2 comments | 
Pete Jensen
Dressed in blue jeans and a black sweater, sleeves pushed up, Paul Hawken leaned casually against a tall stool at Rancho La Puerta and looked out over the Green Spa Network audience. We sat in a yoga and meditation gym known as Oak Tree. Not a lot of us. About 75 spa owners, skin care experts, fitness experts…the kind of diverse spa community that is doing a great deal these days to redefine the very word “spa.”
That’s why it was so appropriate when Hawken opened his comments by giving the group a brief recap of the history of spa.
“The spa business started because being rich was really hard on your liver and kidneys…your body,” he said.
“You had to take to the mountains and take the waters. Life was really hard on the upper class. Rejuvenation was seen as episodic: something you did and then you went back to life, no matter how weird and strange your life was.”
“To me, Rancho La Puerta really shifted that to ‘you come to a spa to learn to be rejuvenated for the rest of your life, not at a spa only. [The spa experience] then encompasses everything we do, touch, talk about, how we relate to each other, give our hearts, our spirits…everything! So I think Rancho La Puerta was a real turning point…certainly in this country. So I honor you and thank you for your contribution for lo these many years.”
With that, Hawken got to the meat of his talk. But he already had me backtracking.
(Do you ever do that? Hear something and then realize, “Whoa, did that mean what I think it meant?” It happens to me constantly in conversation…or listening to speeches. I seem so oriented to the printed page that audible communication results in some kind of lag time.)
“…being rich was really hard on…your body.”
Historically, this makes a lot of sense. Today, it still does. So many people today are “spa-ing” because they feel stressed out and beat up. They may not be rich, but today’s gladiatorial workplace can do a number on your body every bit as fast as overdoing the rich food and drink, a la Roman nobility.
Hawken, despite being outside the spa business, crystallized my thinking about why the definition of “spa” has headed in two directions: first, spa to many has come to mean a change in attitude and perhaps appearance brought on by an hour or two…or day…of relaxation and (that word many of us hate) pampering; second, a way to change your life.
Deborah Szekely, co-founder of Rancho La Puerta in 1940 with her husband Edmond, was in the audience. Most of us have heard her say, many times, “It takes a week to work a miracle.” The rise of the modern-day “fitness resort” traces its DNA directly to Deborah and “The Prof” (Edmond was known as Professor Szekely), and, sure enough, the Ranch has always had a week-long (or more) program.
So it’s not about the quick fix or indulgent episode…real change comes about more slowly via learning, immersion, experience.
Hawken continued:
“I really urge you not to be bummed out by anything I say [laughter]. I want to talk about where we are as a civilization. This is a turning point. And there’s a tendency to interpret facts as ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ There’s no such thing as ‘good news’ or ‘bad news:’ It’s our minds that make them bad or good.”
Many in the audience chuckled, because many of us are called Boomers…or in some cases “Doomers” if we’re overwhelmed by all the “bad” news assaulting us every day. And aren’t we all, now and then? But this room wasn’t filled with Casandras or Jeremiahs. Hawken called us “Designers”—someone who proves the Doomers wrong.
“I tell this story quite a bit,” he continued. “I feel like, in a Jungian sense, our gifts are in our shadows. Our civilization has cast a huge shadow and there’s a tendency not to look at it. The Zeitgeist in the U.S. after the panic of 2008 is, ‘Can we get back to business as usual?’
“And I want to say, ‘Let’s pray we don’t go back to business as usual!’
“But the metric for betterment, or improvement or ‘progress’ is actually ‘business as usual.’ And so there is something in between business as usual and where we are now, in terms of possibility. The facts, to me, are simply gifts: information that allows us to imagine what it means to be a human being right now on earth.”
And much to my relief, Hawken confirms that we human beings “are responding in extraordinary ways.” Today there are tens of millions of human beings directly engaged in undoing the havoc wreaked on this planet, and they are working on it every day.
And I realized that our planet, also, was in need of “spa”—but not the quick fix, not the “taking the waters” for a day or two, but a deep, cleansing, healing—and a breakaway from our indulgent ways. This isn’t an episode we’re in. This isn’t “back to business as usual.”
Watch Paul Hawken speak at Rancho La Puerta.
Next: Hawken speaks on the cold, hard facts of oil dependence and its rapid “feedback loop.”
Translation: we’ll see big, big changes in the world in the next 20 years. Will spas be healers or just “pamperers?”
Read more from Pete Jensen at The Rancho La Puerta Journals.
Find more about Rancho La Puerta, the original destination spa.
Tags: deep cleansing, deep healing, fitness, Green Spa Network, History of Spas, Jung, meditation, Paul Hawken, Rancho la Puerta, San Diego Spa, SDNN, skin care, spa, yoga
Comment by: Michael Stusser Posted: November 17, 2009, 11:06 am
Hi Peter, I so much appreciate your comments and perspective. Paul’s talk at the Ranch was a turning point for our spa community. Cant wait for the next intstalment. Michael
Comment by: Tara Grodjesk Posted: November 18, 2009, 12:55 am
Peter, you were able to articulate and capture insights from our conference at the Ranch- that were so poignant. thank you for spending time with us. and thank you for being so supportive of our vision.
We certainly don’t want to go back to business as usual. I have been cringing when people say we need to bounce BACK. I hope we never return to unconscious consumerism. but rather progress and evolve to conscious consumerism- making healthier choices personally and globally.
And yes, the Ranch creates a conducive environment which allows us to step out of our habituated routines and numbing behaviors, so that we can re-ignite passion in our lives, recharge our own vitality and life force- Living fully and with greater awareness of our relationship to all things great and small.