All massages aren't created equal; some might have a psychic golf connection

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – One of my very favorite aspects of traveling to golf destinations is the spa treatment, which in my case means a massage.

Yesterday, I got one at a place unlike any other – Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E, or Association for Research and Enlightenment, which is located in a big old historical house on 67th Street. If it sounds like there’s a little more too this than a therapeutic massage, you’re right.

Edgar Cayce, if you don’t know, was a pretty famous psychic, among other things. He was able to “enter a self-induced trancelike state that enabled him to place his mind in contact with an unlimited source of information.” According to a brochure, more than 14,000 of these “readings” were transcribed and copied for research, and Cayce founded the A.R.E. in 1931 to make this stuff available.

I was just there for a massage. Who knew?

Anyway, my one-hour session transpired before a round of golf (a sequence I highly recommend). I got the “Cayce/Reilly” treatment, which I was told Bob Hope received regularly in his advancing years, and that guy knew how to live. Plus he really loved golf, so this must be good.

There are a couple of things they did at the A.RE. that I had never experienced before. First, my therapist started with an abdominal rub, which unfortunately covers a large area.

Secondly, she worked in some pretty good arm, shoulder and hip stretches, which really seemed beneficial later in the day when I played a round of golf at Bay Creek Golf Club on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.

I wound up hitting the ball pretty good, but I have to wonder: Was it the massage, or were they able to channel Walter Hagan for me?

Whatever they did, it worked.