If you have resolved to clean up your act, body and soul, a spa session might help. Emma Cullinan presents some options, from low-budget to blow-budget
Visits to beauty salons used to involve basic body maintenance. You'd get excess water and body hair ripped out of you, eyebrow plucking and waxing, or you'd be wrapped and heated up to encourage the sweat to seep from your pores in an effort to convince the world that you had shrunk. But we've moved on from pure maintenance to spirituality and well-being. Beauty treatments are now required to rebalance our bodies and minds and detox our, apparently, contaminated bodies.
The experience will be pleasurable, but it is what it is, a nice relaxing time - don't expect a life-changing event. As one friend says, if you're truly stressed then you could just go to a spa and lie on a massage table for an hour. It wouldn't really matter what the therapist did - if anything at all. Just to go and lie in a scented, candlelit room is enough. A bit like church then - no wonder spas have been hailed as a new religion.
But you're never far from a spa wherever you are in Ireland, and there are yet more coming on stream. Sámas in Kenmare opened just over a year ago. The new spa at Kelly's Resort Hotel in Rosslare opened last autumn, as did the Aveda Spa in Aghadoe Heights Hotel and the Molton Brown Spa in the Killarney Plaza Hotel. The Sligo Radisson Spa will open this spring (its Galway spa is already well established).
Prices for many of them range from €50-€100 for an hour-long facial or massage. There are many deals for spa breaks in hotels, ranging from €150 to €450, which typically include two nights' accommodation, two meals and one or two treatments (some of these are listed in www.irelandhotels.com).
THE STAY-AT-HOME SPA
If leaving home would be difficult, or too expensive, then you can always have a spa session at home. You'll need to prepare the bathroom for your bliss-out. Get some huge clean towels and heat them on a radiator. Create a restful ambience with candles, and some essential oils to tip into the bath (from chemists or health food stores, which mainly supply oils from Atlantic Aromatics, a Wicklow-based company).
For your spa experience, you need the bathroom to yourself for a while. Arm yourself with tweezers to do the brows, a razor or wax strips, exfoliator, body cream, face mask, a decadent soap (from Lush, Jo Malone or Laura Mercier, for instance), shampoo and conditioner. If you have dry hair, start by rubbing oil (sunflower or olive) into it, in preparation for washing it out later. When you do wash your hair, use a deep conditioning treatment (such as Kerastase Oleo-Relax Masque) rather than a standard conditioner.
Spas are all about using water's healing properties, so if you're feeling under the weather a hot bath can kick-start the body by tricking the immune system into thinking that you have a temperature (but don't use scalding water, don't stay in too long and get out of the bath if you feel faint). If you dare, use a quick cold shower as a wake-up call when your soak is over.
Before getting into the bath or shower, gently rub yourself with a dry, natural bristle body brush to stimulate the lymphatic system and smooth the skin. Otherwise, you can use an once you are in the water. Clarins has Toning Body Polisher, the Body Shop has a lovely gritty Africa Spa Body Salt Scrub and L'Occitane uses crushed almonds and shells plus sugar to good effect in its Amande Exfoliating and Defining Delicious Paste.
You can make your own scrub with coarse sea salt and olive oil (100g salt to 125ml oil). For extra zest, add a few drops of eucalyptus, peppermint or rosemary essential oil). For a really good scrub, use a loofah or rough gloves specially designed for this purpose.
Once out of the water, your body is receptive to all sorts of treatments. You can cut your toenails more easily, and now that the pores are relaxed, tweezing and waxing is easier. Your face will also be more receptive to a mask; the most effective are the peel-off masks, such as Elizabeth Arden Peel and Reveal, and Boots No7 Positive Action Pamper and Peel. Slather on a body lotion before tucking yourself up in bed. Decléor make an Aromessence Spa Relax Balm which does your body good, as well as your senses. The essential oils it contains include lavender, petigrain, neroli, myrrh, frankinsense and sandalwood.
THE LONG LUNCH
If you just have the odd hour to spare, you can avail of a facial, head massage, flotation or reflexology. If you're planning to have such treatments during a lunch hour, avoid scheduling important meetings in the afternoon.
A head massage will often involve rubbing oils into your scalp. You'll come out feeling more relaxed, but looking like a hormonally active teenager who hasn't washed her hair for a while. A facial can leave skin looking a bit raw and, while you can cover the damage with foundation, caking cosmetics straight on top of a cleansed face will undo some of the good work.
If you have your eyebrows or upper lip waxed, you'll have red weals on your face for a few hours afterwards. After flotation, you'll need to wash your hair. The Float salon in Monkstown, Co Dublin recommends having a morning session if you've had a sleepless night and need to be alert for something. They usually open at 10 a.m.. but will let you float your stress away from 6.30 a.m. by appointment.
So, there's a lot you can do in an hour, but if you need to be somewhere afterwards, restrict treatments to the parts of your body that won't be on show, such as reflexology (foot massage).
THE ONE-DAY INDULGENCE
Many beauty salons have morphed into day spas. They've been kitted out with small treatment rooms, some complete with a hydrotherapy bath in which you sit while water jets come at you from all angles beneath the water. Filled with seaweed mixes and the like, the minerals are meant to zap up your body, as are the jets.
