Perched elegantly among a grove of eucalyptus in the foothills of Berkeley, Calif., the Claremont is the 91-year-old, white-haired doyenne of California hotels and home to one of the best day spas in the country. For men who like to pamper themselves, the Claremont’s day spa offers a whole raft of men’s specialties, including the sports massage and the athlete’s manicure. The latter includes nail filing, cuticle care, skin care, and buffing. Sounds pretty masculine, but still, a manicure is a manicure.

Now, I’m a sensitive, new age kind of guy. I talk about my feelings, drink cappuccinos, and use hand lotion on a regular basis. But I’m not quite ready for a manicure. A massage, however, I can do.

Stepping out of the elevator into the spa level, I felt like I was entering a different world, a serene land of elevator music, fresh-cut flowers, and eerily efficient service. As I walked up to the registration counter, an athletic-looking man materialized at my left elbow. “Michael?” he asked, in a soothing voice one usually associates with psychologists. I nodded. “I’m Dave. I’ll be your massage therapist.”

Dave led me down the hall to the men’s lounge and motioned for me to step inside. The lounge, which resembled a lavish dentist’s waiting room, was completely empty. On a serving dais were carafes of cucumber water and iced orange juice, as well as a glass bowl filled with satsuma oranges and a complete selection of Tazo tea.

An attendant led me into the dressing room, complete with an enormous stone whirlpool with a full view of the San Francisco skyline; a brigade of private showers, each of which has 11 showerheads firing simultaneously, not to mention something called the deluge shower.

“Enjoy,” the attendant said as he handed me my robe. Dave was waiting for me next to the cucumber water when I stepped out of the dressing room, clad in white robe and slippers. “Are you ready?” he asked. I was ready.

He led me down the hall to one of the private massage rooms, a small, windowless rectangle with a sheet-draped massage table in the middle. Dave left the room for a minute, and I disrobed.

I lay there for a few minutes, facedown in the doughnut-shaped headrest, listening to Buddhists ring bells and shedding my excess layers of stress, before Dave came back into the room. “First we’ll work on your back, then we’ll do the bowls,” he said. “Then we’ll work on your front, then we’ll do more bowls.” I wasn’t really sure what bowls he was referring to, but I kept my questions to myself.

Those who have experienced a professional massage will know the bliss that followed. Those who have not, I implore you to pick up the phone right now and call your local day spa. It may be expensive. But it’s worth every penny. Cancel the next appointment with your therapist. Don’t go out to eat for a couple of weeks. Take your children out of private school. A good massage will change your life.

After about 15 minutes of working on my back, I had entered a blissed-out, dreamlike trance. Dave switched off the boom box and began rummaging around in a drawer. Then I felt a small weight on my back and, for the first time in what seemed like a decade, I heard Dave’s voice.

“This is your root chakra,” he said. “May you be healthy and have a strong connection to the earth.” Before I could even begin to question the relationship between Tibetan Buddhist prayer bowls and what I thought was the strictly Hindu idea of chakras, Dave rang the bronze prayer bowl with a stick, sending a sound wave of vibration through my entire body.

The Claremont (www.claremontresort.com, 800-551-7266, $127 for 50 minutes) describes the Tibetan Sound massage as a “Full-body massage combined with sound waves from sacred Tibetan bowls placed on your body. … Awaken to sound and vibration as a fundamental shaping force to your stream of feeling alive.” I’m not sure what exactly was going on with my stream of feeling alive, but it did feel quite nice.

Never has 50 minutes passed so quickly. After working my front and then more bowls, Dave led me to the dressing room, a hand on my back to keep me walking in a straight line. Then I took an 11-nozzle shower and slipped into the whirlpool. Smiling like a cult member, I watched the birds flitting from tree to tree and the clouds moving slowly across the sky.

My post-massage bliss was eventually interrupted by another man, stumbling into the dressing room as I had earlier. I heard him shower, change, and then make a call on his cell phone. “Honey?” he said, a little guiltily. “I think I’m going to stay down here for a little longer. Maybe the rest of the afternoon.”