SPOTLIGHT : A TENSION SHOPPER : Is Getting Rid of Stress at the Top of Your To-Do List? Read On, and Relax

Some love all the presents and parties, the wrapping and decorating, the dreidels and the bourbon balls. But let’s face it: Beneath all that season-specific cheer, the true, undying essence of the holidays is, in a word, stress.

Mall stress, spending stress, cooking stress, traffic stress, fighting-off-offers-to-eat-more stress, drying-Christmas-tree stress, card-sending stress, and the one so close to us all, repetitive-dysfunctional-family-gathering stress.

What to do? In a word, de- stress.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to do that without going broke or spending much time. A manicure and pedicure, for instance, can cost as little as $15, which is about the cheapest hour of nerve-soothing massage anywhere.

For those who best de-stress by burning off steam, an hour at the shooting range might be the answer.

“Some people come in and draw their bosses face on the target,” says Scott McPhillips, an employee at Straight Shooters, a range in Orange where firing away runs as low as $4.95 an hour.

Yoga and meditation can work their wonders too, as can kayaking and other outdoor sports that combine endorphin-boosting with nature’s calming effect. A visit to a nearby hot spring, a massage, some garden puttering, batting practice or Tai Chi can change your perspective on life. More suggestions follow.

From Tip to Toe

To the uninitiated, a nail parlor might come off as a cross between a Big Brother sweat shop and a torture chamber.

At the Nail Star in Irvine, all workers, situated at small stations arranged in two straight rows, face the same way. Their heads bent in toil, they wear hospital masks to avoid inhaling the dangerous chemicals. The frightening buzz of electric drills comes too close to the sound of dental work. Worse, customers are forced to listen to Phil Collins on the radio.

After an hour, however, Phil sounds positively transcendent. Last month’s Redbook magazine makes absorbing reading, and the chemical smell--some nail products contain substances “known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm”--ceases to annoy. The water we drink is worse, goes the rationalization.

Parlors are plentiful in and around Orange County, but the $15 manicure-pedicure at Nail Star is one of the cheapest indulgences on the market.

After she has delicately trimmed errant cuticles and filed and buffed, Michelle Vuong, at station No. 9, gives one of nail parlordom’s all-time longest massages, spending a full five minutes--about double the average--on each hand and lower arm.

The same goes for Vuong’s pedicure: five minutes for each foot and lower leg--with lotion, of course. It starts in the usual way, with a foot bath in a vibrating tub of sudsy warm water. Even the buzz of those drills--used to file fake acrylic nails--softens to a soothing hum.

Some parlors serve men and women, although many, including Nail Star, cater mostly to women. Men, who typically forgo polish, should demand equal rights--this is pampering not to be missed.

An essential reminder: For a pedicure with polish, take open-toed sandals so toes may dry on the way home. Also, face masks are not required but are strongly advised.

Nail Star, 5365 Alton Parkway, Irvine, (714) 551-2009. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

Targeting the Tension

Bill Hobbs, 31, visits Straight Shooter, the Orange shooting range, every other week. Adjusting his earphone-like hearing protectors, he takes his place in one of 16 narrow “lanes” dividing the 50-foot-long range. Then, he pushes a button activating a wire trolley that carries his paper target, soon to be shot through with holes, to the desired distance. Steadying his gun with both hands, he shoots repeatedly, littering the carpeted floor with bullet casings.

“It’s like a stress relief,” says the towering Anaheim Hills resident, who drives a gas tanker for a living. “It gets out a lot of your aggression. You just go out there and go ugh-ugh-ugh! . . . I’d come in every day if I could.”

To fire with accuracy and avoid potentially fatal accidents, shooters must concentrate exclusively on the task at hand, explains range employee Phillip Bao. Thus, for an hour at least, cares and concerns disappear--or else.

“It could get dangerous, if you forget that a round (or single bullet) is left in your gun,” Bao says. “You have to be self-conscious the whole time.” Technically speaking, “you definitely have to focus on one thing,” and that’s the gun’s “front sight,” a small spot atop the barrel’s end that must be properly aligned to hit a bull’s-eye.

Shooters need to slow themselves down, too.

“You have to breathe slower, and you have to relax,” says Bao, who sums it up with the acronym BRASS: Breathe, Relax, Aim, Stop and Squeeze.

About 15% of Straight Shooter’s clientele is female; whole families visit too. Children must be at least four-feet tall, but those of any age may shoot. First-timers will flinch from the bang of guns firing, but they get used to it, Bao says.

