health and fitness

Palaces of Pampering The Spa Experience Has Changed since Prehistoric Peoples Relaxed at the Local Hot Springs

I just bought myself 60 minutes of soothing warmth, relaxation, and mindlessness. In a quiet room at a top Arizona spa, a therapist uses heated basalt river rocks to smooth away my aches and cares.

I am not alone in this guilty pleasure. Each day Arizona's destination and resort spas cater to thousands of guests who part with a decent chunk of change to be pampered, relax, get in shape, lose weight, or learn to lead a healthier life-style.

By definition, a destination spa offers accommodations and an all-encompassing spa environment, while a resort spa is a spa facility located on the premises of a fullservice resort.

The state's earliest spa-goers may have been native peoples who eased creaking joints in natural hot springs that dotted present-day Safford, Camp Verde, northwestern Arizona, and other sites.

In 1896 the Apaches' fabled “magic waters” in a valley near Wickenburg inspired a group of wealthy investors to open Castle Hot Springs, which could be construed as Arizona's first destination spa. It's closed now, but for years wealthy Easterners arrived by train at the spa's private depot outside Wickenburg, then took a dusty horse and wagon trek down into the valley. They often spent the winter season there, soaking in the hot mineral waters and taking “the cure” for everything from the vapors and melancholia to rheumatism and asthma.

In 1939 Alice and Ted Sliger bought a property with hot springs near Mesa. They called it Buckhorn Mineral Wells and built a bathhouse, motel, gift shop, and museum where they displayed animals they bagged on hunting trips. As the “Buckhorn baths” was on the main road into Phoenix before the days of the interstate, tourists and locals flocked there. Baseball players, in town for spring training, made the baths their own. Buckhorn Mineral Wells, although not a spa by either definition, is still open, a virtual shrine to 1930s tourists.

Across town, at the base of Camelback Mountain, cosmetics doyenne Elizabeth Arden introduced the concept of the luxury destination spa for women only when she opened Maine Chance in 1946. For decades the rich and famous (from movie star Ava Gardner to First Lady Mamie Eisenhower) came for privacy, rest, elaborate beauty treatments, and a chance to shed, in the words of a 1961 Arizona Republic article, a bit of avoirdupois.

By the early 1980s, the Maine Chance-style spa experience was beginning to lose ground to the more healthand fitness-oriented spas. It closed in 1994.

Tucson's Canyon Ranch was among the first in the country to emphasize a healthy life-style rather than pampering. A destination spa, it was started in 1979 by Enid and Mel Zuckerman on a 70-acre dude ranch near Sabino Canyon. Who would pay good money, skeptics asked, to spend a week marching up and down mountains, doing aerobics, and contorting into yoga shapes all on a low-cal diet? A lot of people, apparently, because Canyon Ranch took off, setting the pace for a whole slew of new-style spas.

All its guests (the ratio runs nearly 60/40 female to male, and there's no day-use) undergo health evaluations and meet with program coordinators to determine their activities and goals. There's a phalanx of physicians and behaviorists on staff, practicing both Western and Eastern medicinal philosophies. Weight loss isn't as big an emphasis as it was 20 years ago; instead, it's healthful meals with salt and caffeine back on the menu (although the ranch is still alcohol-free). Guests set their own pace, choosing from 200 daily activities: hikes in the Santa Catalina Mountains, mountain biking, exercise classes, massages, facials, yoga, tai chi, cooking demonstrations, lectures, dance classes you name it.

Another Arizona luxury destination spa also is in the Tucson area. Miraval, set on 135 scenic acres in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains' western slopes, opened in 1995.

Miraval has attracted a good share of the celebrity and corporate chieftains crowd. Some come for just one night, although the average stay is three. Miraval also is open to day visitors, most of whom come from Tucson for packages that might include fitness classes, a massage, manicure, and lunch.

In addition to fitness activities, spa services (Miraval introduced the hot stone massage to the state) and life-style classes, Miraval offers some unusual features. First, there's the “equine experience,” a sort-of horse-whispery program in which guests learn to “interact” with a horse rather than ride it. There's an outdoor rock-climbing wall and in a nearby wash the "Quantum Leap" setup, where guests can climb, stand upon, and leap from a 25foot pole (safety cables ensure return guests). A kivalike structure at the edge of an arroyo hosts evening bonfires and stargazing. A labyrinth constructed of river rocks set into the desert floor encourages guests to walk its path and find the center. Dinner? Though the emphasis is on healthy food, guests can get a cocktail and a burger here. A complimentary snack bar is open all day, too, so no one starves between meals. Though Arizona's resorts have for many years offered amenities such as massage, hairstyling, and even exercise classes, The

Spa at Camelback Inn was the first to offer it all under one large pueblo-style roof. The Scottsdale spa, opened in 1989, was the first big resort spa in the region. The spa building features separate sides for men and women, a pool, a fitnessequipment room, an aerobics studio, a restaurant, and retail boutiques for skincare products and spa accessories, as well as a full-service salon. Spa-goers at Camelback are about 70 percent women, but unlike other resort spas around the state, this one draws the local audience. On weekends, particularly, nearly half the guests are metropolitan Phoenix residents.

