Spas Cater to the Stressed in New York

If you were flipping through Time Out New York, the trends-and-events weekly, on your way to work on the morning of Sept. 11, you would have seen a roundup of fabulous high-tech portable gadgets, suggested to facilitate your carefree and connected boom-time life on the go.

That same section a few weeks later offered another list of acronyms and technical terms intended to ease life’s pressures. In New York’s suddenly quivering new world, Time Out’s plug for wireless toys gave way to experimental and holistic therapies to combat post-traumatic stress disorder, treatments such as clinical hydrotherapy and eye movement desensitizational reprocessing.

Other New York publications are recommending treatments that make therapies such as EMDR seem as traditional as Freudian analysis. On Citysearch.com’s “Take Back New York” page, there’s a prominently featured link to spas for stress relief that offer hydrotherapy tub soaks and facial packages, some at a reduced price for rescue workers who wish to combat traumatic memories with some clinically themed pampering.

SoHo scenesters have been flocking to the famous Bliss Spa for holistic mud wraps and facials for years now. And it’s been a while now since trend-spotters trained their eyes on the celeb-studded mats at the uber-chic yoga destination Jivamukti.

But after the attacks, these urban New Age oases have become run-of-the-mill healing centers for the rich and hip. And for the past few weeks, Prada loafers have been lining up next to Payless knockoffs at city parks for Yoga to Help Heal New York--an organization quickly founded to scatter 50 yoga instructors all over Manhattan for free alfresco stretch sessions intending to help New Yorkers overcome trauma.

Almost every day spa within the city limits is offering some sort of attack-related special, or has reconsidered its marketing and language to incorporate recent events into an explanation of what they do. An Upper East Side establishment is offering a treatment that sounds like it owes more to Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” than anything dreamed up in the cedar-lined cells of Sweden. This is the “Dynamed T2000,” a full-body capsule that apparently uses heat, aromatherapy, massage and audio to help with post-traumatic stress.

Other spas are inventing similarly dubious methods to combat psychological trauma, such as the “sensory deprivation saltwater float” at Back to Basics Massage in midtown, intended to give New Yorkers a break from the sights and sounds of Post-Attack Manhattan.

“This is definitely a trend,” says Zoe Wolff, who edited Time Out’s section on novel therapies. “I think that competition necessitates people coming up with more and more innovative ways to market their services. But I’ve had a bunch of different spa treatments, and whatever they call it, it’s still a massage.”

Plenty of New Yorkers--even those who may heading out to spas themselves--shudder at these newly defined therapies, writing them off as unabashed entrepreneurship.

In contrast, few locals blinked an eye when 48 hours after the attacks folding tables stacked with T-shirts bearing images of ubiquitous Old Glory waving behind the Towers. This city has never been one to collectively scorn a possible buck. Besides, the shirts beamed the indignant, united patriotism that radiated from the avenues in those first weeks.

But the $200 seaweed wraps administered in earshot of cries of “3 shirts, $10” seem to be a different matter entirely, especially when they claim to eradicate symptoms that psychologists say can only be healed by lots of time, and lots of therapy.

Of course, the number of New Yorkers who endeavor to leave their trauma behind on the massage table is tiny compared with those attempting to do it the couch. Psychotherapists have been inundated with new clients, and existing ones have stepped up their analyses since Sept. 11. Still, many people are showing up for sessions with limber muscles and tighter pores.

Style mavens across the city are quick to point out that this trend hardly suggests a mass-revoking of New York’s more typically image conscious ways. To many, this is the continuation of a previously blossoming trend. “I don’t think the person who spends $150 on a stone massage is that different than the person who spends $500 on Manolo Blahniks,” says Time Out’s Wolff. “Weirdly, those things go hand and hand.”