Ask any bear — sometimes you just need to put winter on defrost and take a break. Shorter, darker days can give you the blahs, while sudden temperature changes and blustery blasts dehydrate and dull your skin, stiffen up your muscles, chap your lips, and frizz up your hair.
Since there’s still a good chunk of chilly days ahead, heading to a spa seems like a super sensible thing to do. These five blissful treatments should help you banish the winter blues.
Bodhi Holistic Spa
Hudson
Treatment: infrared sauna
Price: $20-$45
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Touted by the all-powerful Dr. Oz and all the rage in Asia, the infrared sauna is in demand. Unlike high-heat steam saunas, these high-tech ones operate with incandescent infrared heat lamps so the air doesn’t heat up, but your body gradually gets warmer as circulation increases.
Expect to spend a bit longer in the sauna than usual. “It’s a deep heat over a longer period of time,” says Bodhi owner Melinda Macchiaroli. “They’re great for deep healing and flushing out toxins like heavy metals.”
One unexpected benefit for some of her clients: weight loss. That sure beats skipping dessert!
Wholeness Center
Valley Cottage
Treatment: acupuncture and cupping
Price: varies
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What, you don’t know about cupping? A rediscovered ancient Eastern therapy, it’s the passion of Olympic swimming athletes and celebrities alike, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, and Victoria Beckham.
Clients come to the Valley Cottage spa seeking cupping treatment for all the usual reasons people want massages. The difference is that unlike a deep tissue massage, cupping allows the practitioner to massage into deeper layers of muscle without the invasive pressure. It’s all in the cups: They are heated by fire to remove oxygen, then placed on the skin (usually the back, but anywhere goes) to create a vacuum seal, which draws the skin up and mobilizes blood and energy.
Similarly, Wholeness Center also includes acupuncture treatments to relieve headaches, back pain, joint pain, anxiety, stress, and more.
Buttermilk Falls Spa
Milton
Treatment: warm stone facial
Price: $170
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Not on the menu at most spas, a warm stone facial for winter is a pleasant discovery at this beautifully situated facility in Milton, which is also home to farm-to-table restaurant Henry’s at the Farm.
All the perks of a traditional facial are included in this treatment — cleansing, hydration, exfoliation, and a restorative mask — with the bonus of a massage using warmed stones to stimulate blood and relieve muscle tension and sinus pressure.
Because this facility is also an inn, after it’s over you can choose to drift back to your room to sleep rather than getting on 9W. (This treatment is not recommended for those with acne or rosacea.)
Haven Spa
Rhinebeck
Treatment: detoxifying espresso mud
Price: $130
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Just the thing for winter, this purifying treatment at Haven Spa will help you start the year off right. With this full-body experience, Haven revives your skin using everyone’s favorite morning drink: coffee.
Using finely ground coffee beans blended with Indian sarsaparilla, honey, tobacco, and black silt clay, the spa’s practitioners detoxify the body to remove dead skin cells, draw out impurities, and seal in moisture. In other words, it’s the perfect remedy for winter’s dry skin blues.
Glenmere Mansion
Chester
Treatment: Moroccan purification ritual
Price: $340
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You’ll feel like you’ve just taken the Marrakesh express when you arrive at this Moroccan-style hammam (bathhouse), decorated in dramatic shades of purple with Moorish-style arched windows. As fragrant steam fills the air, patrons are exfoliated with a full-body scrub while lying on a warm, marble stone.
Next comes the application of clay, which draws out toxins, followed by a warmed rosewater rinse-off and invigorating scalp massage. A final application of Argan oil, the secret anti-aging ingredient of Moroccan women, creates a butter-soft finish. If that doesn’t sound like the perfect winter spa treatment, we don’t know what does.
