I Visited a Pink Himalayan Sea Salt Cave, and Here’s What Happened
Pink Himalayan sea salt is arguably one of the trendiest seasonings of the moment. Your avocado toast is sprinkled with it, your craft cocktail is rimmed in it; it’s everywhere.
Iodized salt is so 2002, y’all.
And while I’ve been stocking up on Himalayan sea salt at Trader Joe’s for a while now, only recently did I realize that you don’t have to necessarily cook with this trendy salt to benefit from it. You can just sit in a room made out of it and walk out a healthier, calmer person.
It’s called a “salt cave,” and I went to one during a recent trip to New York City.
I visited FloLo Holistic, which offers all types of relaxing services, (most notably floatation therapy, which is a type of sensory deprivation healing treatment—basically, you float in a tank), but I was most intrigued by the pink salt cave, so I booked an appointment.
The salt cave is made of hundreds of pounds of pure Himalayan crystal salt bricks, and the air in the room is heated with an infrared heat lamp, which infuses the air with tiny particles of the therapeutic salt. Along with naturally drawing toxins out of the body, salt caves are especially helpful if you suffer from asthma or other respiratory issues—which I don’t, but the whole experience sounded extremely relaxing, so I was down.
I walked into FloLo Holistic wet as a subway rat and stressed. My cheap drugstore umbrella did that inside out thing and my new purse strap came off on the way there, so I was feeling ready to get off the rainy streets of 56th Street and into FloLo’s calm sanctuary.
I was taken into the salt cave, which is basically a closet-sized room made out of Himalayan salt bricks with a massage bed in the middle. If you’re claustrophobic, this may not be the salt therapy service for you. I was told I could lie in there fully clothed or not, whichever I preferred, and someone would come get me in a half hour. I was, however, instructed to move my purse from the floor to the hook on the wall, because purses on the floor give bad energy. I don’t want my purse throwing off the energy of my salt cave experience, so I quickly moved it from the floor to the hook.