SPA REVIEW: Leading Up To Spa Week in NYC, Check Out Our Top Five Spa Treatments

We are happy to announce writer and travel extraordinaire TRACY GAVANT

will be offering up travel reviews here on the Travel Column, adding onto her myriad experiences from her side of the magazine business.  Her passion for travel and writing is evident in her editorials for magazines and websites, including a travel column with Travel Squire. Today, Tracy is writing about her favorite spa treatments at New York City day spas, and just time for National Spa Week!

Spring Is In The Air!
After A Long Winter, Consider De-Stressing 

During National Spa Week in New York City. 
written by Tracy Gavant 

Each spring, hundreds of participating spas around the country offer premium full service treatments for just $50, and this year from April 11 to 17^th leading spas are offering healing and therapeutic treatments designed to help alleviate the damage caused by technology overload.  The folks at Spa Week sent me to some of the best-designed spas in New York City to sample the offerings.  To see a complete list of treatments and participating spas across the country, and create your own spa sampler week, visit SpaWeek.com! 
In the meantime, please check out our 
Favorite 5 Spa Treatments 
Offered During NYC's Spa Week

The Geek Massage at Haven Spa
250 Mercer Street, NYC   

phone: (212) 343-3515

Haven is a hip downtown salon and boutique featuring a dimly lit, cocoon-like spa designed with a mix of smoky grey walls and purple crushed velvet fabrics to create a moody, relaxed atmosphere that instantly calms the urban soul.

The signature Geek Massage is an intense combination of therapeutic stretching and targeted deep tissue work focused on the upper body to relieve the problems that occur from long hours hunched over a computer.  This healing massage includes a set of T Spheres (purified aromatherapy infused rubber massage balls) that are used during the session and then given to take home to continue trigger point work.  I keep mine in my purse now for “stress emergencies”!

The Sheva Foot Treatment at Sheva Thai Spa
500 Lexington Avenue, NYC  
phone (646) 329-7290

Sheva Thai Spa celebrates the rituals of Thai royalty and luxury.  As soon as I entered, the brightly saturated colors and imported Thai furnishings, combined with the scent of diffused Jasmine oil in the air, instantly created an exotic sensory escape.

With a silk mask on my eyes, ear buds streaming Thai music in my ears, and a heated silk massage pillow on my back, I was fully ready to start my Sheva Foot Treatment.. 

This signature treatment includes a soothing Thai sea salt & oil foot soak, a hydrating sucrose and seed oil scrub, a detoxifying foot masque and a hot towel wrap to eliminate toxins.  It ends with a 35-minute foot, hand & arm massage, utilizing ancient Thai techniques.   I felt as renewed and relaxed as if I had just spent the entire day at a spa instead of just an hour. 

The Signature Stress Melter ritual at Red Door Spa 
200 Park Avenue South, NYC (212)-388-0222

During Spa Week, Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spas nationwide are offering a mini version of their Signature Stress Melter ritual, a body treatment including exfoliation, an aroma-therapeutic body wrap and a relaxing scalp massage to melt stress away and re-balance the spirit. The two-story Union Square location is designed in black and white with a pop of lacquered red (of course) in the salon & retail space upstairs, while the spa downstairs provides soothing contrast with a more subdued palate of grays and beiges.  

The Seasonal Facial at L’Institut Sothys
37 West 57^th Street, NYC    
phone (212) 688-9400        

Sothys Paris is a legendary product line featured in beauty institutes and spas all over the world but Sothys NY is the only place besides L’Institut de Beaute in Paris where you can have a facial performed by a Sothys esthetician trained in their signature Digi-Esthétique®, an exclusive massage method that transformed my treatment into an unforgettable sensory experience.  Sothys is offering their seasonal facial during Spa Week, which is a hydrating antioxidant Cherry and Gooseberry treatment for Spring. 

anti-cellulite Endermologie treatment

at White Tea Med Spa 104 West 14^th Street. Suite 2C , 

NYC  phone, (212) 647-8919   

Don’t let the 2^nd floor walk up location on 14^th street dissuade you… once you enter the art-filled, gold and white oasis of White Tea Med Spa, you will forget all about the gritty city below.  The treatments are designed to harness the therapeutic powers of white tea with an elixir that’s loaded with antioxidants.  This is a med spa, so they also offer beauty and body contouring treatments as well as a variety of specialty teas, of course.  I tried the anti-cellulite Endermologie treatment, which felt like I was being simultaneously massaged and vacuumed at the same time. While you need a few treatments to see results, even one treatment helps improve circulation and certainly got my blood flowing.

ABOUT TRACY

Formerly the Editor-At-Large for Travelsquire, Tracy Gavant worked with Spa Magazine, The Discovery Channel and Hachette Filipacchi Media, where she created an international awards program spanning 23 countries. Tracy has lived in Copenhagen, Israel, and currently resides in exotic Hoboken, NJ. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and 44 of the 50 states, but still longs to see the Far East. Someday!  Her extensive magazine publishing experience includes working as the former VP at Robb Report, VP/Publisher ELLE DÉCOR Magazine (where she launched The Elle Décor International Design Awards and Elle Décor’s Dining By Design national tour), HOME Magazine (where she helped launch CENTURY 21 HOUSE & HOME Magazine), COLONIAL HOMES, ART NEWS, and McGraw-Hill.  Other accomplishments include co-founding DECORATORBUYPASS, a designer buying service and website.  Since 2006, Tracy was a Group Publisher at Bonnier Corporation, Editor-At-Large at Travelsquire.com and Publisher-at-Large at Interiors magazine, as well as a consultant for various media, consumer and retail clients, creating brand launch and expansion strategies. Tracy is a Board Trustee for The Mile Square Theatre, on the Advisory Board for Furnish-A-Future, a division of NY Partnership for the Homeless, as well as an industry advisor for WHEDCO (Women’s Health and Economic Development).