The on-site Holts Salon & Spa opened its doors at the same time with a more discreet roll out.

But there's a been a wink-wink, nudge-nudge buzz about the spa in the beauty industry for some time now. Rumours are flying that something different is happening in its streamlined treatment rooms.
All anyone will tell me is that it's something I "just have to experience" to understand.

So I decide to find out for myself.

The elegant space tucked behind the beauty department is calm and pristine, with a modernist palette of white, off-white, stone and taupe.

Manager Jada Campbell has lined up a signature facial, a contouring mud wrap that is supposed to take two inches off my waist, and an "ortho-massage" with Brahm Olszynko.

"He'll want you to soak in bath salts tonight," she says. "You'll need to."

She hands me a glass of cool strawberry and cucumber water and smiles mysteriously. I sip it, blissfully unaware.

Of course if she had told me that Olszynko would soon have me naked on a massage table with one leg up beside my ear, in a full split -- and that it would feel good -- I might, oh, I don't know, have been overcome with shyness. I might have backed out before the experience even began.

The signature facial, which includes an idyllic hot stone massage and salicylic peel (an add-on) to reduce fine lines is soothing. My skin feels dewy and new afterward.

The mud wrap is warm and silky. I'm wrapped in a sheet to sweat out toxins and impurities. While I marinate, the esthetician gives me a scalp massage.

Afterward she draws me a hot shower to rinse the mud -- and, yes, about two inches from my waist -- away.

"I see you're in with Brahm," she says. I get that wink-wink, nudge-nudge feeling again.

Then I meet him. Within seconds Olszynko has run through my aches and pains, ascertained that I have a slight forward roll in my right shoulder, and given me a technique to work with while writing at my desk.

The massage that follows is, in a word, spectacular. Olszynko, it turns out, is no ordinary massage therapist -- and why would he be? This is Holt's after all.

An expert in "ortho massage," Olszynko combines elements of Swedish and Thai massage, physiotherapy, structural alignment and cranio-sacral therapy.

He is the secret that everyone has been whispering about, drawing an eclectic clientele: well-heeled Holts patrons, dancers and other massage practitioners.

Olszynko gets so deeply into the muscles that I don't know whether it's pain or pleasure I feel, only that it is transporting, heavenly and sometimes grueling.

At one point I am kneeling on the table, a sheet draped over me. Olszynko is on the table, his body draped over mine, as he uses his weight to stretch my spine.

Later (again with sheet tucked expertly in place), he's got me so relaxed he plies my legs, unbelievably, into a full split. I feel elastic. He works me every way, massaging even my head, face, eyes, jaw, feet, legs, butt.

When it is finished I feel light, released, reformed. My body feels entirely new.

After a shampoo and blow dry in the salon with Nikki ("Brahm's working with me on posture," she confides), I feel like my life, too, may be entirely new. And as far as spa experiences go, this is as good as it gets.