A typical day at The Spa at Camelback Inn might include boxing aerobics or water exercise, a fitness analysis, and a poolside lunch. Guests can then spend the afternoon wrapped in white terry cloth robes and sipping soothing chamomile tea, as they drift from treatment to treatment, including a “para-joba” body moisturizer for which they're drenched in jojoba oil, then wrapped in warm, paraffin-imbued tissue paper — guaranteed to induce a good snooze.

The Scottsdale Princess resort, which opened in 1987, converted its health club into a spa. While there's still an exercise equipment room, aerobics studio, and indoor racquetball and squash courts, the spa now offers six treatment rooms, a salon, and a retail area.

Most of the spa's users are hotel guests, but gift certificate packages encourage local attendance. With the resort being at the epicenter of the Phoenix Open golf tournament and various tennis events, athletes often tiptoe in for sports massages and steams to soothe overworked muscles.

The spa offers a variety of massages and body treatments, including a hot stone massage and what is called a “massage in symphony,” in which two therapists give a guest's muscles a synchronized workout. Guests also can go for the Bindi body treatment of aromatic herbs and oils used in a cleansing body mask.

Those who opt for a day package can use the Princess' pools in between working out and getting treatments, or play ping pong, croquet, or volleyball on the resort grounds.

The Phoenician resort in Scottsdale opened its Centre for Well-Being in 1992. The spa angles around a meditation atrium in which spa-goers (mostly resort guests with some day visitors) relax, meditate, or participate in private, guided meditation sessions. Downstairs, the treatment rooms are used for everything from aromatherapy massages to aloe vera body-wraps. There

There are even facial treatments for guests who are about to, or have just had, a facelift or laser resurfacing procedure. Upstairs, a fitness room and aerobics studio offer Pilates muscle classes, weight-lifting, kickboxing, spinning, and more, all with a view of The Phoenician's oasis of gardens.

The Sonoran Spa at The Boulders Resort in Carefree has three treatment rooms, a salon, weight room, and aerobics studio; outdoors, there's a lap pool and heated whirlpool.

Spa guests can work out, get a massage or salon service, or indulge in some offerings that, somehow, seem especially appropriate to The Boulders, such as hot stone massages and rock-climbing classes.

At present, hotel guests get dibs on spa services and classes because of the spa's limited size. Others might get in during the high season if they're willing to call and go the same day, or they can wait until summer.

At 70 years of age, the Arizona Biltmore ranks as the grande dame of Arizona resorts. However, it has aggressively kept up with the times. In early 1998, the resort opened its Biltmore Spa Complex, tucked between swimming pools and tennis courts.

The new spa, designed in the same Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired motif as the rest of the resort, has indoor and outdoor treatment “rooms” for massages, a weight room, aerobics quarters, a retail area, lounge, and salon in an adjacent building.

Though resort guests make up most of the spa's clientele, the Biltmore courts locals with day packages and even spa memberships.

A day at the Biltmore Spa Complex might also include a hike in the nearby Phoenix Mountains Preserve or a round of qi-gong, ritualistic Chinese exercises. Treatments to try might be the raindrop therapy, in which aromatic oils are dripped onto the body then massaged into the skin, a bee pollen scalp treatment, or a deep-tissue massage.

Newest on the scene is the Scottsdale Radisson Resort's Mist Spa, which features a contemporary-Oriental motif and treatment rooms that open onto an indoor, gravel-lined garden. Shoji screen-style doors to the rooms reiterate the East-meetsWest theme for hotel guests and day visitors, as do some of the treatments: a green tea detoxifying body wrap, seaweed baths, and a shiatsu massage in which finger pressure is said to restore balance and wellbeing.

There are plenty more spas resort and otherwise from which to choose statewide. The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale and the Pointe Hilton resorts, both in metro Phoenix, offer spas to guests and locals; in Tucson, the Westward Look, Omni Tucson National Golf Resort, and Loews Ventana Canyon provide spa pampering and healthy life-style directions. In Sedona, Los Abrigados has a spa facility, while Enchantment Resort has one under construction.

Those who can't take the time to go to a destination or resort spa, head to what's called a “day spa.” In the old days, we used to call this the local beauty salon. By whatever name, an hour out of a busy day for prime pampering still has a way of emptying the brain and detoxifying the spirit.

WHEN YOU GO

For more information, call the individual spas: Buckhorn Mineral Wells, Mesa; (480) 832-1111. Canyon Ranch, Tucson; toll-free (800) 742-9000. Miraval, Tucson; toll-free (800) 825-4000. The Spa at Camelback Inn, Scottsdale; (480) 596-7040; www.camelbackinn.com. Scottsdale Princess Spa and Fitness Center, Scottsdale; (480) 585-2732. The Phoenician's Centre for Well-Being, Scottsdale; (480) 423-2452 or (800) 843-2392; www.thephoenician.com. Sonoran Spa at The Boulders, Carefree; (480) 488-7358; www.grandbay.com. The Arizona Biltmore Spa, Phoenix; (602) 955-6600. Radisson Resort Mist Spa, Scottsdale; (480) 905-2882; www.raddison.com.