Straight Shooter, 1935 Enterprise Ave., Orange. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Range time is $4.95 an hour, Monday through Friday until 5 p.m.; $6.95 an hour after 5 p.m. and all day on weekends. All guns rent for $3.95 an hour. Clients may use their own guns and ammunition, providing the latter is full-metal or lead. Ammunition is $1.99 to $12.99 for 50 rounds. Information: (714) 637-4668.

Out and a Boat

At dawn several mornings a week, neurologist Susan Skinner sculls the Back Bay for the most restful hour of her hectic day.

Only her narrow boat and long, slender oars disturb the otherwise-still water.

“There are no other boats on the bay,” Skinner says, “and there’s nothing out but the birds. The sun is rising over Saddleback Mountain, and sometimes at the same time, the moon is setting over Catalina. It’s unbelievably beautiful.

“You fall into repetitive motion, and you kind of become one with the boat, and you reach a point where it feels like you’re flying over the water. I find if I can’t go, I just don’t feel as calm, as relaxed during the day.”

Skinner, of Newport Beach, is one of many recent converts to rowing, says Joe Seager, an employee at the nonprofit Newport Aquatic Center, where Skinner works out. Paddle sports, including kayaking and canoeing, have taken off with the proliferation of more affordable water sports outlets, Seager says.

While these sports can be challenging physically and mentally, they can also be leisurely, particularly during the winter months, when there are fewer people on the water.

Seager recommends kayaking for first-timers because it is easier to learn than the others. After just five minutes of instruction, beginners can enjoy an hour on the bay. Tipping over isn’t likely either, he adds.

“Anybody can get out there and do it,” he says. “How far they go with it is totally up to them.”

Newport Aquatic Center, 1 Whitecliffs Drive, Newport Beach. Open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Kayaks rent for $10 an hour for one passenger, $13 an hour for two passengers. Canoes rent for $10 an hour. Ninety-minute introductory clinics cost $10. Information: (714) 646-7725.

People Who Knead People

There’s nothing like a massage to ease tension, especially if it doesn’t cost too much. Emily Lietz of Costa Mesa will rub you down for $25 per half an hour, which is about the least you can expect to spend. For that price, Lietz will fluff your aura, too.

“It’s a smoothing out of the energy field we all have around us,” says Lietz, who performs this act by sweeping her hands above the client’s body. “I work from the feet up, and fluff upward to make you feel good.”

Lietz, a.k.a. “stress therapist,” has worked at Oliver’s beauty salon at the Red Lion Hotel for six years. Her clients lie on a cushioned massage table in a small room at the back of the salon where she dims the lights and plays soft instrumental music on a boombox.

“When someone comes to see me,” she says, “I check to see if they have a hurt (muscle) someplace or where their stress points are. Most people have shoulder stress because that’s where they hold most of their tension. If a person has a hurt, you don’t need to massage hard.”

A proponent of so-called aromatherapy, Lietz applies various scented oils purported to have beneficial effects, either relaxing or stimulating.

“I like rose geranium, which is good for cleansing, for detoxifying, and it helps with stress. I use a high-grade massage oil if someone is dieting and they want a stronger detoxification.”

Most of Lietz’s clients are businesswomen (although men visit too) who pop in for a quick pickup, but some loyal customers book a night at the hotel and spend a day in the spa, which also offers facials, manicures, pedicures and hair care.

If money is not an issue, try Oasis Body Salon at the tony Sports Club Irvine gym, where decadence is de rigueur . A $165 quarter-day splurge, for instance, includes a one-hour massage, a one-hour facial (with neck and shoulder massage) and a massage of hands, arms, elbows, feet and legs with a paraffin wax hand and foot treatment. A half-day package includes some of the above plus other services and lunch.

Oliver’s, Red Lion Hotel, 3050 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, (714) 957-1965. Emily Lietz does massages on Saturday and Sunday for $25 per half an hour.

Oasis Body Salon, Sports Club/Irvine, 1980 Main St., Irvine, (714) 251-6310. Open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Gym membership is not required to visit Oasis.

Hot Springs Eternal

Sometimes just getting out of town is relaxing. Escaping to a hot spring goes that idea one better.

Murrieta Hot Springs Resort and Health Spa, a relatively affordable retreat about an hour’s drive away in Riverside County, has 18 indoor mineral baths. Each is about the size of a deep bath tub, into which the natural mineral water is pumped from an original source 50,000 feet beneath the Earth’s surface. The water comes out of the ground at 140 degrees, but the bath temperature is adjusted.

