This fine piece of equipment is called a “red light therapy” booth, aka a bullshit booth. I’m told that red light therapy is supposed to have anti-aging benefits and add elasticity back to the skin and destroy cellulite using the ol’ evil eye. Maybe it does; I will say that my skin has been looking fabulous since using the booth, but it also coincides with my working out on a regular basis, so who knows. If it’s a placebo effect, I can dig that too.
The event of using the machine starts out innocently enough. The one I use has four different programs, but I only know the fourth one thanks to the staff member who told me to skip over to it. By the way Mr. Staff Member – that’s the cellulite reduction program. I should be glad that you didn’t specifically direct me to the anti-aging one, but all the same, thanks for pointing out my fat ass to me as if I didn’t know it was there.
But I digress… So once I step into the booth and select the fat ass program, the floor plate begins to shake, gently at first, until it builds up to teeth rattling mode. This is the hate part of my feelings. I hate being violently shaken about, especially after a work out. To make the experience even more comical, the machine plays some weird watered-down salsa music. I’ve also convinced myself that there is a camera in the booth filming the whole fiasco go down as I try with what energy I have left to regain my balance. This goes on for 12 minutes. By minute 7, I’m usually cursing under my breath and telling it how much I hate its stupid face and debating on jumping out. I always talk myself out of it by reminding myself that I’ve made it more than halfway through and in another three minutes the vibration while stop. Those are the longest three minutes of my life. At the end of the cycle, I step out feeling victorious even though the only thing I accomplished was allowing myself to treated like a tossed salad. Wait…that doesn’t make sense. Something that gets shaken a lot. Yes. A fill in the blank, if you will.
Then two days later, I forget how much I hate the experience and I get back in it. What can I say, I’m a sucker?