The Tamesis
What should you try?
RAKxa gave me a series of new sensations. I had never been in a hyperbaric chamber and I felt like I was the last astronaut in the escape capsule. alien Franchise installments, breathing extremely enthusiastically as the pressure shifts. I’ve never been stretched like taffy one-on-one by a guy with enviable quads. A Chinese medicine expert used her confident hands to move my intestines north. One of the most memorable experiences was sling therapy, where I thought I would be held by a stork napkin like a newborn. After a few half-hearted planks (my core was tiny), I was gently wrapped, my body braced in mid-air, my arms crossed over my chest like a lying pharaoh, while the therapist coaxed my limbs into long, languid stretches. At various points, I felt like a stretchy Armstrong, an origami, an office stress toy. A strange sense of floating weightlessness ensued, and I had the overwhelming feeling that I could nod off—deeply, gloriously—at any time.
There are more medical-sounding options elsewhere. My blood ozone IV therapy (a form of blood oxygen therapy) leaves me as radiant as a person who drinks three liters of water a day, owns a really good blender, and forgives enemies at will.
Photo: Courtesy of RAKxa Integrative Health Center
What else do we need to know?
RAKxa specializes in so-called extreme rest. Not the ordinary “I’m going to lie down for 10 minutes and try not to look at my phone” kind, but the kind that lets your mind wander so far away from your to-do list that it becomes a distant rumor. Your calendar disappears. Your emails lose their emotional color. Your nervous system suddenly interrupts the commercial.
I arrived thinking science was magic. The machines, the scans, the analytics—it’s all this fashionable medical theater that feels like the main event, the quantifiable health improvement. Although it’s exciting to see your inner workings explained with precision and seriousness. The real revelation is the east side of the scheme. Chinese medicine approaches my body like a landscape architect—gently moving, coaxing, stimulating until things seem to be moving in a slightly wiser direction. Science has opened the door, but ancient practices are the silent stealers. I’m reminded that even though the future of health may be extremely high-tech, it still requires someone to press exactly the right spot on your shoulder.
