This is a tale of two spas

Or it’s a tale of one woman growing up. Or it’s a tale of one woman growing up and how that manifested itself when she visited two spas several decades apart. Or it’s all of these. You decide.

In the early ‘80s on a Valentine’s Day weekend, Playgirl magazine sent me to La Costa Spa in San Diego, the first of the full-service resort spas in America, to get the whole experience for an article that was to be titled, “The Ultimate Pleasure.” They sent a photographer with me so I would be starring in my own version of Cheryl Tiegs goes to La Costa.

Jane bikes the trails, Jane dines on spa food, Jane has a full body massage and then a lemon salt scrub, followed a multi-headed shower spraying warm sheets of water.

I took notes on what I was seeing and experiencing, good journalist that I was. I knew that when I got back to my apartment in Burbank, I would have to write 1500 words that would make Playgirl’s readers rush to book their own spa adventure.

It did not go well.

Although I’ve never laughed at a funeral, I do tend to view the world through a lens that is somewhat skewed. Particularly at that age when I was so intent on the need to appear cool and in control, I often could see only the ridiculous in the sublime. So it was with my spa experience at La Costa. The masseuse for that full-body massage seemed like an extra from Hogan’s Heros; the salt scrub made me feel like I was lying in a bed of melting lemon popsicles. And the multi-headed shower? All I could register was that each of those 25 heads proudly bore the words Magic Orificer.

This was a problem when I got to writing the article. The Ultimate Pleasure? My thesaurus cracked at P for Pleasure.The magazine had changed editors by the time I turned the piece in, and the new editor was a 20-something guy who was less than pleased with my expressions of  ecstasy.  He did a rewrite, but his version of the ultimate pleasure had a decidedly masculine flavor: “The massage felt so good it made the fuzz on my thighs stand up and salute.” Under my byline? I think not.

The editor was adament that they would publish the article as he had rewritten it and urged me just to suck it up. Fortunately for me I had a close friend who was a bigshot criminal defense attorney and he amused himself by messing about with The Man in his various forms. In this case, he threatened to enjoin Playgirl from publication of that issue unless they removed my name. There was some lawyering back and forth, but in the end, the byline on the article was not mine, and of course, my Cheryl Tiegs shots on location at LaCosta were never published either. From that day to this, I have foresworn spas; I was obviously missing some gene that enabled me to see the Ultimate Pleasure as anything but a hoot.

Fast forward almost forty years…

The irony that it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, 2015 and I’m off for a spa weekend is not lost on me. I agreed to tread in spa waters again at the Oaks at Ojai  for two reasons: I wanted to see this place built by one of the most dynamic women I’ve ever met, Sheila Cluff,and I wanted to check the Oaks at Ojai out as a possible venue for the writers retreat I’m planning. On the hour and a half drive from LA to Ojai, I’m alternatively enthusiastic and nervous. The young woman from LaCosta, the one who was driven by a need to appear cool and in control no matter what she was actually feeling, had been succeeded by a confident and mature version who no longer needs the scrim of irony to be her carapace of invulnerability. Or at least I hope she has.

The Reality

There is something about the Oaks at Ojai that defies my ability to name–and that is just killing the writer in me. So allow me to babble for a while, to repeat myself and wave my hands a bit, to jump from one topic to the next, to–I don’t know, just say it as it hits me. Maybe at the end of this, you’ll name it for me.

From the moment I entered my room, I thought, “I could move in here…forever.” Southern California is rife with the Southwestern design trope, but this was, somehow, different. It didn’t smack of being stamped by a corporate identity. I didn’t see the other rooms and maybe they were all the same, but mine had high ceilings, a wall-to-wall closet, separate dressing room with magnifying mirror, huge bathroom with a walk-in shower and a jetted spa bathtub the likes of which I’ve never seen before. There’s a built in desk with the requisite plugs for my electronics, a comfy easy chair and just out the sliding screen door, a private little patio, with two chaises and a table.

Oh! I just realized: my room at the Oaks at Ojai had everything that’s missing from my own house. Of course I would want to live there forever!

It’s definitely a writers’ paradise, I think; my fantasy of a West Coast McDowell Colony. That fantasy continues to the food at the Oaks at Ojai. Three meals a day, plus midmorning broth breaks and midafternoon smoothies. It’s a 1300 calorie a day plan, with no salt or butter. I feared I would be hungry; I wasn’t. In fact, I realized in the Morning Stretch that maybe I would be a bit more flexible if I wasn’t so damn full of food.

About Morning Stretch: the mantra of the Oaks at Ojai seems to be, do whatever makes you feel good. Yes, they offer as part of the whole experience a full and varying daily schedule of activities, your choice according to your particular mood and needs at the moment. Yes, there are all those spa extras to book–the massages, the facials, the mani-pedis and private salon services. Do them all, or do none. I met people who were spending an entire month at the Oaks; I met people who had come in just for the day.

It really is that kind of place, a protected space where who you are and what you need is honored. Consequently there are no pecking orders or power trips among the hundred or so women (and yes, a few men) who are there. You want to share a table at dinner–share a table. You want to eat alone at lunch–eat alone. It’s your choice and there are no judgments. I’ve heard about spas where if you don’t show up for class, they send someone to make you. I’ve seen spas (hello La Costa) where classes could have been a fashion show featuring the latest in exercise wear. Not at the Oaks at Ojai.

I went to sleep the first night intending to get up early for the 45 minute Slow Ojai History Stroll. My bed was too comfortable so I only managed to go straight to breakfast, where I sat with ecstatic hikers who had just finished the 90 minute Pratt Trail Hike. That’s so not me, but it was obviously so them. I signed up for the Meditation Weekend and I took, for the first time ever, a water aerobics class, which I loved and intend to do  more of in LA. I had a Skin Authority Fit & Firm Vitamin D Fortified (™) Lifting Facial (which deserves and will get its own encomium). I made friends and hung out. I did not use the fully equipped exercise area or get a massage, although I thought about booking the Reiki and a friend I met there had the Oaks River Rock Massage.

At breakfast my last day, I spent some time talking with Sheila Cluff. Now in her 70s, she has handed over the CEO responsibilities to her daughter, Cathy, but it is clear that Sheila is still the driving force behind the Oaks at Ojai. It is her can do, do what feels right attitude that permeates all that goes on there. Before I even left, I was planning my next trip up there.

And yes, the Oaks at Ojai will be the perfect place for my first Writers’ Retreat. More on that in the future…

For the purposes of this review and researching the venue for my Writers’ Retreat, I was comped for my two night stay at the Oaks of Ojai as well as the Skin Authority Facial.  The enthusiasm, I assure you, is wholly my own. The place is fantastic and I can’t recommend it enough.