When you step inside Bodhi Salt Center, located in a modest strip mall on Sherburn Lane, the relaxation begins immediately.
Co-founded by Anna Shulgina and Dasha Grankina, Bodhi Salt Center combines salt therapies with other wellness practices like yoga, red light therapy, meditation and Ayurvedic techniques for an experience that’s sure to get you blissed out.
With all these different choices, we at LOUtoday knew we had to do our due diligence — so we tried the lot.
We started with a guided yoga class by Grankina, who has been teaching yoga for 10+ years. Her practice focuses on slow, easy movements intended to get your body open and aligned.
Bodhi Salt offers private classes for up to four people, so tell your friends. The yoga sessions are held inside a room with a salt diffusing system that infuses ionized salt into the air, allowing you to breath it in as you stretch.
After our yoga session, Katie + Mandey took on the Siberian steam barrels, while Declan settled in for a shirodhara session — more on that later.
Bodhi Salt’s steam barrels are truly one, or two, of a kind. They were imported from Siberia, and are the only barrels of their kind in the region.
Each cedar barrel, leaves your head exposed, making them ideal for people who don’t like breathing in hot air as you might in a traditional sauna — your body takes the heat through the skin, not the lungs.
Shulgina and Grankina both compared the barrels totraditional Russian bath houses, which use heat and steam in the pursuit of health + wellness. Bodhi Salt is their small slice of that tradition right here in Derby City.
But it’s not all about the heat and steam. They also offer shirodhara, a relaxation technique that involves pouring a warm stream of sesame oil onto the forehead. It’s an extremely relaxing and centering experience — and it leaves your hair smelling quite nice.
The red-light booths combine the benefits of the salt therapy with those of light therapy, helping your mood and bathing your body in infrared heat for a detox experience. These are available for longer sessions, or 15-minute appointments if you’re on the go.
Before and after your sessions, you can lounge in the “chill out zone,” a cozy room with couches + a steaming pot of tea.
Bonus: Bodhi Salt also has a kids salt room — think: an indoor sandbox with therapeutic salts.
If all this relaxation sounds like your speed, consider signing up for a Valentine’s Day couple’s session, which includes chocolate-covered strawberries and a champagne toast.
