Finding out whether halotherapy is worth its salt

When I first heard about Kansas City Salt Mine, I expected it to be a crystalline underground room accessible only by a rickety freight elevator. I pictured the kind of place that knocks you on your ass in awe at nature’s majesty and humanity’s occasionally destructive determination — something like Springfield, Missouri’s Fantastic Caverns, give or take the stalactites.

I typed the Salt Mine address into my phone. My phone told me to drive to a Lee’s Summit strip mall.

Maybe the elevator is out back, I thought when I got there. But then I walked inside, and I realized that this wasn’t the sort of mine that employs sooty men with helmets — or the Seven Dwarfs. Unlike a literal cave, Kansas City Salt Mine, which opened last September as the region’s first halotherapy treatment center, is the type of place where I’d feel comfortable taking my mom. It’s basically a suburbanite-friendly spa, the kind that, for $30 a session, sells something with the suffix “therapy.”

Going in, I knew little about halotherapy, also known as salt therapy, an increasingly popular alternative treatment that relies on the inhalation of salt vapor to treat everything from asthma to acne to stress. But I did know that I wanted to take a nap in a salt mine, or wherever else I might find relief from my spring allergies.

Calming instrumental music played while I signed in. A shelf in the lobby held all manner of salt accessories for cooking, bathing and relaxation, including Himalayan pink-salt lamps that looked like giant, glowing space crystals. I listened to the woman at the front desk chatting with someone who had just exited the salt room.

“It’s like building muscle,” the employee explained. “Sometimes you have to come back a few times before you feel anything.”

What, exactly, is one supposed to feel? Apparently, some people report breathing easier right away, whereas others just lie back and zone out for a bit. The experience seems designed to be relatively low-key, requiring me to do little more than sit and be present.

I thought about asking if I could use the kids’ salt room instead; it looked less meditative and more lively, with children allowed to play in the salt rocks on the floor. I wondered if I could make a salt-rock angel, but a mother and child were sitting cross-legged together on the floor, reading a book, and I didn’t want to interrupt.

Before entering the adult salt room, I took off my shoes and put on the pair of basic, white socks that I’d been handed. Pink salt crystals covered the floor, and the ceiling resembled a planetarium-style approximation of the night sky. In the corner, a floor-to-ceiling pink salt lamp gently illuminated the two other people already stretched out in zero-gravity chairs and covered with soft, white blankets.

“The first time I came in here, I wanted to say, ‘Buzz me up, Scotty,’” one man joked.

The room can accommodate up to 10 people, so I had plenty of room to spread out. I selected a chair by the wall, leaned back and waited. Slowly, the lights dimmed, and the instrumental music got louder, salting the air with a Weather Channel version of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” Fortunately, that was the only song I recognized. The rest of the soundtrack layered relaxing melodies with nature sounds. The wrong music — “Tears in Heaven”? — would have unraveled the delicate artifice of the whole experience.

Then the salt blower started pumping a fine cloud of sodium chloride dust into the room, barely visible in the low light. It had no smell or flavor, but after about five minutes, I felt my allergy-ravaged nasal passages begin to open. I could actually breathe through both nostrils, something that happens very rarely this time of year.

After about 10 minutes, the man on the other side of the room fell asleep, and his rattling, multifaceted snore startled me out of my reverie. I drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the 45-minute session, aware that I was having weird but mostly relaxing dreams about, well, salt — mostly the kind you use to make your own ice cream.

When the lights came back up and I tiptoed out into the hallway, I felt like I had completed a long meditation. Even in this tiny strip-mall shop, there was something elemental about relaxing in a room full of salt. My mind was clear. So were my sinuses.