The Ultimate Healing Experience

By Constance Tillotson

Dressed in muted earth tones and looking as if he could easily stroll the cat walk for Calvin Klein, Hank Wang sits sipping a San Pellegrino, his image reflected in the hand-built slate fountain that flows serenely at the center of his new “Healing Bodywork” spa.

Wang, whose French, Chinese, and Vietnamese heritage has graced him with a perfectly symmetrical face; clear, bronzed skin and fluid brown eyes, seems to have the ability to answer one’s questions before they are even asked.

At times when he speaks, he searches for words, as if walking the fine line between listening to his divine source, while trying to live in a world where he must adapt to idle conversation in order to make a living. He is clearly not a salesman.

"With this process, it is a way of releasing someone from their own personal bondage, to acquire a different pattern and aspire to learn more about themselves” Wang says. “The goal of releasing a person from their emotional prison is to give them a chance to grab onto something higher."

Healing Bodywork -- which just opened its bamboo laden doors in Santa Monica -- offers visitors a tempting menu of unique, soul nourishing treatments sure to tame even the perpetual over achiever.

While the intimacy of the tropical spa gives the illusion that one is on a tiny remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, there is a vast host of 13 different therapists, each one bringing their own specialty to the massage table.

The owner and master masseuse, Wang created Healing Bodywork as an ideal place to find an individual's pain and relieve it at the core of its origin. While the weary can come to the spa and easily find a sublime, relaxing treatment that will bring them back to their eternal bliss, for those spiritual warriors whose quest is a life altering experience, Hank is ready to lend two strong hands and a gentle mind. "By looking at the human map of the emotional body you can tell what kind of experience or trauma a person holds in certain areas," said Wang. "Those issues will stick in the body somewhere.

Entering the pristine spa, one is greeted -- not with the predictable pungent waft of patchouli -- but with the soft, inviting aroma of sweet bark that evokes ancient woods.

The bustle of Santa Monica Boulevard magically disappears as the client is quickly transported into what seems a private remote spa that only those special Hollywood power couples get to jet off to.

The treatment rooms fall under different headings -- love, grace, surrender, aspiration, peace and faith -- and are expertly decorated with a sparse Feng Shui feel atop a spotless ecru Berber carpet. Besides a menu of “healing” massages, a client can go for the "Not so basic facial" or the rejuvenating oxygen facial. Or simply stop in for a wax before hitting the beach. Each client can also receive a recommendation for herbs available at the spa, along with other outside services. "A large part in opening the spa was to see the healing process made possible," said Wang.

"I would like to see body work elevated and viewed the same as other healing modalities such as acupuncture and chiropractic healing. We provide a system of referral to local nutritionists, psychologists and others that a client may need in order to achieve their optimum state of health."

Wang believes that "ultimately true healing is going to take place when the body, not the mind, experiences unobstructed flow of Chi through the energy meridians and chakras."

With this flow of Chi "one becomes more in tune with the inner Self and the universe."