Spring Cleaning Your Body and Soul at California's Osmosis Spa

While many spas claim to take you out of your routine and into a realm of relaxation, few have as much to offer as the Osmosis Day Spa Sanctuary in Freestone, a post-card perfect small town 90-minutes north of San Francisco.

The spa's signature treatment is a cedar enzyme bath that was imported to this country by the spa's owner, Michael Stusser, in 1985. The popularity of the treatment was accelerated by a 1987 article in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner and the enzyme bath has ultimately fueled spa's expansion to the incredible oasis it is now.

But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. What, you ask, is a cedar enzyme bath?

Stusser first got the idea after visiting Japan to study traditional landscape gardening and Zen. He says his first plunge into the cedar enzyme bath was a "life-changing, healing and spiritual event."

He came back to Sonoma County, the rural county north of San Francisco, and built a prototype in his backyard with recycled wood from a chicken coop.

The bath itself is a wooden tub filled with a fragrant mixture of finely ground cedar, rice bran and plant enzymes imported from Japan. The ingredients are warm naturally from the fermentation process.

The treatment is famous among residents in Sonoma County and beyond. Although mud baths are a somewhat similar idea, unlike a mud bath, you don't constantly find mud in creaks and crevices in your body for days later. This stuff cleanly washes away.

You can take the bath with a bathing suit or without. The heat naturally kills off any germs that may have been on the skin of the previous person who used the bath. Couple treatments are encouraged. The spa actively promotes itself to the gay community and actually shows male couples in the bath together on its Web site. As you soak in the enzyme, you can close your eyes or gaze outside to the bucolic grounds of the spa.

When you first get into the tub, you settle in the place that has been shaped to support your body. Then, you are covered up to the chin. The treatment feels quite unusual, but once let yourself go, the Zen that inspired Stusser takes over.

You can, of course, get out of the bath any time you want, but it is advised that with any heat treatment, you not spend more than 20 minutes. Don't worry if you loose track of time, an attendant will gently rouse you back to earth.

After you get out of the bath, the attendant gently brushes the loose enzyme away, you shower, and after you dry off, you can continue with one of the spa's many other treatments including a massage and an aroma therapy facial.

But wait, there's much more to the Osmosis Spa. While the enzyme bath gets many first-time customers in the door, the incredibly beautiful meditation garden on the property gets them to be regulars.

The spa is a must-see for any visitor to the gay friendly Russian River area. The town of Guerneville, one of the gayest towns in the US, is a beautiful 30 minute drive away though some spectacular redwood forests.