Stand-alone day spas include the situated on the corner of Liffey Street and Henry Street, Dublin; in Sandycove and Clontarf; the Dolphin Day Spa just out beyond the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, in a converted house; and Burke's Beauty Rooms, above a pharmacy in Naas, which has a bright, airy feel. Many hotels with spas also offer day options. If you are spending the whole day having treatments, you're better off spending the extra money and availing of plush surroundings. Some of the small spas would get claustrophobic after a while. Day spas are nice places to go to with a friend who you can chat to between treatments.
PUTTING IN THE EFFORT
There's a distinction between the lifestyle-scrutinising health farms and the no-questions-asked indulgent pampering offered by four- and five-star hotels. Here the facilities are swish, the list of treatments is long and if you want to restrict your diet, go ahead. But with the good food offered in the restaurants, plus treats such as the homebaked pistachio nut cookies laid out in the bedrooms of the Park in Kenmare, you'll perhaps need to convince yourself that rich food is good for the spirit.
If you would like a stricter regime in which somebody else organises your day and perhaps even your life - or at least gives your lifestyle a once-over - head for a health farm. The Cloona Health Centre in Westport, Co Mayo, has a dedicated band of clients who return year after year. Cloona has detox and relaxation breaks, with days that involve yoga, walking, sauna and massage and nights in TV-free rooms. The food is a body-beneficial diet of fruit, organic vegetables, herb teas and spring water.
Claureen Health Farm in Ennis, Co Clare, runs a similar programme, buts with a more extensive spa experience. Heading even further in the spa direction, but staying with the yoga, walks and home-cooked food formula, is Temple Spa in Westmeath. As Declan Fagan of Temple Spa says: "The activities are optional, many guests prefer just to chill out in the relaxation room. But most find that participation in the activities makes the difference between a very enjoyable day of pampering and taking some lasting value away from the spa."
The Delphi Mountain Resort and Spa in Leenane, Co Galway, includes a spa, but also offers activities. Here, the activities came first and then Michael O'Driscoll and Pat Shaughnessy opened the spa, so they are inclined to encourage you out in the Atlantic air.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS
There are a couple of reasons why you might want a spa with sports facilities either on-site or nearby. Tourist industry professionals cite the attraction of fact that he can play golf while she can play with her spirit. The Lodge and Spa at Inchydoney Island has joined forces with The Old Head of Kinsale Links to offer golfing breaks, while at the K Club, the golf came first and the spa has only just opened. Mount Juliet Conrad in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, also offers golf and spa facilities.
The other reason for having sports facilities in the vicinity is that you can have a bit of variety and action; lying around and being pampered can get a bit boring. Also, even the smartest of pampering palaces encourages you to get out for a walk. Delphi staff cite the benefits of a stroll on Silver Strand, and those who run Sámas encourage clients to use the surrounding countryside, and offer outdoor t'ai chi and yoga sessions, overlooking Kenmare Bay.
THE SHARED EXPERIENCE
It's now possible to book suites for yourself and a friend or three.
The K Club has a couple of suites, one with a huge hot tub and steam room, and the other with a copper bath for two, and a sauna. The spa has suites for couples, containing double treatment couches, double day-beds, a private garden with spa pool and a swing.
Kelly's Resort Hotel and Brooklodge, Aughrim, Co Wicklow also have double treatment rooms, while groups of friends can head to Holistic Heaven, in a converted mill building in Dublin's Stoneybatter, and avail of a night of treatments, yoga, wine, juice, and food.
THE HEAD HOLIDAY
For a truly spiritual retreat you might consider Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick, run by the Benedictine order. Its guest houses are for those who want to spend days in a monastic setting.
In The Sanctuary in Dublin, opened by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, you can take a break from the world through meditation, massage and reflection, among other spiritual journeys, to achieve a balance between work and life.
THE FOREIGN AFFAIR
Join the international spa set. If you've overdone the wine consumption, the answer may be to bathe in the stuff. The Caudalie Vinothérapie Spa, near Bordeaux in France, is situated in the Château Smith Haut Lafitte vineyards. Here you can sink into a red wine bath, have a wine and honey wrap, or Merlot wrap, as well as subjecting your body to a massage, water jet shower, and marine shower, while quaffing organic red vine leaf tea.
But just make sure you pre-book your choice of treatments - an Irish couple who booked four months in advance for a three-day stay there last August found on arrival that the hotel was full, and there were no appointments available in the spa. They were eventually offered a facial - at 9 a.m. - and a 30 minute massage - nothing else was available.
If you choose one of Budapest's numerous spafacilities, many of which are attached to hotels, the actual spa-experience may not be quite so full of frills, but the St Gellert public baths and spa in the city-centre feel all the more authentic and healing for it.
The stunning Art Nouveau-style building features a massive outdoor pool, male and female thermal baths, plunge pools, saunas, a wave pool and jacuzzis. For as little as €10 you can spend a few hours wallowing with the locals, most of whom prefer to bathe naked.
In north-west Hungary, at the Tapolca Medicinal Cave below the Hunguest Hotel Pelion, the high humidity air is the perfect treatment for asthmatics. Further north, in the Danubius Thermal Hotel Heviz you can be smothered with medicinal mud from the bottom of Lake Heviz and left to snooze on a water bed. Prices are amazingly competitive compared to Ireland, even when the cost of flights is factored in.
For the last word in indulgence, head to where the weather is warm and be treated in an outdoor pavilion, beside a pool in the Nusa Dua spa, in Bali.
Treatments use natural products and are devised from local tradition using "beauty therapies from across the Indonesian archipelago with native herbs, flowers and spices for rejuvenation and relaxation of both mind and body".
A coconut scrub and a Balinese massage are two of the many treatments on offer.