I just read an interesting, if flawed, story in New York magazine. Still scratching my head on how I came to be a subscriber, but for the first time since it started showing up in my mailbox I didn’t feel that I was contributing to the demise of more trees and increasing carbon emissions when I flipped the magazine pretty much straight into the recycle bin.
The story is called The Economy of Touch and though it is one in which it appears the author was intend on her thesis and set out to find sources who would corroborate it, I learned something interesting: If the New York mag stats are accurate, there is a proliferation of nail technicians—at least in New York and I would suspect in large US cities. Yet massage therapy is suffering from a distinct shortage of trained professionals in the spa industry worldwide. In spa land, the certification requirements change from state to state and country to country and it is much easier to slip under the radar and work illegally as a nail technician than a bodyworker. This means a lot of naturally skilled but not formally trained and certified bodyworkers are prohibited from working. This is true especially in Asia. There are organizations that are trying to change by setting up foundations.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Where Are We Going in Spa Land?
I heard an unintentionally funny story while at the International SPA conference in Orlando, Florida in mid-November, one that is both telling and thought provoking.
I was talking to an Asian spa entrepreneur who I admire and like a lot. He was telling me that he was recently diagnosed with a gallstone. He decided to treat it with Chinese herbs as part of his ongoing research on the efficacy of the treatments that he promotes, to live his beliefs. It took ten days for the TCM cure to dissolve the stone, which cost him considerably in time—he didn't work unless he could do it from bed—and pain, for which he offhandedly mentioned that he was regularly popping pain pills. . .
Meet the health dilemmas of 21st century seekers.
I know the feeling. I’ve been harboring a freaky super-cold that has come and gone for over a month and counting. During that time I’ve had massages, acupressure and acupuncture and chiropractic. I’ve taken homeopathic and Chinese herbs. And I’ve been popping Benadryl faster than you can say (correctly) thassalotherapy.
We're straddling two worlds: the modern, quick fixes that we know aren't particularly healthy for us, and the desire to live a more natural, healthful lifestyle. Who's got the time or the patience for that?
With just a small leap, the themes above figure into the ongoing discussion that has been on the tip of everyone in the spa industry’s collective tongue these days: Where spa is heading. Where should it be heading? The general consensus at spa conferences and summits, to varying degrees, is that it is, it must, it should move away from surface-y pampering and in the direction of wellness. Mind-Body-Spirit, the whole shebang working together.
On the part of the spas, it is about creating environments conducive to the promotion of well-being rather than just repeating the overwrought and overused bliss-heavy terminologies and think that's going to cut it. And to the spa goer it is about empowering and teaching people to participate in their own good health by, say, posing questions regarding their expectations for this spa experience rather than expecting external quick fixes for internal—spiritual, psychic, emotional—stuff.
The fact that no clear one-size-fits-all model has yet been arrived at is no surprise; these things take time. It’s a new paradigm that is being put forth. What pace should be set for these changes to take place? After all, some people just do want to go a spa where they can plunk down their cash and call it a day. All the bells and whistles are great but really they just want to get away from the kids, or the job, or the whatever for an hour or two.
Others, likely the more frequent spa goers, are a bit more discerning about spa. Whether it’s because they’ve had enough experiences that left them cold and empty, perhaps even taken, or because from the get-go they’ve used spas as part of a larger personal wellness program, they are seeing the cracks in veneer.
It’s no surprise, then, that many of the media stories that have appeared lately fall into one of two categories. One half is targeted to the first group and feature “the next new thing in spa land” stories, and some of it is getting just plain weird. The stories beg, What’s next? (Grocery store spas! Spas from a vending machine! Spa funerals!)
The other types of stories are complaint stories. Are-prices-getting-out-of-control-with-insufficient-return type stories. You’ve seen them; you’ll see much more of them.
It’s no accident that these are the stories being reported, and they should be. That’s what happens when we’re saturated with a topic. The microscope comes out and the talk gets tougher. The industry is growing so fast but we’re still are not so sure what it should look and feel like.
One way or another, we’ll get there.
I was talking to an Asian spa entrepreneur who I admire and like a lot. He was telling me that he was recently diagnosed with a gallstone. He decided to treat it with Chinese herbs as part of his ongoing research on the efficacy of the treatments that he promotes, to live his beliefs. It took ten days for the TCM cure to dissolve the stone, which cost him considerably in time—he didn't work unless he could do it from bed—and pain, for which he offhandedly mentioned that he was regularly popping pain pills. . .
Meet the health dilemmas of 21st century seekers.
