the moisture of your body, and getting out is an even greater challenge than getting in - you have to pull up as it sucks on you like quicksand, lumps of the stuff gradually falling away from you like the Terror from the Deep. Once you have rolled or been tugged out, you shower yourself off and then sink for a while into the hot tub, being told to drink the provided water to rehydrate. And after being wrapped up in warm blankets, you're sent on your way.

I think it did me a world of good. I haven't even shouted at the television once since we came back.