Los Angeles’ remarkable ethnic diversity has brought more than exotic food and rich cultural traditions—it’s led to a wealth of incredible (and incredibly inexpensive) therapeutic massage treatments. Gail Herndon and Brenda Goldstein, both health-care professionals, spent five years visiting Southern California’s Thai, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Indian, and Hawaiian spas, and they share the details on their favorites. They explain the treatments and their benefits and tell you where to go, what to expect, how to tip, even where to park and where to eat in the neighborhood. A beautifully photographed and designed gift for adventurous Southern Californians.

Based on traditional Thai herbal lore, the secrets of this country's ancient healing therapies, are offered for the first time in this Thai guide to health and beauty. Feel-good therapies and natural healing are the lifestyle mantras of the new millennium. Asia leads the way in the back-to-nature market, reviving many of its ancient techniques and treatments that have been handed down form one generation of women to the next. Thai Spa Book focuses specifically on stress-busting therapies from Thailand, running the gamut from the many types of Thai massage and meditation, to full beauty treatments, facials, relaxing baths and scrubs, healthy tonics and much more. These therapies are offered with recipes or instructions, or both, which are easy to follow. practical tips are given to recreate these health and beauty recipes at home, and specific treatments are outlined for specific ailments. All are designed to soothe, nurture and calm. With superb, full-color photography using many of Thailand's top supermodels, the book was shot entirely on location in some of Thailand's super-delux spas.

Geothermal springs constitute a major tourism resource, providing spectacular settings, recreation facilities, a recognised value in treatments beneficial for health and wellness, a sense of heritage and adventure, and links with the natural environment. Health and wellness tourism accounts for a significant proportion of the world’s tourism consumption, with components ranging from hot spring bathing for leisure and recreation, through mineral water use in health treatments under the supervision of highly specialised medical professionals, to water treatments in the wellness and beauty therapy sector and the use of mineral water for drinking purposes. This makes it an economically and socially important area of tourism demanding in-depth analysis. This book explores health and wellness tourism from a range of perspectives including usage, heritage, management, technology, environmental and cultural features, and marketing.

The Sparkle Spa crew kick it into high gear to help Brooke out of a hairy situation in the ninth sparkly story in this shimmering series about two sisters who open their own mini-nail salon. Talk about a bad hair day! When Brooke gets a disastrous haircut—compliments of thorn-in-everyone’s-side Suzy Davis—she vows never to show her face in public again! Will the Sparkle Spa crew convince her otherwise?

From the creator of the bestselling Office Yoga comes the ultimate guide to sanity and serenity in the workplace. Office Spa presents more than 50 fun, simple, stress-relieving ideas that help make a day at the office feel more like a day at the spa. Beat the mid-morning blahs with an invigorating herbal tea steam. Alleviate anxiety with a Hara Power tummy massage. Treat tired toes under the desk with relaxing reflexology. Author Darrin Zeer taps into the healing principles behind aromatherapy, acupressure, meditation, reflexology, and even feng shui, creating quick and effective pampering treatments that are easy enough to do on the commute, at the computer, or in the conference room. Brimming with playful illustrations by Frank Montagna, this delightful desktop reference offers a suite of soothing ideas to relax, refresh, and renew.

From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to "take a cure"—to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings, match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a very high proportion were Jewish. In Next Year in Marienbad, Mirjam Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings. During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms, and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the off season. Next Year in Marienbad draws from memoirs and letters, newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the years between the fin de siècle and the Second World War.

Spa Living explores the many benefits of the spa lifestyle, including skin care, ayurvedic healing, exercise, and a relaxing environment that offers inner peace, health, and well-being.

Health and Wellness Tourism takes an innovative look at this rapidly growing sector of today¿s thriving tourism industry. This book examines the range of motivations that drive this diverse sector of tourists, the products that are being developed to meet their needs and the management implications of these developments. A wide range of international case studies illustrate the multiple aspects of the industry and new and emerging trends including spas, medical wellness, life-coaching, meditation, festivals, pilgrimage and yoga retreats. The authors also evaluate marketing and promotional strategies and assess operational and management issues in the context of health and wellness tourism. This text includes a number of features to reinforce theory for advanced students of hospitality, leisure and tourism and related disciplines.

English spas have a long and steamy history, from the thermal baths of Aquae Sulis in Bath to the stews of Southwark, the elegant pump rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton to the Victorian mania for hydrotherapy and Turkish hammams. 'The Secret History of English Spas' is an informative but light-hearted social and cultural history of our obsession with drinking and bathing in spa waters. It tells the stories of the rich, the famous, the poor and the sick, all of whom visited spas in hopes of curing everything from infertility to leprosy and gonorrhoea. It depicts the entrepreneurs who promoted these resorts - often on the basis of the most dubious scientific evidence - and the riotous and salacious social life enjoyed in spa towns, where moral health might suffer even as bodies were cleansed and purged. And yet English spas also offered an ideal of civility and politeness, providing a place where social classes and sexes could mingle and enjoy refined entertainments such as music and dance - all part of the fashionable pastime referred to as 'taking the waters'.

Sisters Aly and Brooke launch a nail service for kids at their overworked mother's salon only to discover that their brilliant idea needs a bit of polish.