Vision Spa Retreat

Back to Eden: the water cure

An aquatics colleague writing about water's healing power, introduced me to a piece of American health history that I had missed, when she referenced the 1930s book below.  It would be a good read for anyone who wants to understand how some of the ideas still active in spas (especially under American influence) gained popularity. 

My partner had the 1975 (5th edition) of this book in his library, since it was a survival bible for many an Ozarks-bound back-to-the-lander.  It sounds as if it still is an important reference for health conscious people seeking self-sufficiency, though the language and some of the ideas are definitely those of the last century.

Back to Eden: The Classic Guide to Herbal Medicine, Natural Foods and Home Remedies by Jethro Kloss (original edition copyright 1939 Jethro Kloss.  Authentic Kloss Family Edition copyright the heir of Jethro Kloss 1975, 5th edn, Woodbridge Press Publishing Company).

Kloss was a staunch Christian - he believed that God gave health to the good and the sinful in equal measure, and that it is Nature that is the Grand and Great Healer.  Most of his book is devoted to herbal and dietary remedies emphasizing home self-care. He was associated with Seventh-Day-Adventist John Harvey Kellogg's Sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan, and followed very similar health practices.

Kellogg and Kloss both promoted the use of hydrotherapy. Their ideas were based on water cure (a synonym for hydropathy and later hydrotherapy) practices developed in the early 19th century in Europe, mostly involving cold water.  The Americans used both hot and cold treatments and combined hydrotherapy with other therapeutic modalities.

Read more on this Wikipedia link for Water Cure, which has many good references.

The most recent edition of Kloss' book is published by Lotus Press, 2004. A description on Amazon reads: 'Now in its expanded, updated revised edition, this is the original classic text (with more than 5-million copies sold) that helped create the natural foods industry. It remains today one of the major texts on herbs, natural diet and lifestyle and wholistic health.'

I haven't seen the latest edition so I'm not sure how 'original text' and 'updated/revised' can exist side by side.  I understand from the preface to volume I have, that there have been many unofficial copies of the original text which the Kloss family did not approve.  When it comes to using the remedies, check the information against your own commonsense and current medical understanding.

Spring water: a useful online database

Not long ago, a colleague suggested that it would be good to have a user-friendly map of mineral springs in the US.  Right on cue, I came across FindaSpring.com, the 'first extensive online database of springs in the world'. 

Health rebels Heidi and JS Ohlander teamed up with health strategist and motivator Daniel Vitalis to produce this participatory database of spring water sources.  If your favorite spring is not on it, you can go ahead and submit whatever interesting information you have along with location data.

In addition to the directory they are building up there, you'll find a valuable list of questions and answers written from personal experience, research and passionate interest. Here are just two informative examples:

• What is the best way to ascertain the quality of water from a spring to determine if it's safe to drink or not?

• Is there a possibility of tapping a spring out? Should I be concerned with the amount of water I gather at my spring?

That last question is something that has concerned me in my own water quest, especially in promoting the restoration of water to its once revered position in spa culture.  I have a feeling that if we really valued water, as the creators of this springs database do, we'd take good care of it.  Quote: Now is the time to reclaim our water! 

Explore the springs database here

 

Wellness and the spa: paradigm shift or marketing move?

A recent spa industry report suggests that it may be best not to emphasize bathing, meditation or spirituality if you want to attract more customers.  When it comes to wellness, people think exercise, then food, then spa.  They'll spend most on personal beauty and they'd like a lot more medical evidence.  They love massage but they're not so drawn to water experiences. 

Is this true for you?

Probably not, since we are all individuals and the details of how we seek and sometimes arrive at wellness differ for each of us.  It's interesting to look at patterns or trends; but it's also good to keep our own perspective, insights and experiences intact as we do.  This might be expecially important in a world overloaded with new ideas and products clamoring for market attention.

'There is a growing impetus for a paradigm shift, a switch from mere reactivity – trying to treat or fix our problems – to a proactive and holistic approach to addressing and preventing the root causes of our personal and societal ills. This is what the wellness movement is all about'  explains The Global Spa Summit, Spas and the Global Wellness Market: Synergies and Opportunities, prepared by SRI International, May 2010.

When I first heard that phrase 'paradigm shift',  I understood it as a radical change in perspective.   That was 20 years ago.  I was living and working at Schumacher College in Devon, UK,  where I took courses on the Greening of Medicine and Green Utopias.  Physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra, a visiting scholar, spoke in terms of a paradigm shift in values characterized by ecological literacy.  I liked these ideas.

