Back to the Roots – An authentic Costa Rican Eco Spa

December 28, 2007 at 3:39 pm (Spa Costa Rica, Spa Treatments)
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Vanessa Jensen, recent Spa College graduate heads up the Eco Spa at Tierra de Milagros on the Osa Peninsula in the southwest corner of Costa Rica.

A 45-minute plane ride from San Jose or an 8-hour car trip along winding roads takes you into the Osa with it’s national parks, thick jungle, rivers, flora and fauna featuring only-here-to-be-found species once abundant throughout Central America.

Here is also Tierra de Milagros a rustic retreat center catering already for many years to workshops especially yoga, with ocean front platforms and open-air accommodation.

Enter the Spa at Tierra. Not your usual spa at all, in fact one might even want to resist comparing it to any mainstream definition of spa and seek a more primal word for it deserves to be in a class of its own.

Now in her third season, Vanessa has developed an astonishing selection of spa treatments that are pure to their core. Not only are the ingredients sourced from the surrounding waters and land, but they are harvested on a daily basis so that they are packed with life force suggesting an association with the energy and vitality of raw foods more than a cosmetic experience.

By delivering the product fresh, still dripping from the rainforest the utmost potency of each component is a key to a down to earth experience. The no frills yet abundantly luxurious treatments cannot be compared to anything out of a bottle. With the elements coming directly from source their inherent information is absorbed on a homeopathic and naturopathic level while original fragrances please the senses and the pulsating environment does the rest.

Treatments are designed a la minute and while suggestions lure, no treatment is ever like another. A coconut-ginger wrap can be washed away by coconut milk made from freshly grated coconut flesh laced with freshly picked ylang ylang blossoms while the feet and take a cacao-cinnamon scrub and are rinsed in spring water.

Or a blend of aloe vera from the garden with cooling cucumber can soothe the skin after a day on the water with a botanical hair rinse regenerating hair and head alike with sweet-smelling substances that then again become naturally part of the natural world as they wash off into the Earth.

Another world and level of sourcing that many can only dream of unfolds here and bringing this closer to the visitor by facilitating a direct experience is providing an unforgettable understanding, bringing back cellular memories of when this was once our second nature.

Originally hired to manage the retreat center where she has established her spa services, Vanessa, quickly realized that her true calling was to develop unique spa experiences that literally emerge out of the surrounding jungle and just as quickly disappear back into it without a trace except for the feeling of having been touched by something very special.

Vanessa Jensen’s approach to can be compared to the discipline of the finest chef who will go where the ingredients are at their freshest and finest. She trails up the river to seek out clay that she pulverizes and connects with local growers. She picks the flowers from the land and gets exotic fruit right off the tree.

Living in the abundant supply of natural fruit enzymes (as in papaya), fragrant emollients (as in coconut milk), moisturizers such as wild honey and a virtuous arrangement of fragrant flowers distilled into essences from Frangipani to Ylang Ylang, as well as the Osa clay that is plucked from the river bordering the retreat, Vanessa’s daily ritual begins with harvesting, collecting, grating, rasping, slicing, blending and pulverizing ingredients that she combines for each client individually to enhance their particular moment in time.

She then proceeds to lay out an arrangement of freshly harvested banana leaves and fragrant flowers on the wooden floor of her spa cabana that serves as a 100% eco-friendly bed,  ready to drape and wrap the lucky person about to receive one of her tropical treats.

Treatments include body scrubs, wraps and masques featuring ingredients ranging from ground local cacao beans and of course famous Costa Rican coffee through to Osa mud enhanced with numerous fruits such as bananas, papayas, limes, oranges as well as flowers that we usually know only from the labels of essential oils.

During the season you can find Vanessa at Tierra de Milagros and the retreat center is at www.tierrademilagros.com

 

 

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Taking an Eco-Centric Approach to Spa Treatment Design

August 17, 2007 at 1:37 am (Spa Treatments)

Spa treatment design can be improved by taking an environmental and culturally sensitive approach. Many spa treatments include too many exotic ingredients and are drawn from philosophies unrelated to the local requirements.

While at least some spa treatments (wraps, scrubs and masks to name the basic protocols) are usually found in a section on the majority of spa menus, they tend to lead a rather dormant life overshadowed by their more commonly requested relatives massages and facials. More often than not they decorate menus with adventurous names while flirting exotic ingredients. Considering the expensive products retained to perform these services and the equipment held available it is a pity that spa treatments are not given the place they deserve and could conquer.

Spa treatments are one of the menu-items that have not even been tapped into as a resource by the majority of individual practitioners as well as health spas of all styles and sizes.

While massage and to a good degree esthetics have matured so far that they are being accepted and understood as a solid part of every spa menu and a core service offered by the individual practitioner, spa treatments are still struggling to make their mark.

Spa treatments offer numerous advantages for clients, providers and for the spa business itself. Some of which are for clients that they pose an alternative to massage and a different approach to health and wellness altogether that utilizes a chemical rather than a physical approach. For providers they offer a rest from the physically challenging nature of massage and an opportunity to provide the client with more post treatment products that will extend the effects of the treatment. And finally the spa business itself for example can attract additional clients and renew client relationships more often with attractive treatments as well as expand the business with related products that help clients enjoy their spa experience at home as well.

So while there are many reasons why spa treatments tend to be less requested, we would like to pick one in particular that is rarely addressed. One of the explanations we find why clients do not opt for a spa treatment and providers and front desk staff have a hard time recommending them is that they cannot relate on an emotional and cultural level to the services offered.

One fundamental reason is that the services were not designed taking local ecological, social and cultural existing and pre-existing conditions into account, but rather have been imposed as a concept from the outside, importing foreign concepts that evolved under different circumstances and foreign ingredients that need to be imported. These concepts will surface in menus as “a traditional treatment from Bali” in a Mexican luxury spa or as product driven treatment featuring “caviar” designed by a vendor and wrapped around their protocol.

Now while at first glance the appealing description and mouthwatering descriptions might seem attractive, upon closer examination there are some major flaws in the design. Ingredients, the verbiage, the philosophy, aromas, and especially the client concerns originated somewhere else and lack the connections to the local facility. The ideas first spark interest and a certain sense of attraction to the mysterious but than fall short of following through with a feeling of being grounded in the here and now and offering benefits that embrace the local environmental and cultural heritage.

There are some very concrete reasons to pursue an eco-centric approach. When taking the time to research local healing traditions, one inherits many years of refining regionally available resources to address locally prevailing ailments and concerns. While looking into nature’s plant systems one finds plants that have thrived on the local geological and climatic environment and retain substances and essences that can heal conditions that are a result of just that environment. In observing weather patterns one can address the seasons and the changes between them. And most important, treatments designed with an eco-centric approach are grounded and feel complete as they are deeply embedded in their environment.

Taking local conditions into consideration while designing spa treatments is not difficult and well worth the effort. Besides the relationships you will develop researching the local resources, the resulting understanding of local culture, flora and climate will give the spa treatments you design a completely different level of integration with clients, providers and staff.

More about eco-centric spa treatment design at Spa College

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