Home Spa: Moroccan Style

If you ever want to treat yourself to the best home treatment ever, I suggest you give yourself a version of a Moroccan spa: Hammam. If you're not familiar with this, it's a modified Turkish bath with a major exfoliating session. It's a lot of hard work but the final result is the most incredible feeling ever. It beats all those soap and lotion commercials with women selling us their kissable, soft skin.

Basically, you sit in a steam room and give yourself a full body mask with beldi soap, made primarily of black olives, and them literally scrub off dead skin with a loofah or a keess (a traditional bath glove) until your skin is red. The steam is to open up your pores and all you need to do is run a very hot shower for at least 5 minutes. Second, the beldi soap helps to exfoliate the skin, without it, you will be scrubbing for a very, very long time, sometimes with no result. And last, you need to scrub your skin to the point were it hurts, but you will see your skin shed. No joke. It's a major workout. But your skin will thank you. * Once finished, don't lotion your skin, you won't need since your skin is fresh and glowing.  


If you ever plan a trip to Morocco, I strongly suggest you go to a hammam. It usually costs about 10$ and that includes being scrubbed by woman and receiving a massage at the end to complete the treatment.

A Moroccan hammam. They are usually composed of several steam rooms, the first being the coldest and the last is a boiler room.

Beldi soap, also known as black soap. You can purchase the soap and also the kess glove at Zamouri Spices.