Natasza Sallmann
Vice-President
K&P Consulting

Wellness and Spa – A Return to the Past

Hotel venues, regardless of their character (a stylish palace, a spa hotel, a family hotel in a health resort, a business hotel or a conference hotel) have for some time been attracting and luring guests with the words “Wellness” and “Spa”. And they are doing it effectively.

The two terms are associated with rest and relaxation, sometimes with unconventional medicine, but, above all, they make us think of cosmetic, care, beauty and slimming treatments. They are also often associated with... luxury. So before visiting such a centre, let’s get some history.

The term wellness was introduced by US medical doctor Dunn in 1959. Dunn studied the holistic relationship between people’s well-being and health. The term is derived from a combination of two words, well-being and fitness, and denotes the harmony of body, soul and mind – these are referred to as the elementary needs of modern man.

In this sense, the term wellness can be defined as the aspiration to achieve well-being in four aspects:
• physical, which requires physical exercise, reasonable eating habits and body care;
• mental, this relies on relaxation, the ability to meditate, work under stress and rest;
• social, which is strictly related to the ability to communicate with the outside world and to build interpersonal relations;
• spiritual, which is achieved through being culturally active, sensitive to nature, willing to learn new things.

The spa concept is an integral part of the term wellness, positioned in the area of body treatments and related services, such as beauty care and relaxation, health, physiotherapeutic, therapeutic and cosmetic treatments, as well as plastic surgery. The diversity of spa treatments and spa hotels is owed to, among other things, history and cultural diversity.

Spa treatments themselves only seem to be a modern invention. The history of water therapies dates back to the early civilisations, and their traces can be found in what remains of the past cultures worldwide. The very word spa comes from the first letters of the phrase “sanus/sanare per aqum”, which translates as “health/making healthy through water”. Professional water therapy was first used in Europe by the Greeks as early as in 500 BC, who began with baths filled with water and progressed to hot-air baths. The small Greek bathing spots grew into the Roman balnea and thermae (Greek for heat), and in 25 BC, Emperor Agrippa built the first hot baths, the prototype of the modern aqua park – a place to provide water therapies, i.e. services referred to as spa. So what treatments did the ancient Romans use? The ancient hot baths were divided into two main areas: palestrae, devoted to physical activity, and tharmae, a water zone used for keeping clean and relaxed. A typical visit to a bathing centre would begin with a workout at a palestra, followed by a visit to three, gradually warmer, rooms. The first of these was called a tepidarium, the largest and most luxurious room in the venue, where the bather stayed for about an hour warming his body, while oils were rubbed onto his skin. After that, he went to a caldarium, a room filled with steam and extremely warm, where small „personal” bathtubs with water of different temperatures were installed. In the third room, called a laconium, which was the hottest of all the rooms, the bather took baths similar to those in a dry sauna, during which hot air caused him to sweat heavily. In this room all of his body was massaged briskly. The bathing ritual finished in a frigidarium, the equivalent of the traditional swimming pool, where the bather got into cool water to relax, cool down, wash off the sweat. Refreshed and clean, the bather then went to other sections of the thermae to relax in a library or in a common relaxation room. Additionally, he could choose to have an oil massage given by thermae staff in rooms specially designed for that purpose. The Roman love of baths has survived till this day in Turkey, where regular visitors to public baths regularly indulge in the pleasures of getting soaped and having steam baths and massages, and some elements of the Turkish bathing culture, e.g. hamam – a bathing ritual combined with foam massage – are being taken to spa centres.

The variety of treatments and therapies available is owed also to other philosophers and cultures, cultures in which the care of body is as important as the exercise of mind and is a daily routine. And so increasingly popular at spa centres today are treatments and rituals brought from, for example, the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, as well as from Japan, China and India. Equally popular, however, are – culturally closer to Poland – the Scandinavian traditions (Finnish sauna), the Slavic bath house and alpine baths in hay or milk. Today’s spa centres are an interesting combination of ancient traditions and modern miracles of technology. No matter the type and origins of particular treatments, what is important is the sequence of actions: washing, warming, having the actual treatments, relaxing.

To conclude, I cordially invite you to visit the wellness-spa centers advertised in this album. Please remember though that the spa center you will choose, no matter the origins of the treatments it provides, should help you in your personal efforts to achieve a state of well-being and health.