The Big Chill-Out
From city spas to rural retreats, we found the best places in Texas to relieve the stress of everyday life.
(Page 2 of 3)
After I was completely covered in the lentil soup–colored slime—which is reportedly rich in minerals, though no one could tell me which ones—the therapist applied hot, wet towels and wrapped me in the plastic sheet, then in a blanket. “The world’s largest soft taco,” I thought to myself. I was left that way for 25 minutes, all warm and dirty and mummified but somehow magnificently calm. Later, as I was showering off, watching all the dirt swirl down the drain, I began worrying about the poor soul who was going to clean up the muddy tile. Then I cheered up, knowing that thankfully it wouldn’t be me. The Urban Retreat, 713-523-2300. $85 for the Jericho mud treatment.
Beyond Room Service
WHEN A HOTEL SAYS IT HAS A spa, it often is referring to an overly chlorinated puddle-size hot tub and maybe a sauna stuck in a closet in the changing room. It’s the tourist industry’s equivalent of padding your résumé. But the Spa at the Crescent Hotel in Dallas offers full-service coddling when your nerves get as taught as Joan Rivers’ face. Done up in pink and tan marble, the locker room is stocked with plenty of lounge chairs, a telephone, newspapers, and pitchers of ice water. A chic little cafe is just outside the locker room door, and a gym is nearby. The nicest feature of the spa is that no one hurried me in or out, which happened at other hotel spas that hadn’t heard that rushing is antithetical to relaxing. I arrived early and spent about fifteen minutes before my Swedish massage—one of many services offered—in what’s called the “quiet” room, where lights were turned low and several daybeds were invitingly strewn with pillows. The masseuse then worked the rigid strands of muscle in my neck, plucking them as if they were harp strings.
Delirious after the fifty-minute massage, I went to the clinical-sounding “wet treatment” area and stepped into the 104-degree water of the whirlpool bath. No sooner had I shut my eyes than an attentive staff member ran up with a glass of ice water. Next to the bath was another, smaller pool labeled “cold plunge.” I quickly—and I do mean quickly—lowered myself into the bracing 54-degree water and then ran back to the hot tub. The change in temperature made my body tingle as if it were a fizzing Alka-Seltzer tablet. After that I stayed put until my fingertips took on the texture of monkey fingers. The Spa at the Crescent, 800-828-4772. $68 for a Swedish massage.
The Alamo Plaza Spa in the Menger Hotel in San Antonio is not as nice to look at as the spa at the Crescent. The decor has a no-fluff, all-business feel, but that is somehow appropriate for the treatment the spa specializes in—the Menger massage, based on a method from Baden-Baden, Germany’s famed spa town. A gruff masseuse with a Teutonic accent would have been perfect (surely they could find one in the Hill Country), but the sweet young woman who worked on me performed brilliantly just the same. The idea behind the Baden-Baden method is to “detoxify” your body. I began with a steaming shower, followed by fifteen minutes in the sauna. Then a masseuse put me on a table and scrubbed me down as if I were a linoleum floor, using a sponge and wonderful-smelling herbal gels. I took another shower and went into the steam room, where I sat in a cottony fog that resembled my state of mind. Then came the Swedish massage, followed by another hot shower. Two hours later, I was cleaner than Mariah Carey’s image and so blissfully lethargic that I had to stop for coffee to stay awake on the drive home. Alamo Plaza Spa, 210-223-5772. $95 for the Menger massage.
The Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas is not the decadent diversion you’ll find at many spas but rather a place for concentrating intensely on your health to make yourself more pressure-proof. Kenneth Cooper is the fitness guru and writer who coined the term “aerobics” (see “Walk, Don’t Run,” TM, June 1995). Cooper has long had a clinic and an aerobics research center on his thirty-acre property. Several years ago, he started a wellness program so that people could stay from four to thirteen days at the clinic’s hotel and learn how to live—better, healthier, longer. Not only does the staff focus on the body, as you would expect, but an awful lot of attention is paid to retooling the mind. You can sign up for sessions on dealing with anger, boosting your self-esteem, or sleeping better.
Most people begin their sessions with a complete physical, which includes a blood workup, a treadmill test, and a dunking in a vat of water to determine fat percentage (you may need a class in managing grief afterward). From there, the days are crammed with exercise—maybe laps in one of the two pools or workouts in the fitness center, which has a banked indoor track, a basketball court, and more machinery than an airplane assembly plant. If it’s true that exercise produces mood-elevating endorphins, as researchers say, then there should be no spot on the planet that has more elevated moods than the Cooper clinic. Cooper Aerobics Center, 800-444-5192. $1,500 for a four-day program, double occupancy, including meals and a complete physical.
The Sounds of Silence
SOME STRESS CAN’T BE WRUNG OUT OF you by a masseuse. Some stress is a deeper darkness of the soul that requires spiritual attention, and for that there is no place like Lebh Shomea House of Prayer in Sarita, sixty miles southwest of Corpus Christi (see “Let Me Hear Silence,” TM, August 1991). Run by Roman Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Lebh Shomea (the name is Hebrew for “listening heart”) is a quiet refuge that emphasizes solitude and prayer. Here, no one speaks to each other; life is conducted in almost complete silence.
Living in a large city most of my adult life, I had never really experienced the power of silence, the way it amplifies the sounds of nature. After I arrived, I curled up for a nap in my room, and the palms rustling outside my window seemed to roar like waves breaking on a beach. One of the most refreshing principles of Lebh Shomea is that there is no structure to the day, except for a morning mass, which everyone is encouraged to attend. You can do whatever you like and no one bothers you. For me that was browsing through an extensive library and spending an afternoon roaming a few trails that wind through Lebh Shomea’s 1,100 acres. There I saw deer, wild turkeys, and armadillos among the wine-cups and Indian paintbrush. I noticed that none of the animals ran when they saw me. I assumed that they felt—as I did—very secure here.
As beautiful as Lebh Shomea is, it is not for everyone. And those who live there full-time prefer it that way. After some recent publicity, the place has received more than its share of curiosity seekers. The Oblates would like only visitors (of any faith) who are sincerely searching for a connection with God. And to that end, potential guests are gently screened over the phone. First-time visitors meet with the priest or one of the nuns who live at Lebh Shomea to discuss why they have come. I saw it as a time to make a map for the quiet, spiritual journey ahead. Lebh Shomea House of Prayer, 512-294-5369.
Another spot for solitude owes its creation, oddly, to the age of industrialization. You can find it in the pine forests of East Texas, near the Big Thicket National Preserve. Seventy years ago, a company began digging up gravel here, taking deep bites out of the land and piling up dirt and gravel in massive heaps. Instead of leaving the land scarred, the years of mining have miraculously created a splendorous terrain, thanks to springs that have filled the craters with jade-green water and to the pines, maples, and willows that have sprung up on the old mounds of debris.
This web of thirteen clear lakes—set off by a leafy archipelago and an abundance of spoon-shaped peninsulas—is now owned by Chain-O-Lakes Resort; small rustic log cabins on piers crane out over the water’s edge. This is the place to go when you want to do nothing more taxing than fish from your cabin’s front porch, swim in an artesian-well-fed pool, pick blueberries, or canoe through the maze of waterways that make up more than a third of the resort’s three hundred acres.
My Library
