Bob Henry, award-winning architect and author of Spa: The Sensuous Experience (and personal friend), recommended a bodyworker named Gary Wohlman a few months ago. Since Bob is “in the know,” I decided to give Gary a try.

My session with Gary last night began with his specialized form of Deep Tissue Body Sculpting, which he described as having three parts: Creative Release, Emotional Release, and Physical Release. According to Gary, these steps respectively represent the concepts of “fine tuning,” “retraining the patterns,” and “freeing the stress.”

What a great example of the Spa Fusion Trend we predicted as one of our Top Ten Spa Trends for 2007. Gary has fused massage, breath work, and verbal affirmations. While he did the deep massage and affirmations, I did the breath work; we continued this pattern throughout the entire hourlong session.

Results? Well, I can’t say I love having to take such an active role by breathing a certain way with every stroke, visualizing the sun rising, water flowing, anxiety releasing, etc., when I would rather lie there like a blob and nod off. However, I have to say that not only did I feel as though I could perform ballet after the session, but I also slept well and felt more energetic this morning than I have in a long time.