I looked up the term 'paradigm shift' for this article and discovered that it was originally used by science historian Thomas Kuhn (1962) to describe change in basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science - it actually meant 'scientific revolution'. Since then, the term has also been used in social science and non-scientific contexts to describe profound change in a fundamental model or perception.

By the late 1990s, 'paradigm shift' emerged in marketing speak.  Wordsmith Larry Trask advised refraining from using it, and counselled caution when reading anything that contains the phrase.  I don't think the Global Spa Summit document is describing either scientific revolution or radical change; it's mainly about an effort to 'repackage and develop new offerings to define and market spas as a wellness necessity'.

How would you feel about visiting a spa if you heard that the collective industry and the owners of the place you had in mind to visit had set out to 'position themselves strategically to capitalize on growing wellness lifestyle trends'?  Would you anticipate being viewed and cared for as an individual?  Or labelled as a good prospect, say a babyboomer ready to spend on forestalling a decline into elderhood? 

Yes, I'm wary of the report and its conclusions; though it is well-written and thought-provoking, worth reading and considering carefully.  I recognized in it language, themes and ideas that seemed resonant with my own.  The report states that it is designed to encourage open dialog about Wellness rather than to dictate specific courses of action.  I hope it will; but I fear it will instead be used to provide marketing blurbs and justifications.

Spas could lead the way in the art and science of healing

The previous two posts have brought forward some of the questions I think spas ought to be asking about what might be behind the alliance between the healthcare and spa industries proposed in a recent edition  (3, 2010, Scientific Proof, p. 20-22) of Spa Business magazine entitled Could a union with healthcare be the spa industry's reward for becoming more savvy about scientific research?

This third post in the series looks more closely at the limitations inherent in the scientific approach to health and healing.  It is not intended to refute the value of science but rather to explain the faulty reasoning behind the idea that science is the answer to all our problems, whether economically or healthwise. 

Spas will lose a great deal of their heart and soul, and their potential as places of holistic healing, if they choose to go unreservedly down the path suggested in the article.  Alternatively, they could lead the way in the art and science of the healing arts by seeking new models for our understanding of the highly creative and innovative practices that have found a last bastion of support in spa.

 

The bathing pool: rituals

 

Recently, a dear friend, Diana Mihajlova (artist and chess player extraordinaire), who lives in Budapest wrote asking: 'Would you  be able to advise how best to use the time when I go and spend a day in the hot baths in Budapest in order to relax, and de-stress the best? '

Her request reminded me of a short article I wrote on the topic for a community newsletter a few years back, and a ritual I developed for guests at my previous spa-retreat venue. 

Below you'll find updated versions of these (the second one is offered in audio also), which can be adapted for use at home, in nature, or in Budapest!  I'd love to hear of your experiences (comment below).

Beauty and Harmony: an interview with water advocate Barbara Harmony

 by Sara Firman, May 2009 for VisionSpaRetreat.com

Venus, as Botticelli portrays her in the renowned painting of spring called Primavera, is the moist, florid, green lusciousness of life on earth.  It's an Ozark early May weekend with rain dripping from a forestful of trees all around the cabin where I live.  When yesterday's phone conversation with Barbara Harmony (also in an Ozark Cottage surrounded by green lusciousness), upon which this post is based, came to a close I asked Barbara what she had planned for the rest of the day: 'I'm going to enjoy the rain,' she said cheerfully.

Barbara has inspired Vision Spa Retreat, partly because she's been a strong and effective Advocate for Water Quality and Bioregionalism over the past 30 years.  Her home and her inspiration for all those years has been Eureka Springs, a spa-resort town, deep in the Ozark hills of Arkansas.  Barbara is a Lifelong Learning Coach, Minister, and Astrologer.  You could say that Vision Spa Retreat's tag-line 'water consciousness for personal and planetary health' is personified by Barbara.

Putting the water back into spa

Derived some claim from the Latin verb spargere, to pour forth or the acronym s.p.a., referring to salus per aqua (health through water), the historical association of spa with water is undeniable.  Sadly, over the years, the word spa has been slowly but surely separated from its connection with water. 

Spa now comes in many forms. The 2007 Global Spa Economy Report summarized the categories of spa as day/club/salon spas (63% of total spa types), hotel/resort spas (16%), other spas (13%), medical spas (11%), and destination/health resorts (1%). 

