No one wants to face a dimensional shift with kinky shoulders and knotted chakras. How’s your Kundalini gonna rise? As every avatar knows, you need a free flow of energy for proper ascension. And this is where Carolyn Jacques comes in.

Jacques takes an amalgamated kitchen-sink approach to bodywork; the Native American taps into the tribal healing techniques coursing through her veins, along with Maori (ouch!) modalities, Qigong, cord cutting, traditional massage, reflexology, aromatherapy and quantum healing.

I met Jacques while in the throes of total Mercurial meltdown, having stumbled into her hands stinky, late and frazzled. Two hours and one Indigo Series later, I was floating on air in a blissed-out haze.

It wasn’t your typical massage. She started by scanning the front of my body with an outstretched hand an inch from my skin. “It’s all in here,” she said, laying her palm gently over my heart. “You’re completely blocked.”

Face-down in a giant, dimly lit treatment room, where soft, New Age music played, Jacques unearthed — and removed — emotional blocks, limiting beliefs and ancestral scarring (seven generations back), not to mention the rote kinks and cricks, using hot stones, warm rice, strong hands and clear intention.

She dug her fingers into my feet. “You eat a lot of vegetables.”

She’s good.

I yelped as she kneaded a family of knots in my right calf.

“If your mother was compassionate and supportive, you wouldn’t be as strong as you are now.”

Really good.

Usually, to get deep healing bodywork of this caliber — infused with ancient mojo, divine light and empathic, motherly love — you have to travel to the far ends of the Earth and leap through flaming hoops along the way. The only comparable experiences I can conjure found me in a smattering of rundown, rinky-dink hole-ups with medicine men and village healers in foreign lands and creepy neighborhoods. But, Côte d’Azur, Jacques’ swanky Old Town Pasadena spa, is elegant, posh and upscale, with exposed-brick walls, polished wood floors and beautiful, understated décor.

Seventy-five minutes toward a better, brighter you.

 
74 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Old Town Pasadena, (626) 396-3030 or www.cotedazurspa.com.

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