Feature

Spa vs. Spa

Susan Ciminelli
754 Fifth Avenue, between 57th and 58th Streets
(872-2650)

Ciminelli, who recently moved her scented spa to the top floor of Bergdorf Goodman, is renowned for her crystal treatment, which, as one staff member described it, is “like a magnified healing thing,” meant to balance your chakras by positioning the crystals in various places on your face and body. (As an aesthetician once explained when a crystal slid from face to floor, “It was probably time for it to leave.”) Visualization, meditation, Reiki, and more hands-on Swedish and Shiatsu are also available. The masseur’s interest in astrology (the moon was apparently in retrograde that day) didn’t detract from his strong work. Prices are steep -- one-hour facials and massages start at $115, and the “ultimate hour,” a body wrap, aromatherapy, and reflexology combo, is $295.

THE SPORTING SPA

We’ve come a long way since a massage at the gym meant locker-room-style treatment spaces. Today’s top fitness spas have soft lighting and serious massage therapists who use hard-core deep techniques like myofascial and neuromuscular release.

The Spa at Equinox
205 East 85th Street
(396-9611)

Equinox offers eleven types of facials (including the one-two punch of electronic muscle stimulation and acupuncture), very strong deep-tissue massage, hot-oil aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, even a men’s sports pedicure. Now comes this: American Indian hot-rock therapy (“La Stone therapy”), during which heated smooth stones are placed on different parts of the body, first to balance energy, then to knead out knots of tension. The warmth from the stones relaxes the muscle before the rocks sink in for the deep work, pinpointing tough-to-reach places under the shoulder blades. At the end, the therapist follows the Indian custom of tapping the rocks together as he walks around you in a circle. “This is the rocks saying good-bye to you,” he explains. No such farewell came from the Stairmaster I passed on the way out.

Paul Labrecque at Reebok
160 Columbus Avenue, between 67th and 68th Streets
(595-0099)

“Oh, good, the latissimus dorsi are giving way,” reports massage therapist John Wehr as he digs in deep, just before he actually climbs onto the table to work on some particularly intractable knots. The current house special -- a luxurious 90-minute, $175 massage -- begins with a muscle meltdown using hot fango (otherwise known as mud) mixed with volcanic ash and paraffin. An energizing facial is carried out with a new acupressure tool, which looks something like a space-age pen. Spa director Regina Viotto is cautious about her clients’ expectations: “It finds trigger points and helps clear blocked energy. I don’t promise any lifting. But if that happens, great.”

The Origins Feel-Good Spa
At Pier 60, 23rd Street and the West Side Highway
(336-6780)

Head over to the Hudson River, past clusters of children en route to bowling parties, through blocks of sports complexes and a dreary locker room, and finally you hit the Origins spa. Its pine-scented candles and soft moss-green interior make for a welcome refuge at that point. While Origins offers mineral crystal baths, seaweed and mud wraps, energizing and relaxing massages, and a myriad of facials, it also has unique “mindful treatments” that, it is claimed, will stimulate your creativity. Settle into an MRI-like pod that heats up and vibrates while full-spectrum light does what it can to relieve you of the winter blues. During “Lost in Space,” meant to “balance your alpha and beta brain waves,” dark goggles emit a series of rapidly flashing light patterns as you lie on a free-love-era water bed that rocks vigorously as it delivers a pummeling hydromassage. No more stimulating than a so-so amusement-park ride, “Lost in Space” is enough to make you long for a restorative steam facial.