The mineral water is also pumped into three outdoor pools on the Spanish-style resort’s palm- and Eucalyptus-tree-lined grounds. Use of the indoor mineral baths, in the resort’s spa, costs $14 for 25 minutes; use of outdoor pools costs $10 for the day.

Natural elements and minerals in the water, such as calcium, sodium and magnesium, are “absorbed into the body,” says spa director Marcia Bennett. They stimulate natural bodily functions such as joint lubrication, relieving stiffness. Hydromassage (air jets in the mineral baths) soothes too.

Fifty-minute massages and facials, mud treatments (see accompanying story), seaweed body masks, a sauna, acupressure and other services are offered in the spa. There’s a fitness center with weightlifting and exercise equipment, a restaurant and overnight lodging.

“We don’t do any healing here,” Bennett says. “What we do is enable the body to realize its own full potential, which means with massage, we just press right places on muscles to enable them to relax, and (through the mineral baths) provide the body with ways to stimulate its own natural resources.”

Murrieta Hot Springs Resort and Health Spa, 39405 Murrieta Hot Springs Road, Murrieta. Take the Riverside (91) Freeway east to the Corona (15) Freeway south. Exit at Murrieta Hot Springs Road. The spa is about four miles down on the left. Indoor mineral baths, $14 for 25 minutes; use of outdoor pools costs $10 for the day. Overnight packages begin at $89 a person, double occupancy, for one night’s lodging, a 50-minute massage, one mineral bath, unlimited use of pools, sauna and fitness center and one continental breakfast.

The spa is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Outdoor pools open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. Information: (800) 458-4393.

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The indoor Beverly Hot Springs, 308 N. Oxford Ave., near downtown Los Angeles, is another natural source of mineral springs with similar services. Open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Admission is $25 weekdays before noon, $30 after noon and covers 90-minute use of hot and cold mineral waters, dry sauna and steam room. Information: (213) 734-7000.

Non-Fat Yoga

People think that Chris Jensen, corporate communications director of a software firm, has a secret. No matter how frenzied the job gets, no matter how intense her deadlines, she manages to stay cool, calm and collected.

“The other day,” Jensen recalls, “a woman said to me, ‘How do you do it? You’re always so focused and calm?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I do yoga.’ ”

Indeed, Jensen’s been practicing yoga for 16 years and is one of half a dozen volunteer teachers at the nonprofit Yoga Center of California in Costa Mesa.

“You develop a center of relaxation in yourself,” she says, “and it doesn’t really matter what’s going on around you.”

Classes at the Yoga Center, a nondescript, modestly appointed storefront facility opened in 1970, begin with Hatha yoga postures.

“We react to stress by putting tension in the body,” Jensen says. “The postures generally help us release the tension.”

“We emphasize not straining and being very careful, and we teach breath practices and end with 10 minutes of deep relaxation.”

Classes then progress to other yoga forms, such as Bhakti, Raja and Gjani, which emphasize meditation.

“This is the portion where we actually help people let go of the turbulence in their mind,” she says. “The peace of mind you get from meditation is what helps you react differently in stressful situations.”

In a recent intermediate class at the center, some 45 students, most dressed in sweats, performed a string of such postures as the cobra, the lotus and the corpse, all the while breathing deeply and evenly--one of yoga’s key relaxation techniques.

Maurice Leo Scott, 69, said after the class that he took up yoga some 30 years ago. Back then, his rheumatoid arthritis was so severe that he’d developed a bleeding ulcer from taking pain medication and “the doctors were going to operate on the back of my hands and elbows because I had big lumps of bone there, all because of the arthritis.”

Scott avoided the surgery by developing flexibility through yoga, and his ulcer healed when he gave up the painkillers. He practices postures and meditates daily at home and attends class on Tuesdays.

“Everybody has stress, no matter what kind job you’re in, but if I have a lot of work that has to get done, and lots of pressure, come Tuesday night I can’t wait to get to yoga because Wednesday is my best day.

“Yoga saved my life.”

Yoga Center of California, 445 E. 17th St., Costa Mesa, admits new students once a month. Free, two-hour demonstrations for newcomers are held monthly. The next demonstrations will be Tuesday at 10 a.m. and Wednesday and Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Ongoing classes, about 2 1/2 hours each, are held Monday and Tuesday at 7 p.m., Sunday (advanced) at 6:45 p.m. and Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. Registration, which is $54 a month, covers two classes a week. Information: (714) 646-8281.