Conscious Choice: Creating an Herbal Spa at Home

January 2000 | Herbs for Health

Creating an Herbal Spa at Home

by Meg McGowan

With New Year’s resolutions still ringing in your head and slushy snow seeping into your boots, January is the perfect time to pay attention to self care. Creating an herbal spa experience at home can create an oasis of nurturing energy after holiday tumult. It can be a way to reconnect with self alone, or while nourishing a partnership or friendship.

The essence of a spa experience is less about deep conditioning your hair or sloughing dead skin from your feet, than about shedding your cares along with your clothes and entering a space removed from everyday life. The first step then, for a home spa experience, is to create an atmosphere. Jaqua Girls (formerly TomGirls) offers two kits that promise to do just that. Their Traditional Japanese Bath Kit packs a bamboo bath ladle, bath salts, seaweed soap, a bamboo soap dish, a body brush, incense, and flower-shaped floating candles together with an instruction booklet that includes a history of the Japanese bath. (The incense even comes with a tiny floral tile holder.) The booklet walks you through the ritual from creating a natural environment using plants and natural light to donning a ceremonial robe when you’re through. The effect is an instant transformation from familiar to foreign, with all the heightened awareness that a new experience brings.

Jaqua Girls’ Urban Survival Kit is designed to induce calmness and clarity amidst chaos. A sage bundle for smudging and a CD entitled Guitar by the Sea, which includes selections such as "Tidal Pool," "Safe Harbor," and "Serene Shores," shift the energy in your space, while an aromatherapy mist shifts your mood. Herbal eye soothers and an herbal hand creme are included, along with a mini massager for hands and feet. A guide book suggests possible uses as well as relaxation exercises. Either Jaqua Girls kit can be complete unto itself, or simply the starting point for a day-long adventure.

Bloom’s Pure Harmony line offers four separate elements which, when used together, instantly establish a serene setting. The Pure Harmony CD blends strings and wind instruments with sounds from nature and ethereal vocals, resulting in background music that engenders feelings of peace and well being. So too, the synergy of essential oils — mandarin, sandalwood, ylang ylang, patchouli, orange, geranium, rose, and jasmine — in Bloom’s Pure Harmony candle and essential oil blend is both soothing and uplifting. Use the coordinating massage oil for a fine beginning to your home spa experience, whether you hire a massage therapist to come to your house, swap massages with your partner, or give yourself a hand or foot massage.

Lighting a candle is a simple act that immediately shifts the energy and light within your space. Fragrance adds depth to the experience. The aromatic essential oil blends used in Pacifica candles are designed to evoke a mood, a sense of place, a memory, or a moment for one’s soul. Selecting a scent can set the tone for your spa date — Mexican Cocoa or Madagascar Spice for warmth, nurturing, and comfort; Mountain Temple for tranquillity; Kashmir for cleansing and clearing; Zen or Tibetan Cypress for meditative focus.

Burt’s Bees Facial in a Kit makes it easy to treat your face to the works. Eight sample-sized products are contained in a zippered pouch, including: Orange Essence Cleansing Creme, two Veggie Complexion Soaps, Green Goddess Clay Mask, Carrot Seed Oil Complexion Mist, All-Natural Lipstick, Powdered Facial Tissues, Moisturizing Cream, and Carrot Nutritive Creme. Add a deep cleaning step with Better Botanicals’ Facial Steam. Packed in a clear glass bottle, the herbal steam looks and smells like an enticing tea. "Care not camouflage" is the credo of this Ayurvedic-based business which produces a range of body and face care products made with vegetarian, food-grade ingredients. Try Nature’s Acres’ Facial Toner for the final touch before moisturizing. Made of witch hazel infused with elderflower, yarrow, and calendula, it is gentle and effective for both men and women of all skin types.

