Health & Relaxation are not just for women

Women, do you invite the men in your life to join you at the spa? Do you encourage them to seek out treatments on their own or maybe accompany their daughters for a day at the spa? It is important to acknowledge that a body treatment at the spa can be a way of honoring a man’s inner peace, physical strength, and internal well being.
If there were a science to figuring out men and their relationship to spas, we who work at and frequent the spas would know it inside and out. But it’s so sporadic that the issue is really more cultural than scientific. I say lets take the challenge of looking at all things; boys, men, spa, and do I dare say emotionally related. From the dressing rooms of Victoria’s secret to grocery store lines, us women can and do talk about our bodies & feelings. But where is it normal for men to do this? If there are places, they often tend to make a big deal about the pairing of men and well umm . . .emotions. As though those two don’t naturally go together. Where are the male spaces for all things feeling related to be normalized and not emphasized?
Since I was a young girl my mother always took me to female bathhouses where women of all ages and emotional states bathed together. I knew as a little girl this is the place where women came to talk with their bodies, about their bodies. But what little boys are exposed to this when they are young? Where can they be in the midst of men of all ages, to be present, absorb, and hopefully understand without ever awkwardly using the word emotion? The most interesting thing about emotions, for men and women, is that you don’t have to do a single thing verbally to fully express them. Science other than spa science shows that translating your intangible thoughts into tangible words through the physical activity of writing is one of the healthiest ways to express oneself. I recently was given a beautiful Royal typewriter from 1966, in pristine condition, and the best part is, it doesn’t type. So when I am really stressed out I take my typewriter in the backyard and type pages and pages of everything I am thinking and feeling. Then I pull out those blank pages and feel like I expressed, it’s out there, and its over, I don’t have anything left over to reflect on. Writing is not the only way to release, though. Maybe the science behind getting men to embrace the spa as women have, lies in the concept, that the tiniest of sighs as you zone out in a massage can equal that of a thousand words.