Wellness Series Program—

Internalizing The Personal Spa Experience

By Nancy K. Crevier

When people envision a spa experience, they often conjure up visions of seaweed wraps, mud packs, mineral baths, saunas, and deep muscle massages. “Relieving Stress With A Spa Experience At Home,” presented by Peggy Gilmore of the complementary medicine department at Praxair Cancer Center of Danbury Hospital at the October 3 C.H. Booth Library Enhancing Wellness program, will be a spa experience for the head, said the preventative care practitioner at a recent interview.

“People imagine an elaborate sort of thing when they think of the spa experience,” said Ms Gilmore. “I’ll be crunching [the experience] down to fit today’s fast-paced lifestyle.”

Spa time generates time for relaxation and self-care, she said, and the first place a person can start, she said, is through self-awareness. “We need time to be quiet. People are wearing too many hats and doing too many things. If you can start a good habit of a regular ‘check-in time,’ an intentional period of time to be aware of where you are in the scheme of things, imbalance can be caught before things go awry,” said Ms Gilmore. “Staying in balance is the best goodie-bag I can give someone.”

The time allotted each day to self-awareness does not need to be a huge span of time, she explained. “It can be as simple as asking yourself, ‘How do I feel? Am I in balance in body? In mind? In spirit?’”

Ms Gilmore hopes to offer suggestions to the Tuesday night Enhancing Wellness participants as to the many different ways relief from stress can be obtained. “Breathing, is of course, very important. [The habit of shallow breathing] is one of those habits we can easily change. Taking just three minutes each day to be aware of how we are breathing can make a difference in how we feel.”

Because everyone’s style is different, it may be beneficial to try different ways to relieve out-of-balance symptoms, said Ms Gilmore. Tai-chi, yoga, massage, or meditation are all methods of relaxation; the trick is to determine which one best suits a person’s lifestyle.

The spa experience in the mind can be enhanced through the use of scent, as well, explained Ms Gilmore, and that is an area on which she will touch during her discussion. The healing power of aromatherapy has been documented in many reports, according to Ms Gilmore, and she uses aromatherapy extensively in her work at the Praxair Center.

“The majority of people I see at Praxair are people who are very sick. I have a deep respect for Western medicine, but I also have a deep respect for other cultures and the medicine they have used for centuries.”

Samples of oils and information sheets about the benefits of aromatherapy will be available to the Enhancing Wellness attendees on October 3.

“My passion is trying to get information to healthy people to recognize dis-ease, before it becomes a full-blown disease,” stressed Ms Gilmore, and she looks forward to the library program as a way to pass on that information. “I truly believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Ms Gilmore will be joined by massage therapist Marge Coughlin, who will demonstrate foot massage techniques that can be practiced at home.

The Enhancing Wellness series runs Tuesday evenings through October 17, from 7 pm to 9 pm. Botanical Medicine with Dr Josh Berry on October 10, and Nutrition, with holistic health counselor Dina Tsungu on October 17, will wrap up the series. To register for the free programs, call the C.H. Booth Library at 426-4533.