| Green is the paradox of the modern spa industry: treatments
designed to make you feel well can make the earth sick. Just think of the chemical-enhanced
potions, harsh cleaners and copious amounts of water used at spas—not to
mention miles logged by travel and by importing European equipment and products.
The green spa movement is so new it barely has a name, let alone a hub.
But after noticing a concentration of eco-friendly spas and resorts in New
Mexico, I was intrigued. These industry leaders are waking up to the potential
of treatments using natural, local ingredients and incorporating cultural and
healing rituals unique to the area. A few are even striving to use the architectural
materials and operational practices—from reclaimed building materials to
recycled rainwater—that make them truly green.
Search for Authenticity: Albuquerque
You don’t have to drive far along one of New Mexico’s highways to
come across a casino, hotel or golf course owned by one of the local pueblos or
Native settlements. Increasingly, these places are providing authentic cultural
experiences infused with their ancient traditions and customs. At the Tamaya Mist
Spa at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya, located on the Santa Ana pueblo north of Albuquerque,
spa director Joe Herman tells me that they held a “storytelling session”
with the pueblo to learn the tale of how the Tamayame people came to this area.
A Three Sisters Salt Scrub contains the cornerstones of their ancient cuisine:
corn, anasazi beans and pumpkin seeds. “It’s hard to involve the culture
in a way that truly respects it. But I think we’ve done that,” Herman
says.
After a quick dip in the outdoor hot tub’s standing niche (a five-foot-deep
alcove with a program of jets that whoosh up and down your body), I meet my therapist,
Kat, the prototype for a series of New Mexico women I encounter: petite, slim
and powerful, with beautifully greying hair and warm grey-blue eyes. In the Ancient
Drumming treatment, she smears me with slimy red chili-infused mud that quickly
warms when she palpates my skin with little flax seed-filled muslin bags soaked
in warm piñon (pine nut) oil.
“These days, everybody wants to connect with other cultural traditions,
to feel like we’ve participated in or at least witnessed something authentic,”
she says. She’s talking about the cultural activities offered at the resort—from
ceremonial dancing to the “NewMex-Asian” cuisine at The Corn Maiden
restaurant—but she’s also describing my spa experience there.
Eco-luxury: Santa Fe
Driving along a partially unpaved road past eclectic trailer homes and other ramshackle
domiciles on my way to Sunrise Springs on the southern outskirts of Santa Fe,
I’m convinced I’ve taken a wrong turn. But this area is “what
the old Santa Fe was like,” says the resort’s Judy Herzl, showing
me around the property’s Peace Sauna (built in the tradition of a ceremonial
sweatlodge), pottery studio, Japanese teahouse and meeting rooms located in a
recycled barn and a passive solar-heated building.
At the edge of the resort’s 35-acre spread (in the middle of a 70-acre
parcel the owner moved to in the 1970s), my temporary home is a luxe casita, a
big suite of blond wood and natural textiles with a separate yoga/meditation room
and featuring the Environmentally Sensitive Amenities line (brown-paper packaged
soap, shower cap and the like).
The sound of trickling water from Sunrise Springs’ fountains and ponds
is background music to Spa Samadhi’s impressive “Transformative Menu”
of alternative treatments: take a Medicine Helper journey with fresh herbs, native
song and prayer with curandera (a traditional healer) Concha or get an intuitive
personal reading from clairvoyant Kathleen. Opting for something more traditional,
I enjoy a unique hot and cold stone facial from Ishka, using the organic Naturopathica
product line. She uses warm stones to invigorate acupressure points on my face
and cool jade discs and rollers to close pores and give “a facelifting effect,”
she says.
This resort still has a grassroots feeling: rough cedar poles in the sauna,
art by the owner and prominent local artists on the walls, homemade pottery everywhere.
It feels like upscale summer camp for grown-ups—albeit with much better
food, like the Blue Heron restaurant’s fork-tender ancho chili-rubbed filet
mignon with smooth polenta cake and creamy chile relleno.
Just a short drive away to downtown Santa Fe and a short walk from its famous
central plaza is Absolute Nirvana, one of the greenest spas in America. On this
chilly spring day it feels like a slice of the tropics. “This is the treatment
that started it all when Carolyn had it in Indonesia,” spa manager George
Padilla tells me before my Mandi Lulur session, a ritual treatment traditionally
given to young Javanese women for 40 consecutive days before their marriage.
Spa owner Carolyn Lee, who also operates nearby B&B-style accommodations,
has long been committed to environmental practices. This four-room spa practices
comprehensive “Greenistics”: organic products, natural cleaning agents,
wind-generated power and treatment water repurposed for heating. “We’re
green right down to the roots of our operation, though it’s not easy to
operate this way and it’s expensive. People are still really unsure of what
green means. But the awareness is coming,” says Padilla.
My therapist Georgina (who is from New Sarepta, Alberta—small world)
shows me the house-made treatments: a mask of honey and yogurt, a scrub of ground
brown rice with sandalwood and bright-yellow turmeric that makes my body look
like a piece of performance art against the scarlet and ochre sheets. Her massage
technique is “based in Swedish but ranges from rolfing to shiatsu to cranial
sacral and deep-tissue work,” Georgina says. “And Hawaiian lomi lomi:
when I get a massage I just love those long, flowing strokes.” After a steam
shower I relax in a rose petal-topped granite tub, snacking on sharp ginger tea,
fresh fruit—and one perfect, round chocolate truffle.
