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The nauseating 'wellness' industry is un-British, out of control, and must be stopped

Perhaps this is what they mean by “pressure along the energy channels”? - This content is subject to copyright.
Perhaps this is what they mean by “pressure along the energy channels”? - This content is subject to copyright.

Where the hell did wellness come from? We were all going along confident, or so I thought, that long walks, longer lunches and perhaps a glass of scotch at nightfall looked after the needs of our health (the 20th-century term for “wellness”).

Then wham, and all at once, the holiday world was chocker with spas, hammams and baths of foaming liquid. These were suddenly vital for keeping us tip-top. Every luxury hotel offered a list of treatments, from stones down the back via enzymatic heat to shiatsu – which apparently involves “pressure along the energy channels” rather than a rub-down with small dogs.

Absolutely against my better judgement, I got carried along. I was painted in mud and trussed like a broiler in a thalassotherapy place on the French Atlantic coast. This was clearly devised entirely for the amusement of the staff.  I emerged feeling as I imagine a broiler itself feels, post-cooking. Hot and dead.

In Digne-les-Bains in Provence, a handsome woman in a swimsuit massaged my thighs under a shower, failing to ease the tension she was herself creating.

And in world-famous Vichy, two women dressed as butchers – wellies, overalls, plastic aprons - gave me a four-handed massage in order, among other things, to feed my skin. “Fabulous,” I said. “It so rarely eats.”

Stones down the back? How about a long lunch instead? - Credit: GETTY
Stones down the back? How about a long lunch instead? Credit: GETTY

I’d noted the spa had a bar. Later, I went. With grim inevitability, it offered only fruit juice and exotic teas. There was nothing normal. Desperate, I downed so many herbal infusions that I was temporarily re-classified as a plant. The only plus was that a sister of the King of Morocco – and her entourage – had taken over the hotel floor above my room. This was a mild thrill. I’d never before slept under a princess.

Even so, I’d soon had enough. I bridled at the acres of self-obsessed serenity on display, at the smothering calm, at men and (mainly) women floating around in white dressing gowns, clearly just a verbena tea short of nirvana. The worshipping-at-the-temple-of-one’s-own-body had me wanting to storm through the place, throwing back gin and blowing on a trombone. It was so profoundly un-British.

OK, our aristos used to take the waters in Buxton, Bath and Baden-Baden (“Baths-Baths”) but that was essentially a front for gambling, debauchery and finding a husband for one’s more difficult daughter. They weren’t looking for bliss from bubble baths or, if they were, it wasn’t the sort of bliss covered by Jane Austen. For the rest, well... while the Far East was perfecting processes with essential oils, massaging feet with barely visible fish and “applying vibrations to blocked areas” (Tui-Na), we were cropping record wheat yields, mining, making textiles and steel and pioneering the heavy industrial production of pretty much everything else the rest of the world now uses.

When we relaxed – around July 1925 – it was in woollen bathing costumes behind a windbreak on the beach, with meat-paste sandwiches and jugs of tea. Wellness jaunts involved charabancs and fish-and-chips at Margate, or boots and beer in Lakeland. Should someone have slipped off for a massage, it wasn’t something he talked about much afterwards. Having small fish nibble you was what happened after a 11pm plunge into the canal. “Pressure along the energy channels” occurred if you knocked over the pint of a fellow bigger than you.

Our aristos used to take the waters, but that was essentially a front for gambling and debauchery - Credit: GETTY
Our aristos used to take the waters, but that was essentially a front for gambling and debauchery Credit: GETTY

All this was the British way. It was a good one, and remains so. Our bodies were the means for getting us about, to the forefront, not to be adored with unguents and oils. As I have said before – and shall doubtless say again – the taste for saunas, hammams and “herb-infused chili oil massages” is the surest sign yet of our long-term decline.