This image shows two deer stranded in a river while the forest burns around them. For me, it conveys well the current challenges we face in deciding how best to survive economic and environmental crises. These deer know that the water may save them. Could a new vision of spa play its part in helping us to survive?
Recently I received an e-newsletter from a spa industry leader who was addressing, like so many are, the issue of the current economic drama and how it will affect business as usual. The argument put forward was inspired by the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, written 70 years ago when some still thought that the planet could keep supplying our needs.
The spa expert says that time is our limiting factor, not resources, and that by saving time by spending money, you will increase your wealth. It's the paradigm that led to mass production of products and mass servicing of people's needs. And it persists still in the drive behind the burgeoning spa resort business.
We have created a culture in which we apparently spend less time on the daily tasks of living and more time on what? The newsletter writer insists that by saving time you have more time to create wealth; and I guess more time to enjoy spending that wealth at places designed to give you the experience of being at leisure.
But exactly what do we believe these two things - wealth and time - to be. Or, to put it another way, what is it we value them for? What do they mean to the customers who visit spa retreats or resorts, and to those who create and service these places. Would a deeper examination change our perception of how we use our time and money?
Here's the advice of the author of the e-newsletter: 'If you ask most people how they’re handling rising prices in today’s tough economy, most will rattle off a list of the ways they are economizing; they are driving less to save on gasoline, cutting back on meals out, doing things themselves that they once paid others to do — and patting themselves on the back for their frugality ....
'Most people spend time trying to save money. The wealthy do the exact opposite; they spend money in order to save time. And with the time saved they work on more productive ways of creating wealth than they would have by washing the car, or mowing the lawn or driving someplace to find a sale. If you want to be wealthy that’s what you have to do too.' I do hope this view is not widely shared.
Who is doing the tasks the person who thinks and grows rich has decided they haven't got the time to do? What would happen if everyone thought and grew rich? Napoleon Hill's ideas got a new lease of life with the film 'The Secret' and have given rise to a whole host of wealth creation advisory services.
The basic idea is that if you whole-heartedly assume your right to money and act as if you are wealthy, then you will be. It's similar to the idea that if you have cancer, it's within your power to think your body well again. I'm concerned that the wisdom behind both these ideas has been distorted in favor of the few who have discovered they can profit by it.
Are those who fail to get rich or well, really to blame or at fault in their philosophy of life? Have they given up their share, their health, in unknowing or unwilling service to those who would have more? Unlimited wealth implies unlimited resources. In a material world, this seems unrealistic unless sharing and sustainability (replenishing) are included in each consideration.
The equations of life have become impossible to balance, especially for those who live far from the natural world and whose life-styles are often disconnected from actual sources of the services and products that support them. The current global crises, reflected in human and non-human ways, reveal the imbalance that we all live with now.
I suggest this calls us to examine our underlying values, our world views, and to see if what we do with our time in order to create abundance (a reworking of 'time equals money') is really meeting our needs and those of others in a way that respects the source of our livelihood, the planet itself (including all things sustained by it).
What if trends in the spa industry and in the alternative health systems supported by it were to reflect cultural changes that enabled a more sustainable way of living for all? I'd like to support a shift away from wealth creation for the few and towards providing places and practices offering an abundance of time for reflection and restoration available to all.
Changing paradigms
We could view the growing spa industry not as another consumer market but as a reflection of an underlying need to take time out and to consider the deeper meaning of our lives. Whilst many see spa as a way of relaxing and de-stressing, more profoundly it might offer an opportunity to restore our human values.
For this opportunity to be grasped, we must go beyond superficial style and develop authentic integrity in providing true spa (sanus per agua - health through water) services. Catering to an increasingly time-conscious and materialistic culture, though that might alleviate some stress to person and planet, will do nothing to change the inequalities that underlie the prevalent trends of society and modern spa business.
Luxury-style settings promoting high-tech treatments with expensive cosmetics in condensed packages are proliferating. Design parodies of the natural, mystical or romantic past may actually distance us still further from reality and our true selves. What is needed instead is to create safe, contemplative environments in which the limitations of linear time and consensual reality can be explored.
In such places both individuals and groups could discover alternative and positive ways for facing the future. Being neither pampering nor prescriptive, these venues would aim to empower people with their own sense of connection and responsibility to the whole. This is my vision of spa retreat.
There are many examples in the business world and in social movements of efforts to change cultural paradigms. Writing in (IONS Noetic Sciences Review, August 2001) on The Madii Institute, a non-profit organization aimed at building self-reliant communities, Gail Holland notes that:
Adopting another view can sometimes... [Susan and John Blood] admit, be an uphill struggle. Therefore, they often suggest different methods to escape restricted boxed thinking. We talk about knowledge that comes from dreams,'says Susan, 'and we introduce activities that tap into intuition and our consciousness.'
(Elsewhere on this website you can read about Asclepian spa sanctuaries and the value given there to incubating healing dreams. I believe is it a model worth exploring.)
In the same IONS Review (August 2001), a letter to the Editor from Marjorie J. Scott offered some water-based inspiration:
If we were to see the current upheavals as this kind of chaos, as an opportunity to stimulate our imaginations and transform our thinking, would we still come up with 'think and grow rich', or would we be able to envisage another kind of abundance and a sense of time that expands to contain that?
Although this discussion has been rather abstract, I do believe that we need to ask such fundamental questions now before we can be sure of finding solutions that will stand the tests of time and money.
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