By Kyle Roderick

Who doesn’t dream of a spa sojourn where one mind/body treatment blissfully follows another? While visiting a spa will certainly help you relax and regroup, those looking for deeper transformation should consider signing up for a workshop. Generally lasting two days to a week, the best workshops cultivate mind/body/spirit, along with emotional balance, physical health, and inner well-being. Here is a select guide to special spa experiences that can help you increase your human potential, enhance your wellness, and live with joy.

Synergy & Balance Quality of Life at Miraval Life in Balance

Catalina, Arizona

(800) 825-4000, www.miravalresort.com

Do you feel off center? Does your life feel out of whack? This four-day, five-night session helps you get back on track by pinpointing and developing internal resources for cultivating personal growth. Unlike any other spa retreat, Miraval’s synergy and balance workshop teaches how essential, everyday actions (starting with how we breathe, think, speak, and react to stress) can be mastered to improve our emotional, physical, and spiritual vitality. Featuring empowering and stress-busting breathwork, yoga, and meditation (along with teachings on their medically proven healing powers), this workshop also imparts lasting lessons in self-awareness, self-care, and self-regulation. Guidelines for upgrading your diet, fitness regimen, and stress management are also supplied, along with take-home strategies. While three 50-minute spa services are included in the fee, desert walks and talks offer opportunities to practice intuition enhancement for enriching personal and professional life. A physically and emotionally cleansing sweat lodge ceremony rounds out the schedule.

Yoga Jazz for Mothers & Daughters at El Monte Sagrado Living Arts Spa

Taos, New Mexico

(800) 828-TAOS, www.elmontesagrado.com

El Monte Sagrado honors the primal, profound mother-daughter bond by offering this retreat over Mother’s Day weekend. Conducted by yoga teacher/healer/artist Ed Moffett for a maximum of six mothers and daughters, Yoga Jazz refers to Moffett’s yoga philosophy and practice, which he has been refining for thirty years. The first day includes a Sunset Yoga Jazz session and fitness hike to help bond couples – and the group. The second day features spa services followed by a lecture and practice on “Self-Bodywork and Sustainable Fitness for Optimal Aging.” This combines do-it-yourself deep tissue massage with both ancient and contemporary philosophies and techniques regarding functional fitness and injury prevention. Moffett photographs participants so they can continue exploring self-bodywork at home. Each woman also receives spa services that have been chosen by the spa director to suit her individual needs. Moffett also offers “Massage for Mother and Daughters,” a hands-on lesson on massage and bodywork techniques to use anywhere, anytime. Requiring no experience, it literally loosens up mothers and daughters. Again, Moffett takes photographs for guests’ future reference. In “How to Give Yourself a Deep-Tissue Massage,” the group learns techniques for releasing tension with everyday tools such as tennis balls. The Sunset Outdoor Yoga Hike fuses yoga, archetypal movements, and energy perception exercises. Before parting, the group discusses how to incorporate ancient fitness methods into daily life.

Micaceous Clay Workshop: The Traditional Ojo Experience at Ojo Caliente Spa

Ojo Caliente, New Mexico

(800) 222-9162, www.ojocalientespa.com

For centuries, Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs has been a center for healing and pottery making. In the 15th and early 16th centuries, Tewa Indians produced mica-rich pottery in this region. Lightweight yet intensely durable, the micaceous pottery is still made from clay that is sourced nearby; it makes excellent pots for cooking rice, stews, soups, and beans. With its healing spring waters and lessons in coil and scrape pottery techniques used by the Tewa, Ojo Caliente’s clay workshop changes lives by engaging one’s artistic powers. When participants are not soaking in the springs, they are channeling their energies and making at least two pots to take home and cook with. Master potter Felipe Ortega shares his historical, anthropological, and archeological knowledge during class and over the dinner he prepared in micaceous pots at his home. Participants also enjoy private group receptions with archaeologist Martha Yates and Ortega, along with an archaeological expedition with Yates through remnants of Tewa civilization.Spa treatments that are part of the package include: Earth Keepers Hot Stone Massage, Herbal Wrap, Moor Mud Wrap, and a fifty-minute massage.

Awakening The Creative: The Painting Experience at Esalen Institute

Big Sur, California

(831) 667-3005, www.esalen.org

Imagine spending five days on a picturesque cliff top at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, painting directly from intuition. In this workshop, the only rule is to unleash the elemental energies of your inner artistic spirit. Led by Steward Cubley, Awakening the Creative presents the chance to realize your imaginative path and commit to following it by generating art straight from the spirit, as opposed to the everyday consciousness that is policed by your inner critic. The atmosphere at Esalen greatly supports your artist’s way, unlike many other retreat centers, the studio here is open 24-7, encouraging maximum experimentation, camaraderie, and productivity. All materials are supplied and a $50 materials fee is paid directly to the leaders. When you crave sensory bliss after painting, Esalen’s cliffside sulphur baths situated hundreds of feet above the ocean offer nude bathing from morning till night. Delicious organic food, some of it grown in Esalen’s own gardens, makes your stay extra-delicious. For an extra fee, massages can be booked morning till night.

Journey Through Midlife: A Woman’s Retreat at Canyon Ranch

Tucson, Arizona

(800) 742-6494, www.canyonranch.com

Designed by Canyon Ranch women’s health professionals and led by Molly Roberts, M.D., M.S., and Karen McIntyre, M.S.W., the Journey Through Midlife takes place in the Life Enhancement Center (a seminar area designed for in-depth workshops). It’s a weeklong course offering detailed action plans for successful aging and personal evolution during perimenopause and beyond.This life-changing workshop teaches participants how to gracefully manage their midlife health, aging, sexuality, and fitness needs in deep detail. Personal consultations with highly credentialed health professionals mean that this workshop often dispenses information that the typical seven-minute doctor’s office visit lacks the time to cover.

Services include a blood testing and a private consultation with a physician to discuss test results and options for enhancing wellness. Discussions of such topics as sensuality and sexuality, grief and loss, anger, body image, joy, and stress management also form part of the schedule.Building strength, flexibility, and aerobic capacity in daily fitness activities teach the basics of exercising for optimum fitness. Nutrition workshops outline healthy eating habits for the slower metabolism and hormonal changes that accompany midlife.

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