That night when I change into pajamas a rose petal clinging to my back floats
to the floor, making me feel like an Indonesian princess all over again. I’ve
crossed the street from La Bella to La Posada resort, located on the former Staab
family estate. I’d been warned that the old mansion at its hub (now housing
the front desk, restaurant and bar) was haunted by matriarch Mary, but I feel
nothing but old world gentility within these walls. My room above the spa has
a white stucco ceiling and dark exposed beams, a leather chair in front of the
fireplace and a cozy enclosed balcony.
In La Posada’s RockResorts Spa waiting area, a giant skylight infuses
the turquoise New Mexico sky into the room. This spa strives in every way for
a sense of place, with treatments like a Chocolate-Chile Wrap and a Spirit of
Santa Fe journey through the four cardinal points of a Native medicine wheel.
My therapist Rebecca’s arm, when she offers it as support for me to sit
up, feels as deceptively fragile as a bird’s wing. Yet her hands turn out
to be as strong as any male therapist’s. “Salt detoxes on a physical
and spiritual level,” she asserts, rubbing it in with evangelical fervour.
Sure enough, by the end I emerge as pink and sleepy as a baby, glowing with the
scrub’s warming Tara-brand blend of pine, eucalyptus and citrus oils: reborn.
Frontier Mentality: Taos
Underneath the tented pavilion of El Monte Sagrado’s indoor pool and hot
tub, I float on my back in 10-foot-deep water and deeply inhale the funky smell
of dirt in the warm air. It comes from the Living Machine, what the resort calls
its greenhouse worth of plants and fountains that naturally treat and filter water
on the property. At El Monte Sagrado’s Living Spa more plants, skylights
and windows defy the cocooning atmosphere of most pampering places. Among the
haute organic products (Body Bliss, Desert Blends of Taos, OSEA, Naturopathica)
on the spa shelves I see another comforting sign: Western Canada’s own
Deserving Thyme Aromatherapy.
Soon I find myself really and truly cocooned as therapist Mae exfoliates my
skin, slathers me in silky red and brown clay mud and wraps me up in mylar sheets
and blankets to stew. The 15 minutes could feel like a claustrophobic lifetime,
except Mae says: “I’m right here, all the time, if you need me.”
The time passes in the blink of an eye. As I shower afterward, I look up through
rough-hewn beams clear to the sky through the spa pavilion’s greenhouse
roof.
All this greenery isn’t just window dressing, either: the resort’s
commitment to holistic health and operational sustainability extends to geothermal
heating and cooling, solar heating (there is a solar-panel “tree”
in front of one casita), rainwater collection and wastewater recycling. Now I
don’t feel so guilty about the private hot tub bubbling behind my suite.
Driving west of Taos on the highway to Ojo Caliente Mineral Spa and Resort
(ojo caliente means “hot eye” in Spanish), I’m puzzled by the
cone-shaped formations scattered among the area’s mesas and cliffs: dormant
volcanoes? The geography makes sense once I’m reclining in the waters, which
emerge from underground aquifers through subterranean caves heated by volcanic
rock and infused with minerals. This curative hot springs, a sacred gathering
place to the tribes of New Mexico, is the only one in the world with four distinct
types of mineral composition.
Leathery-skinned regulars recline in the hot pools rich in iron (said to be
beneficial to the blood and immune system) and arsenic (believed to relieve everything
from arthritis to stomach ulcers to skin conditions). Just a few floaters populate
the enclosed soda pool (in which water full of natural sodium bicarbonate, said
to help with digestive problems, steams away). The brave even drink from a tap
rich in natural lithium, a longtime practice (thought to relieve depression and
aid digestion) that is nonetheless not officially condoned. The modern aspect
of these ancient healing waters is a high-tech wastewater treatment plant and
geothermal heating and cooling systems that give it true eco-cred.
The feeling of the wild west is still here in the original 1916 hotel and 1868
bathhouse. In one of four new spa rooms, I get a facial with the ayurvedic-based
Sundãri line from Ryan, who has radical fishhook ear piercings. He uses
the vata products for “hot” types with dry skin, which describes my
condition in the thin, dry high-desert atmosphere. Another signature treatment
here is a Milagro (miracle) wrap, a bargain at just $10 to be swathed in layers
of blankets post-soak, sweating out any remaining toxins My cliffside suite, like
many of the new buildings, is made of eco-friendly rastra (a recycled styrofoam
and cement composite) and features recycled building products like weathered beams.
There’s a private hot tub out back, so late that night I raise the lever
on the industrial-looking hot-water pump and in a few quick minutes the large,
shallow square tub is full enough to climb in. I recline on the steps and my mouth
opens, and hangs open in this gaping position, for the duration of my 15-minute
soak.
Due to the springs’ secluded location and conscious “downlighting”
to reduce light pollution, the sky is as thick with white stars as grains of sand
on a beach, beating any Star Wars flick for entertainment value with its blinking,
streaking and glowing attractions. The red rock cliffs loom beside me; white smoke
drifts from my kiva fireplace across the indigo sky as I mentally compose my own
painting of this stellar New Mexico moment. |
Hyatt Regency Tamaya
Resort and Spa 