I know the feeling. I’ve been harboring a freaky super-cold that has come and gone for over a month and counting. During that time I’ve had massages, acupressure and acupuncture and chiropractic. I’ve taken homeopathic and Chinese herbs. And I’ve been popping Benadryl faster than you can say (correctly) thassalotherapy.
We're straddling two worlds: the modern, quick fixes that we know aren't particularly healthy for us, and the desire to live a more natural, healthful lifestyle. Who's got the time or the patience for that?
With just a small leap, the themes above figure into the ongoing discussion that has been on the tip of everyone in the spa industry’s collective tongue these days: Where spa is heading. Where should it be heading? The general consensus at spa conferences and summits, to varying degrees, is that it is, it must, it should move away from surface-y pampering and in the direction of wellness. Mind-Body-Spirit, the whole shebang working together.
On the part of the spas, it is about creating environments conducive to the promotion of well-being rather than just repeating the overwrought and overused bliss-heavy terminologies and think that's going to cut it. And to the spa goer it is about empowering and teaching people to participate in their own good health by, say, posing questions regarding their expectations for this spa experience rather than expecting external quick fixes for internal—spiritual, psychic, emotional—stuff.
The fact that no clear one-size-fits-all model has yet been arrived at is no surprise; these things take time. It’s a new paradigm that is being put forth. What pace should be set for these changes to take place? After all, some people just do want to go a spa where they can plunk down their cash and call it a day. All the bells and whistles are great but really they just want to get away from the kids, or the job, or the whatever for an hour or two.
Others, likely the more frequent spa goers, are a bit more discerning about spa. Whether it’s because they’ve had enough experiences that left them cold and empty, perhaps even taken, or because from the get-go they’ve used spas as part of a larger personal wellness program, they are seeing the cracks in veneer.
It’s no surprise, then, that many of the media stories that have appeared lately fall into one of two categories. One half is targeted to the first group and feature “the next new thing in spa land” stories, and some of it is getting just plain weird. The stories beg, What’s next? (Grocery store spas! Spas from a vending machine! Spa funerals!)
The other types of stories are complaint stories. Are-prices-getting-out-of-control-with-insufficient-return type stories. You’ve seen them; you’ll see much more of them.
It’s no accident that these are the stories being reported, and they should be. That’s what happens when we’re saturated with a topic. The microscope comes out and the talk gets tougher. The industry is growing so fast but we’re still are not so sure what it should look and feel like.
One way or another, we’ll get there.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Spa-ing in Asia
Spas are woven even more firmly into the Asian culture. No surprise since so many of the spa treatments we enjoy today originated there. This is a photo of Boracay's Caticlan airport. These massage stations are a common sight at airports for "quick fixes."
Thursday, November 1, 2007
More on the Farm at San Benito and Energetic Healing
Did I sound too high-minded in my last post? What I really meant to say was that it felt great to visit this place of healing where I could talk freely about alternative practices and energy healing without having to clean up my language for fear of sounding too woo-woo. I’ve gotten bad responses in the past. I remember going to an ear, nose and throat doctor about my sinuses and telling him that I’d had acupuncture for the condition. He was silently disapproving except for how his eyes narrowed. I think he disliked the fact that I was actually participating in trying to get myself well. He didn’t like being questioned, even when it was for a $5000 CAT Scan he proposed. I never went back but was none too happy when I got his bill and realized that the probe that he casually put up my nose cost $500.
By the time I sat down with one of the Farm doctors, Dr. Marian Alonzo, it was dusk. I was several hours late because of bad weather that put my whole day behind schedule, which ended up being a blessing because the doctor was finished with work and free to talk. I remember being aware that I should begin our conversation slowly despite the late hour. I thought she might be cautious or even defensive speaking with a journalist and I didn’t want to get too deep too fast. But it was she dove right in.
Dr. Alonzo was mesmerizing. She is young, petite, pretty and appeared . . . breakable. She wore flip-flops (practically the uniform of tropical countries) and a crisp white coat and her perfectly silky hair was perfectly pulled back. She shared stories about being green when she first started working at the Farm, and of her first patients and how she was afraid. When was the last time you heard a Western doctor admit that? She actually hid from one of them, she told me. It was a woman who came in quite ill but very feisty, angry and demanding. Dr. Alonzo called her a—and if you could see her you would know how out of character this is—“the bitchiest patient I ever had.” The woman came with a tumor in her colon. Dr. Alonzo and she ended up being great co-partners in restoring the woman to health. They had a ritual after the woman left: at 7 AM each morning, no matter where they were, they would both envision the woman’s colon being healthy. She said they’d often have wild images while doing this. I recall her saying something about an octopus. . . Seven months later, the woman’s colonoscopy showed no sign of a tumor.
