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It’s not your average spa. There are no therapists and only one treatment offered at Toronto’s Iyashi Bedrock Spa: Rock Bathing. It’s hot, it’s healing, it’s totally relaxing and self-nurturing – I liked it a lot.
Located directly across the street from upper-Toronto’s very popular Sporting Life mega store, Iyashi is the first and perhaps still only Ganbanyoku (the Japanese word for Rock Bathing) spa in North America.
Ganbanyoku originated in the Onsens (hot springs) of Japan centuries ago and the Japanese people have been “taking the heat” of these natural black silica stones to promote healing of medical conditions – from arthritis to diabetes to fibromyalgia – for generations.
The self-administered treatment incorporates rare black silica bedrock imported directly from Japan. It is this black silica – with its reputed healing properties – that make the spa and the experience distinctive.
Iyashi vice president Ryusuke Juge, who arrived in Canada from Japan close to 20 years ago, explains that black silica – unique to the region of Hokkaido in northern Japan – is treasured because of its many natural minerals and its ability to emit far-infrared rays and negative ions when heated at low temperatures.
From a pleasant reception area, I’m escorted to the adjacent locker area to change into a Yukata. This traditional, two-piece pajama-style outfit, made of a waffle fabric, looks more like something one would wear to a karate class than a spa treatment. Inside the locker there’s the Yukata, a small towel, a pair of disposable underwear and disposable slippers.
Adjacent there’s a “cool down” room and the main treatment room, cedar-lined and set up like a dorm with 17 rock “beds” in semi-partitioned areas, allowing for up to 17 people to rock bath simultaneously (women only for the rock bathing, coed for the Hot Yoga offered at set times on Wednesdays and Sundays.) A second treatment room has four rock “beds” for use by women, men or couples.
Raised granite platform with embedded black silica stones provide the treatment “beds.”
Gentle instrumentals mixed with the sound of ocean waves and sea birds. Close your eyes, feel the heat, listen to the sounds and you could be lying on a beach. The humidity is around 60% so there is no suffocating pressure one feels in a wet sauna.
The attendant suggests I begin by lying on my stomach to heat the internal organs. Ten minutes later the attendant comes in to suggest I turn over on my back for another ten minutes. This is just a helpful starter because there is a large clock in the room so bathers can time themselves.
And, yes. It’s hot. Very hot but it’s not the suffocating type of heat one often experiences in a sauna. I feel the perspiration beginning to roll down my back, arms and legs in big fat drops. It feels like the same kind of sweat but Juge is right – no salty taste.
A treatment (either 60 or 90 minutes) is broken up into 20-minute intervals with the clients emerging from the treatment room to spend a few minutes in the “cool down” room to sip on water, flip thru magazines or just enjoy a moment of quiet.
Today, I’m the only one in the treatment room for the first 20 minute session before being joined by a young Japanese woman. We chat in the cooling down area and she tells me her name is Ai and that she’s a 25-year-old Japanese student, in Canada for the last three months, who visits twice a week to lose weight and to improve her skin.
At the end of the session, guests are served a cup of green tea.
This is a tranquil, self-nurturing experience that could easily turn Iyashi Bedrock Spa into one of Toronto’s favourite “hot spots.”
For more information, go to: www.iyashibedrockspa.com
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