For the purposes of this economic report, spas were defined as establishments that 'promote wellness through the provision of therapeutic and other professional services aimed at renewing the body, mind and spirit' with no restriction on size or combination of treatments, as previously used for other surveys. 

No mention of water.

Of course, some spas (mostly in the lowest percentage category above) are naturally endowed with seemingly unlimited mineral waters because of their location.  But, for all spas (and all places where humans gather) water must be available.  It is an essential ingredient for life, yet we often don't give its source and flow a moment's consideration.

Spa, in its original water-based meaning, could help give us back our reverence for water.  Perhaps the dilution of this word is simply following suit with the loss of our appreciation and valuing of water.  Perhaps, by reversing this trend, we could help restore health to our water.

The Well of the Strong: Women and the Spa World

Water is the great nurturer and connector.  In its unique transformations it links the mundane with the mystical and lends meaning to life.  This description could just as well be applied to the feminine principle, intuitive mysteries embodied (at least potentially) by women.  Women and Water are profoundly linked.

In a few months I will turn 50 and I'm contemplating what this means to me personally and to the role I can now play in the wider world.  A few days ago, an older woman told me that her daughter (not much younger than me) is focused on remaining 'young', as she sees no alternative to her future marketability.

This woman, who works as a drug rep and supports a family as a single mother, expects to have to work long beyond 'retirement' age.  As a woman who has not had children, I respect her dilemma; I also feel concern about the way in which the old economic paradigm has so many people apparently entrapped.

So, this piece of writing is mainly for my water sisters - to encourage us to see our lives as something more than our youthful beauty or family bonds (not to discount the value of either at certain stages of our lives).  I believe there is something far more to be drawn up from the deep well of life - a more enduring health.

Read on to see what this might have to do with spa culture and water.  I need your help in creating a movement that supports and safeguards a truly soulful and sustainable spa culture; one that puts water back into center stage and sees itself as far more than an escape from difficult realities.

Women and water

From 2002 to 2007, I owned a small private spa-retreat in the Missouri Ozarks.  A few years in to the venture, I surveyed our visitors and found a clear predominance of women in their mid-forties to mid-fifties.   I asked myself what state of being or seeking the above age-group might represent.

(Women also make up about 75% of spa goers and the larger percentage of seekers of alternative lifestyles, in addition to predominating among those who make consumer decisions based on their concerns for the environment.) 

The climactric (menopause): a natural feminine season, presaging irrevocable change, new freedom and ancient wisdom.  As the flow of blood ceases,  these women might naturally seek out the flow of water to reinvigorate their transformed lives. 

Women, well-versed in the blood rites through their own bodies, are also increasingly wise to the overriding importance of water, especially insofar as it represents the mythical and natural realms, the ultimate force for life and meaning. 

This awareness may become even stronger as middle-aged women move into the 'change'.  For some, it's a scary time that sends them to estheticians for anti-aging treatments, to gyms for workout programs.  It's not that these are necessarily wrong but the motivation behind them may deny a greater power.

To water ... add time

Along with sustainable living and a environmental sustainability, there is now the idea of sustainable health.  Sustainable implies something that lasts over time.  And water is a key ingredient for life and health.  In nature, these are not new concepts. 

Here I want to make a case for another ancient concept: spa sabbatical, the foundation for sustainable spa retreat. 

Bathing for social and therapeutic benefits has long been an important part of ancient cultures. Before Europeans arrived in the New World, Native Americans gathered at hot mineral springs for physical health, spiritual, and social purposes combined. They honored water in their sweat lodge ceremonies as the essential element for life. 

In ancient Greece before Hippocrates, people gathered in temples devoted to the god Asclepios, whose many healing sanctuaries were always located beside ocean or spring. Priests of Asclepios required supplicants of healing to take a sabbatical from everyday life that could last several months; and treatments were based on dreams they received during their sabbatical. 

Thus began the first spa-retreats with a healing intent!  Water and Time were essential ingredients.

From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance in Europe, bathing and healing places developed around hot springs, among them towns like Spa in Belgium, Baden-Baden in Germany, and Bath in England. These are currently enjoying a revival as combined relaxation and therapy centers.  Visitors to these places usually expect to spend some time in their search for health but perhaps not enough so.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the American medical establishment prescribed bathing in medicinal waters in far-flung natural locations. However, medical advances of the early twentieth century soon offered quicker and apparently more powerful remedies to a society that had increasingly little time for leisurely recuperation.

