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.]
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