What is Womb Therapy and Do I Need It?

03.12.2024 - 23:09 / cntraveler.com

On the last day of a 10-day trip to Japan, I took the elevator to the 40^th floor of the Bulgari Tokyo for a spa treatment that promised to reconnect me to my divine femininity. It was a big ask. Ever since cancer treatment put me into medical menopause at age 32, I haven’t felt very connected to the divine nor the feminine, as I prematurely navigate midlife delights like hot flashes, mood swings, and rogue hairs everywhere except where I want them: on my head of patchy post-chemo hair.

As I sipped pine tea in the spa lobby, taking in the expansive views of geometric cityscape, I took a quiz to determine my “dosha,” or the energy pattern in Ayurvedic medicine that dictates our physical and mental wellbeing: vata (wind), pitta (fire), or kapha (water). My skin tends to be… I checked off “dry, cold, rough, thin, dull.” I would describe my hair as … “fine, thinning.” Under pressure I feel … “erratic, anxious, lack of focus.” My massage therapist Anna studied the results and prepared personalized oils for the treatment, while I made my way to the shimmering, mosaic-tiled hot tub where I soaked somewhat existentially beside a window and watched Tokyo carry on beneath me. After a lifetime of chasing feminine beauty standards, I wasn’t sure how to understand myself without them, or what to do with my brain if I weren’t pursuing them. The new hormonal normal—irritability, infertility, and inability to regulate my temperature—was making me feel invisible to the world, and sad. My softening belly, that fleshy pouch holding nothing but womb and misery, had become a stranger to me, and it needed some love.

As if on cue, I overheated in the hot tub and scurried to the cold shower, weighing whether to blame the power of suggestion—the quiz had clocked me as pitta (moody and prone to overheating)—or curse my hormones. When my therapist came to retrieve me from the relaxation area, she asked why I’d chosen this treatment. I could only muster, “I’m all off.”

Launched in 2023, and intended for women only, Bulgari’s Divine Feminine Nurturing Ritual is a “bespoke nurturing womb therapy” designed to “balance through all ages and stages of the female hormonal cycle,” according to the spa menu. The treatment is one of a growing number of spa offerings geared towards supporting people with womb-related woes, from endometriosis to menopause to pregnancy loss. The term “womb therapy” has proliferated outside of the spa space, too, often referring to some form of abdominal massage—a healing tradition that dates back to the ancient Mayans—but also services like vaginal steaming (which has roots in Korean and Indigenous cultures in Africa) and fertility doulas. Many spas have also begun offering wellness programming for menopausal