When my wife Heather and I stepped into Salt Spa, the first thing I noticed was the scent. It was clean and oceanlike, hitting the senses the way a wave hits your ankles: soft at first, then unmistakable.
I used to live in Los Angeles, so I know that salt-in-the-air purity well. It’s something you usually only find near the coast. Except somehow, it’s here in the middle of Michigan. Well… maybe not somehow. I know exactly how.
Because Kristina Perillo wanted to help her son breathe.
Years ago, long before she opened three Salt Spa locations across Metro Detroit, Kristina was simply a mom with a baby who had RSV and asthma. That meant sleepless nights for them both. It also meant specialists, steroids, and more questions than answers.
And then her mother, an immigrant from Lebanon with her own lineage of holistic wisdom, said something that cracked the whole problem open:
“Take him to the salt air.”
In Florida, salt rooms soothed her son. He slept. He relaxed. He started asking—begging—to go.
“That’s when I knew something real was happening,” she says. “He wouldn’t stop asking for the salt room.”
Back home, Kristina told her husband Joe she wanted to build one in their house. Joe “didn’t want people lined up outside our house,” she laughs. So he found her a building instead; it became her first location, in Saint Clair Shores.
Years later, a Shelby Township facialist was closing her business. Kristina walked into the room and didn’t ask a single business question.
“I just liked the feeling,” she said. “My gut told me yes.”
The space is chic, simple, intentional. A neon ‘get salty’ sign winks from the wall. Heather and I don the luxurious robes and slippers Kristina provides, and settle into the salt room. The floor is salt, like sand on a beach. One entire wall, striking to behold, is built from backlit Himalayan salt bricks.
I reflect back to my interview with Kristina. Most rooms like this, she told me, are “decorative. Pretty, yes. Therapeutic? Not really.”
Kristina’s rooms look like sanctuaries, but they function like medicine. Heather and I can hear, smell, and even taste the salt filling the air.
“It’s the generator,” I remember Kristina telling me. “Pharmaceutical-grade dry salt blowing through the air. That’s where the real benefits come from.”
Those benefits? Reduced inflammation, improved skin conditions, respiratory support, sleep support, stress relief, magnesium absorption, and more. Sometimes it takes more than one session to experience these, so Salt Spa also offers a surprisingly affordable unlimited plan.
“It’s like going to the gym,” Kristina explains. “You can’t expect a six-pack after one session. But stick with it and you’ll feel amazing.”
Her customers agree. Regular visitor Renee Timbeau says the salt “helps my asthma. And life today is so fast-paced… I think it’s so important to slow down. I unwind there. I usually bring a book.” Brooke Schwartz uses the spa to stay healthy all winter. “Something about the salt in my respiratory system,” Brooke explains. “I do it regularly, and I stay healthy.”
And then there’s Stacey Conigliaro, the front-desk concierge who came for the experience—and stayed.
“I’m not a spa girl at all,” Stacey admits. “I get more anxious sitting still, because I start thinking of all the things I could be doing.” But one visit changed her. “I left feeling so great… ten pounds lighter. My skin felt amazing. My congestion went away.” She applied for a job the next week.
I tell Kristina that in L.A., there would be a line out the door at Salt Spa. She tells me she believes Michigan is “five to eight years behind” other wellness hubs, so if Salt Spa feels ahead of the curve, that’s by intention. “I want people to experience what’s possible," Kristina says. She adds that she designed Salt Spa to feel luxurious without the L.A. price tag. “Why should calm be a privilege?” she asks.
I came in with a day’s worth of tension. As we breathed in the same salted air that once brought relief to a little boy, I felt my ribcage soften. We also noticed our sinuses tingling, and a lightness in the chest that moved outward.
Kristina says her employees rarely get sick, simply from working around the salt every day. Her brothers use the spa religiously. Her kids clamor to come on their school breaks. Even her husband goes more than she does, often with friends. “He’s obsessed with it,” she says with a smile.
It’s impossible to miss: the same magic that helped her son through his earliest struggles now extends to anyone who walks through Salt Spa’s doors.
After the salt room, Heather and I try the infrared sauna, then the dry cold plunge (an innovation currently available at Salt Spa’s Royal Oak location). On the way home, I realize my body has started breathing for me again, automatically, effortlessly. The scent of the ocean is still in my sinuses.
And then I hear Heather say one word:
“Wow.”
I ask what the wow is about.
“I just feel good mentally,” she answers. “Like really good.”
Interestingly, that’s exactly what Kristina said when I asked what her goal was for her clients. “I just want people to feel good,” she said. “Really, really good.”
So a mother’s determination to help her son has become a gift for the whole community.
Michigan winters can feel interminably long. It’s comforting to know there’s a place you can go that smells like the ocean, relaxes like an exhale… and makes you feel really, really good.
Offering salt therapy, massage, infrared sauna, red light therapy, and the calmest atmosphere in town, Salt Spa is one of the community’s hidden gems. For more info, or to book a session, visit saltspascs.com
“It’s the generator: pharmaceutical-grade dry salt blowing through the air. That’s where the real benefits come from.”
It’s impossible to miss: the same magic that helped her son through his earliest struggles now extends to anyone who walks through Salt Spa’s doors.