We are now coming to realize that the fast lifestyle that causes chronic stress may also leads to pain and illnesses that are not healed so quickly.  Time, and our attitude to it, matter.

During their abandonment by the medical profession, the healing waters were largely taken over by the leisure industry. Now the word 'spa' is the latest stress-busting buzzword for a burgeoning industry that may or may not include water. Well-packed spa packages cash in on novelty therapies but still cater to a persistently time-conscious and materialistic culture.

Yet these spas often fail to meet their enthusiastic therapeutic claims. In their wake, medical spas have emerged to take advantage of the popularity of 'spa'. But these may still miss the point: the real therapeutic values of time and water.  That's where I think spa-retreat comes in, especially when the concept truly espouses unhurried simplicity.

Clinical hydrotherapy and the modern spa business make use of water's more obvious therapeutic benefits with justification. But there is much more to water - from it's connection with emotion and spirit to the subtle energetic processes identified by the so-called mystic scientists of the last centuries and now being investigated more seriously by modern science.   

The Institute of HeartMath, has suggested that “studies designed to advance our understanding of water’s role as a bridge between the worlds of energy and matter will provide a crucial link between the realms of science and spiritual phenomena, bear profound implications for the betterment of human and environmental health, and may well help lay the foundations for a newly emerging scientific paradigm”.

Medical spa holds promise only if it represents a real commitment to the expansion of the concept of health, i.e. is truly holistic. If it is done primarily in the name of lucrative business rather than genuine service, I have my reservations. Given the authoritative power of the medical establishment and a general reluctance of people to really take responsibility for their own health, I favor less clinical approaches.

In my experience, healing is a process and not an event. It also takes many forms and may not necessarily prolong life or eradicate pain or disease completely. There are some acute situations in which modern medicine is very effective but many in which it seems to have failed us. Non-clinical approaches to health and well-being have their own place, in addition to a significant supporting role in medicine.

This adjunct role can include: relaxation before or after conventional clinical treatments; weaning therapy for those at the end of a long treatment period; part of a program for long-term, chronic, or heartsick clients; conditions that may be partly stress-related such as fibromyalgia; the terminally ill, bereaved and elderly for nurturing/ touch aspects; and also as support for therapists and other staff to avoid burnout.

Placing medical and nonmedical spa establishments side-by-side is an option that spa ventures (like that of my Advisory Board member Marion Schneider in Germany) have done well.  Many of them, not surprisingly, choose to locate themselves in beautiful and natural settings beside water.  What is needed now is a committed focus on integrating sustainability in terms of individual, societal, and planetary health.

For more on the focus on sustainability, please see this 'The greening of health and spa'.

Image: A modern water clock.  For more on water clocks click here.

[An earlier version of this posting was published by AMTA-Florida (American Massage Therapy Association) 2003 newsletter on the trend in medical spa.]

Water is a living thing

Water covers over 70% of our planet ... it also constitutes about the same percentage of our bodies.

 

This parallel is significant - it hints at how intricately we are connected with our surroundings. Each cell in our bodies could be seen as a microcosm of the earth and both are dependent upon water for life. I want to start this section of the blog off with some inspiring views of water.

Scientists, philosophers and artists have all recognized the fundamental importance of water in our lives. Some of their insights have been gathered together in a fascinating book called Writing on Water, edited by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus (2000). If you're interested in any aspect of water and want to broaden your perspective, I recommend this book highly.

My friend Alan Rayner (biologist and artist) and Caroline Way, organizers of the Language of Water, international science-art conference (UK, April, 2001) suggested 'viewing water as the receptive medium into and through which life forms gather and distribute the energy that puts them in motion'. They continued:

'As such, water provides the dynamic contextual highways and byways along and in which genetic information can flow and be exchanged and expressed in a myriad of diverse forms. Within it may lie the deep reason for emotion, our responsiveness to our own and other's needful being.'

Statements like this are intended to help us see water as a living thing and as an intimate and essential part of our own living organism. My own awareness of this came out of the practice of aquatic bodywork. This work helped me to appreciate qualities of water that extend far beyond our everyday use of this element.

As scientist, artist, and therapist, water has helped me to integrate objective and subjective viewpoints and to explore both the sensitivity and the chaos of life. I found also that there are many ways in which water provides not only a metaphor for life, but also guidance for a fully engaged and creative way of living. I've written more on that in Diving Deeper.

Please read a little more about the mysterious science of water in Water: nature's sense organ. I'm always interested to hear how people relate to water ... add a brief comment below.

Writing on Water
by David Rothenberg