I tried a personalised, full-body detox treatment

When you think ‘spa treatment’, you might imagine flickering candles, essential oils, perhaps some whale song. But as I arrive at the treatment room at Valldemossa hotel in Mallorca, I’m feeling a sense of trepidation rather than relaxation. A journalist has told me about in-house practitioner Amor Garzón (her name means ‘love’ in Spanish) and her ability to diagnose pre-existing conditions, and the detox treatment she offers to clients including celebrities and footballers. I’m about to meet a true wellness guru, it seems.

To be clear, the spa suite is stunning, a secluded haven in the green hills of the Tramuntana mountains that you access via a charming wooden door. After sipping a tea I meet Amor, who makes suggestions based on her assessment of me and taking my pulse (apparently I eat too much cheese, should eat more watermelon, and I think too much… guilty!) She even knew that I’d started my period that day, and that it was a light blood flow.

“Have you tried Korean massage?” she asks, to which I reply, no – only Swedish and Thai. I lie face-down on a heated bed and she begins walking barefoot on me, using a kind of ladder fixed to the ceiling to balance. There’s a satisfying crunch as her feet meet my back and she applies her full body weight to me. After that, I have a cupping treatment in which suction cups are moved around my body, combined with hand massage and oils. It’s a feeling that’s satisfying in places and, in others, painfully intense.

The approach Amor takes is called the Piroche method, which is something I’d maybe dismiss as a bit out-there if I hadn’t tried it myself: it’s “based on bioenergetics”, according to its website. The technique, though, is inspired by Chinese medicine and Western ideas of lymphatic drainage – walking a delicate tightrope between traditional medicine and modern wellness. The idea is to heal energy blockages in the body, which some believe are caused by toxins in food, environmental pollution and other chemicals.

I’m not qualified to weigh in on the science of all this, but Amor’s methods certainly had results: pre-treatment, she pulls out a measuring tape and notes my numbers down on her iPhone. Post-detox? I’ve shed a huge six and a half centimetres from my waist, according to her Notes app. The areas I’ve had the cupping treatment on look tighter and smaller, and I feel fully relaxed – so much so that it takes me a couple of minutes to get up from the bed.

Speaking through a translator after the treatment, Garzón says that 90 per cent of what she does is an intrinsic skill rather than something she’s learned, although she has 25 years of experience under her belt. She describes how, when she was younger, she’d visit old people’s homes to look after the residents and cut their nails, which gave her a desire to help people feel better. How exactly does she analyse people, I want to know. She looks at people as a whole, she says, from their skin to their posture, to how they sit.

She goes into further detail about how emotional pain can be stored by the body, and how the internal organs work on their own timetables. Working with people, and understanding their individual needs, is what’s taught her most about the practice, she says. I had some rusty Spanish to rely on when talking to her, but the other English speakers I was with found that she could gather information about them even without a common language.

Post-treatment, I felt the kind of soreness that you’d get after a deep tissue massage, but also a general sense of calm – which could have been to do with many things, including the fact that I was on a sunny Balearic island. A couple of weeks on, those centimetres I’d lost almost certainly haven’t stayed off, but it was an effective temporary fix for fluid retention (drinking plenty of water and eating less salt can help with this long-term, apparently). I’ve had zero back pain, too – which is something I experience now and again thanks to my desk job.

It’s hard to put my finger on why, but meeting Amor felt special. Her treatment was an exercise in improving mental wellness as much as in the body, and a good reminder that caring for your inner self is just as important as what’s on the outside.

You can find out more about the treatments offered at the Sanctuary at Hotel Valldemossa here. A 60-minute body detox treatment starts at €189.

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