While pampering yourself with Nature’s Acres’ products, you are taking care of the earth as well. Herbal ingredients are harvested from the certified organic herb farm located in Baraboo Bluffs, Wisconsin. The products are prepared in small batches, employing local women whose schedules revolve around their commitments to children, family, and community. Rather than plastic, glass bottles and tins are used for packaging. Simply to gaze upon their Herb Infused Body Oils is a sensual indulgence. Herbal ingredients lend subtle hues to the oils. A single herbal ingredient floats suspended in each rectangular, bevel-cut glass bottle. Half of the fragrances offered defy categorization as male or female scents — the healing blend of Hypericum-Rosemary-Comfrey; invigorating Peppermint-Thyme; fresh Lemon-Eucalyptus; and the woodsy, grounding Earth Scent, which blends patchouli, pine, and clary sage. Sandalwood and Ginseng, a warming blend with a spiritual note is a particularly nice choice for a spa date.

The Homegrown Organic Collection from The Spa On Paces also begins with raw organic and wildcrafted materials. Handmade organic herbal infused oils, handmade without heat, are the base for all of their cremes and lotions. The line includes facial cleansers, toners, masks, and cremes, as well as body and hair care products, lip balms, and a gentle shaving creme.

Many spas offer salt glow treatments, sea crystal soaks, and mud treatments. Neptune’s Gift makes these services available at home. Their Sea Mineral Crystals bring essential elements such as potassium, magnesium, calcium, sulfate, and sodium chloride to your bath water. You can customize your experience by mixing the bath crystals with a bath oil or with a carrier oil and a few drops of essential oil. Sea Mineral Scrub nourishes while exfoliating the skin; it also soothes tired muscles. The finely textured grains can be massaged directly onto damp skin (after bathing is ideal) or they can be blended with a base oil or a body gel. Essential oils can be added to any application. Neptune’s Gift Clay & Mud comes in dark and light formulas. The high shrinkage factor of approximately 35 percent firms skin and draws out toxins. Essential oils can also be added to the Clay & Mud packs to enhance healing properties and add aromatherapeutic value.

Chandler’s Soaps began with a line of natural soaps, handmade in small batches. The popularity of their product compelled them to branch out into other natural body products. They still make their soap the old-fashioned way, leaving in the moisturizing natural glycerin. But they use only plant-based oils and a naturally derived alkaline base for a bar that is gentle and creamy. For those with sensitive skin or allergies, eight varieties of "no fragrance added" soaps are available, including one made with certified organic olive, coconut, and safflower oils. (All of Chandler’s body care products are also available with no fragrance added.) Both men and women can appreciate the Shaver’s Dream soap, which froths into a thick, orange-cedar-scented lather that’s just right for shaving.

Chandler’s Foot Care Basket and Pampering Gift Basket are ideal for creating a complete spa experience. The Foot Care Basket is available in Healing (Tea Tree Oil & Herb) and Invigorating (Strong Mint) varieties and includes two bars of soap, Foot Soak, a pumice stone, Foot Creme, and Foot Powder. The Pampering Gift Basket is available in Lavender, Orange Spice, Lemon, Lime, Mint, Patchouli, Springtime, Ylang-Ylang, and No Fragrance Added. It includes three bars of soap, Bath Salts, Body Powder, Lip Balm, Hand and Body Cream, Bath Oil Drops, and Body Oil, along with a natural bath sponge, a candle and holder, and a mug with herbal teas.

However you do it, take some time this month to engage in a ritual of focus on your whole self. The Spa on Paces sums up the aim of a great spa experience in their slogan: "Taking care of you — body, mind, and soul."

Resources

Better Botanicals, 888-BBHERBS

Bloom

Burt’s Bees, Inc., 800-849-7112

Chandler’s Soaps, 541-572-4039

Homegrown, The Spa On Paces, 404-237-7712

Jaqua Girls, or at Bloomingdales

Nature’s Acres, 800-499-HERB

Neptune’s Gift, 800-749-7258

Pacifica Home, 503-221-2466

DISCLAIMER: Choosing a holistic approach to medicine means choosing personal responsibility for your health care. Herbs for Health offers a doorway through which to enter the realm of herbal healing, an invitation to further investigation on the part of the reader. It is in no way intended as a substitute for advice from a health care practitioner.

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