There’s been an astonishing degree of diversity amongst the parcels that have arrived on my doorstep in the last 9 months courtesy of Covid-triggered lockdown ennui and a now possibly-permanent fear of physical shopping centres. Having now worked from home since March 2020, I’ve been skulking around the house in trainers and a ‘capsule wardrobe’ that is nothing more complicated than an inventory of black jeans and T-shirts in direct proportion to my laconic approach to laundry. Some of the budget that would normally be invested in high heels and other office swag, along with parking, tolls, fuel, gym fees and eating out NEEDED TO GO SOMEWHERE at the risk of otherwise bringing the Australian economy to its knees.
Beyond the early covid knee-jerk purchasing of hoarder-level quantities of toiletries, pet-food and sauvignon blanc that appear to be universal across the western world, my purchasing became ever more diverse, bordering on eccentric.
Lovely Royal Doulton mugs, since there was now so much at-home tea-drinking to be done, which made it necessary to finally kick the first-home cheap Ikea coffee mugs to the curb (or at least to a box in the garage where they now leer at me with Scandinavian surliness)
A flat-pack chest of drawers which just served to reinforce my already-acknowledged lack of DIY skill. It would have been less heart-rending to simply throw away the quantity of clothes for which this drawer capacity was purchased and bypass the need to build more storage.
A pallet of geranium and lavender seedlings during that period when we were in the tight grip of a 5km radius limit and an 8pm-5am curfew, a period that made me momentarily and falsely believe that I was interested in gardening. Preposterous.
Hot on the heels of the investment in activewear which in no way triggered the hoped-for increase in activity, a more recent arrival was another loosely aligned to my quest for wellbeing.
A Shakti mat.
For the uninitiated, which I was until very recently, this is a mat that allows you a modern version of the ancient wellbeing/torture device known as a bed of nails. Far from its ancient predecessors that conjure up images of dripping dungeons and the bedding of believers hand-stitched from the teeth of tigers or sharpened shivs, the Shakti mat is an acupressure mat crafted from thousands of sharp plastic spikes attached to a slightly cushioned mat.
The first time the Shakti mat piqued my interest was during my annual health retreat a couple of years ago. A seasoned health-retreater, I’m now fully aware that most of the purchases triggered by the state of mind I experience at a health retreat don’t translate well when removed from a serene, stress-free location into my actual life. Guided journals that remain stoically blank years later. A Theraband that was going to the bedrock of my new daily stretching routine, but instead appears to have found its niche holding the letterbox together until I can get to Bunnings. Tea that on-retreat tasted like the jewels of the herbal universe hydrated with the morning mist collected by a sacred tribe of angels….. that when transported home taste like a wet version of your cat’s cremated remains.
So the Shakti mat remained swirling in my mind for a couple of years until for some reason, perhaps given my new, loose foray into the purchase of aromatherapy oils, the Facebook gods presented it to me in a sponsored ad.
In the spirit of ‘hey, I haven’t purchased anything since that PVC cat tunnel in November’ and the philosophy that there CANNOT exist a more painful form of torture since that which I experienced in my 14 day trial of Bikram yoga, in a matter of days, I was the owner of an orange Shakti mat. 5000 years of ancient wisdom can’t be dismissed can it? The French have been making wine since 6 BC and I fully believe in that, right? When it comes to acupressure, who among us, as humans in the 90s, didn’t have a pair of Maseur sandals?
I left it neatly folded on top of the DIY chest of drawers, until early in the new year when I found myself woefully short of resolutions. Having already given up alcohol in May 2020 and not quite ready to let go of my substitute addiction to raspberry-flavoured Kooka’s Country Cookies, I had no obvious vices to offer up, so taking up a new wellbeing ritual appeared to be a natural choice. So like the girly-swot I am I read the instructions in readiness for giving it a whirl.
There are very few instructions. There’s the get out of jail card that allows you, as a Shakti rookie, to place a sheet or T-shirt between you and the plastic spikes but my all-or-nothing personality doesn’t allow for such concessions. Go hard or go home.
The prevailing advice suggests that in the first 10-20 seconds ‘the skin feels uncomfortable and the body wants to resist.’ Too right it wants to resist. Laying on the thousands of tiny spikes with bare skin makes any normal human being instinctively resist. As someone with low pain tolerance, having fainted when having my ears pierced, remained desperately afraid of tattoos and never having subjected my body to the rigours of childbirth, only the shame of failing on day one of a resolution kept me prone on the prickles.
I’d decided that it was a good idea to listen to a 20 minute guided meditation track at the same time to a) potentially amplify the benefits and b) stop me staring at my phone timer with the desperation last seen at the gym when doing 1 minute planks. Breathing deeply, VERY deeply, and listening to a nice man talking me through a bedtime meditation was almost enough to distract me through that first phase while I waited for the next phase. This was the period where the body ‘directs the blood supply to the area and the skin feels warm.’ On the first go round, all I really wanted to know was that my skin wasn’t actually going to puncture and leak out all that redirected blood supply. I didn’t want to feel any warmth from anything oozing out of holes in my skin. I was wondering how far beyond the purview of responsible authorities like the Therapeutic Goods Administration the Shakti mats lived and whether I’d have to explain to my loved ones or the ER how I hurt myself lying on a mat.
The Holy Grail was the 6+ minute mark, ‘where feel-good hormones start to take over, muscles start to relax and tension eases.’ As a long-distance runner over many years I am VERY MUCH a fan of feel-good hormones in the form of the runners high that comes from exercise-triggered endorphins. There was definite appeal in the concept of experiencing such feel good hormones in something shorter than a half-marathon, even if it meant laying on nasty spikes.
To my surprise, it did feel better having gritted my way through that first 6 minutes of unfathomable pain. I did actually feel a level of relaxation and reduction of tension. I still had to breathe very heavily and listen to the nice meditation man to distract me from the stingy-ness and the persistent fear that I was going to experience haemorrhaging puncture wounds. The tension returned once I turned my mind to how to get off the mat once 20 minutes was up. Basic physics would suggest that leaning in any direction would place additional pressure and weight upon the spikes and I needed to employ what I can only described as an ‘un-peeling’ manoeuvre to exit the experience.
The benefits do extend beyond those experienced when you are on the mat. If, as advised, you take your newly Shakti-d skin straight to bed afterwards, laying your bare skin on a bed that isn’t riddled with nails is a blissful experience. Whether you are resting on high thread-count pure Egyptian cotton or your pilly Spotlight budget sheets that probably should have been ditched a year ago, you will feel like you are reclining into a bed of liquid silk.
I then slept the sleep of angels. Whether it was the result of my body’s sheer relief in no longer being pressed against thousands of miniature thorns or my entry into a cohort that shares the understanding of acupressure gleaned over of 5000 years, I’m not too fussed.
Decent sleep? Priceless. Side-benefit? Kept me asleep during the 3am witching hour where most of my online ordering takes place, which means I’m yet to succumb to the near-mandatory covid-period-purchase of sourdough starter.