Caroline Myss, the teacher and medical intuitive talks a lot about this type of energetic healing. If you’re interested, she has lots of great CDs on the topic. She also travels the world, teaching. And then there’s Dr. Mehmet Oz, of course, who's done wonders in bringing healing practices that were previously considered quackery to the mainstream.
After medical school Dr. Alonzo studied naturopathy at Chi Med Asia in Manila. The Philippines is very advanced in their acceptance and use of alternative therapies.
By the time I sat down with one of the Farm doctors, Dr. Marian Alonzo, it was dusk. I was several hours late because of bad weather that put my whole day behind schedule, which ended up being a blessing because the doctor was finished with work and free to talk. I remember being aware that I should begin our conversation slowly despite the late hour. I thought she might be cautious or even defensive speaking with a journalist and I didn’t want to get too deep too fast. But it was she dove right in.
Dr. Alonzo was mesmerizing. She is young, petite, pretty and appeared . . . breakable. She wore flip-flops (practically the uniform of tropical countries) and a crisp white coat and her perfectly silky hair was perfectly pulled back. She shared stories about being green when she first started working at the Farm, and of her first patients and how she was afraid. When was the last time you heard a Western doctor admit that? She actually hid from one of them, she told me. It was a woman who came in quite ill but very feisty, angry and demanding. Dr. Alonzo called her a—and if you could see her you would know how out of character this is—“the bitchiest patient I ever had.” The woman came with a tumor in her colon. Dr. Alonzo and she ended up being great co-partners in restoring the woman to health. They had a ritual after the woman left: at 7 AM each morning, no matter where they were, they would both envision the woman’s colon being healthy. She said they’d often have wild images while doing this. I recall her saying something about an octopus. . . Seven months later, the woman’s colonoscopy showed no sign of a tumor.
Caroline Myss, the teacher and medical intuitive talks a lot about this type of energetic healing. If you’re interested, she has lots of great CDs on the topic. She also travels the world, teaching. And then there’s Dr. Mehmet Oz, of course, who's done wonders in bringing healing practices that were previously considered quackery to the mainstream.
After medical school Dr. Alonzo studied naturopathy at Chi Med Asia in Manila. The Philippines is very advanced in their acceptance and use of alternative therapies.
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Farm at San Benito - Unplugged
There was something about going to the Farm at San Benito that felt like I had come home. Yes, the grounds are spectacularly designed—feng shui’d within an inch of its peaceful and serene being. (Have I mentioned how inadequate I feel writing about the beauty aspect of spas and wellness retreats? To me, the experience is sublime and visceral, yes, but these are feelings that don’t lend themselves sufficiently to a block of words on a page. They are better experienced through stillness and an acknowledged sense of awe. So please don’t take my abrupt descriptions as anything but an admission that I choose not to attempt to properly do justice to works of beauty that are designed to create an emotional response within.)
The facts are that the Farm sits on what once was a coconut and coffee plantation—hence the term farm. It sits at the base of Mount Malarayat and any footpath you choose will take you one of many private oases where you can sit and . . . breathe in the beauty.
But as a follower and user of complementary therapies, what most compelled me to want to visit is the fact that the Farm is one of the few—and certainly one of the first—wellness facilities to seamlessly and unabashedly weave medical and complementary therapies into their core reason for being. They have a staff of 150, which includes 5 medical doctors, nurses and one medical secretary who can field calls from guest 24/7.
Now, to grasp how radical a concept this was when they opened in 2002—and apparently continues to be—can be put in perspective best this way: Just this morning I received in my inbox a media release from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which is a part of the National Institutes of Health, announcing that their medical journal, Academic Medicine, is about to publish research studies on why CAM (Alternative Complementary Medicine) courses should be required in medical school—just now, on the cusp of 2008!
It’s good news that the allopathic establishment is finally realizing that there must be something to this trillion-dollar wellness industry. But something makes me wonder if trying to crack the code on energetic healing quantifiably is a doable task. When Albert Einstein came up with E=mc2, he was saying that mass and energy are both manifestations of the same thing, that mass can be converted into energy and vice versa.
In the most simple language I can safely conjure, that’s the kind of healing that is happening at places like the Farm at San Benito: Medical doctors are looking at real diseases and, along with close medical monitoring, are using natural healing practices to excise disease. The owners say they chose their location because they found that it possessed four distinct energy wells—locations that vibrate at a higher level. They include a 200-year-old mango tree, the amphitheater, the orchidarium and one of the villas.
The Farm at San Benito is located in Lipa, Batangas, about 2 hours from metro Manila.
