The wellness industry counts as decidedly inventive. A classic massage may be effective, but for marketing purposes it is a little old hat. Now that traditional healing arts such as Ayurveda from India or the Lomi Lomi Nui massages from Hawaii are on the programme in many places, another and considerably more bizarre trend is circulating: treatment with animals.
What is meant is not the long-familiar use of leeches but, for instance, laying snakes on the body, whose crawling movements are supposed to relax the musculature.
More agreeable for people with a snake phobia is presumably the use of the “red garra” (also called “Garra rufa” or “doctor fish”), which nibbles off dead flakes of skin without asking — practical for a fish pedicure.
As bizarre as this sounds, it is just as contested: with the fish pedicure specialists warn of hygiene and infection risks — in several US states it is banned — and from the point of view of animal welfare, too, “animal wellness” is delicate. Whoever values robust effect and a clear conscience is in the end usually better served by a classic massage.
The phenomenon has been a subject in the press again and again:
- Leeches, snakes, nightingale droppings — these wellness methods go wild (RP Online)
- Reducing stress with pythons in the wellness temple (Die Welt)
- Nibbling for beauty (Fit for Fun)
- North Rhine-Westphalian authorities have animal-welfare concerns: court dispute over “nibbling fish” (WDR)