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Heart of a Massage Therapist
A big debate is quietly raging on Anitra Brown's blog about.com/spa regarding necessary qualifications for being a good massage therapist. This one started because a spa bigwig was quoted in a Luxury Spa Finder saying something along these lines: “good therapists have to have the heart of a servant.” This seems to be the call to action among spa professionals these days—especially because it’s becoming harder to find and keep good therapists.
That fact kept coming up at the Wellness Summit because apparently the level of talented healing hands entering the industry is not sufficient to keep up with the demand. Good technicians, on the other hand, are easy to find. You go to school, you study your anatomy, you learn the skills necessary to set up shop and you get a job. But when you have the heart of a technician apparently your heart may not in the right place. Your heart is probably in your head, which is more focused on your bank account. And burnout is a big issue in the spa industry these days.
In this country, of course, peddling flagrant descriptions of employees as servants is like issuing a battle call. The politically correct contingency will rear its head and Western therapists—some, not all—cannot, will not, wrap their heads around the word. Here, someone making minimum wage in a retail setting is called an “associate,” not a clerk. We’re big on titles, small on customer care. So people latch onto their title, the fancier the title the bigger the head. I’m not promoting classism; I just think that we put too much emphasis on impressive-sounding titles and not as much on putting in the work to fulfill the title.
After experiencing Asian massage therapists, I think it comes down to attitudes. I really believe there is a cultural precedent in the argument for the superiority of Asian practitioners. I mentioned how the staff at Mandala Spa greets visitors: right hand to heart and a slight bow. At another spa, which I’ll talk about another time named Nurture Spa, I was greeted by a man who put his hands, palms up, out in front of him and then brought them both back to his heart as he said, “Welcome home.” The gestures felt so genuine it nearly took my breath away.
Chinggay, my massage therapist and Mandala Spa told me that the massage therapists start each day with a Sivananda yoga class. In fact, I read on the spa’s website that even the kitchen staff and gardeners must attend a yoga class once a week. I hope they like it. I know Chinggay does. She told me that as a result of taking yoga classes she’s decided that she wants to spend time on an ashram. I credit Mo-Ching Yip, a yoga instructor, spa consultant and wife of Dieter Schrottmann, Mandala’s co-owner with Karen Villarica-Reina (see personalities on website). I believe that together they are creating an environment that is not just a pretty construct but a living breathing thing.
That fact kept coming up at the Wellness Summit because apparently the level of talented healing hands entering the industry is not sufficient to keep up with the demand. Good technicians, on the other hand, are easy to find. You go to school, you study your anatomy, you learn the skills necessary to set up shop and you get a job. But when you have the heart of a technician apparently your heart may not in the right place. Your heart is probably in your head, which is more focused on your bank account. And burnout is a big issue in the spa industry these days.
In this country, of course, peddling flagrant descriptions of employees as servants is like issuing a battle call. The politically correct contingency will rear its head and Western therapists—some, not all—cannot, will not, wrap their heads around the word. Here, someone making minimum wage in a retail setting is called an “associate,” not a clerk. We’re big on titles, small on customer care. So people latch onto their title, the fancier the title the bigger the head. I’m not promoting classism; I just think that we put too much emphasis on impressive-sounding titles and not as much on putting in the work to fulfill the title.
After experiencing Asian massage therapists, I think it comes down to attitudes. I really believe there is a cultural precedent in the argument for the superiority of Asian practitioners. I mentioned how the staff at Mandala Spa greets visitors: right hand to heart and a slight bow. At another spa, which I’ll talk about another time named Nurture Spa, I was greeted by a man who put his hands, palms up, out in front of him and then brought them both back to his heart as he said, “Welcome home.” The gestures felt so genuine it nearly took my breath away.
Chinggay, my massage therapist and Mandala Spa told me that the massage therapists start each day with a Sivananda yoga class. In fact, I read on the spa’s website that even the kitchen staff and gardeners must attend a yoga class once a week. I hope they like it. I know Chinggay does. She told me that as a result of taking yoga classes she’s decided that she wants to spend time on an ashram. I credit Mo-Ching Yip, a yoga instructor, spa consultant and wife of Dieter Schrottmann, Mandala’s co-owner with Karen Villarica-Reina (see personalities on website). I believe that together they are creating an environment that is not just a pretty construct but a living breathing thing.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Levitating Yogi
I recently stumbled upon a great spa blog called Asia's Best Spa and Massage Review. (See blogroll.) The author, Katherine, lives in Singapore and is a wealth of knowledge on the spa scene in Asia. In a recent post she has included a video of a levitating yogi. It's a must see. Go visit her.
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