All in a day's rest

Your body has its own hydraulic system, Jenny Sheetz tells me.

The massage therapist and co-owner of Port Matilda, Pennsylvania's, St Joseph Institute spa says she can feel the fluids moving as she holds my ankles while I lie fully clothed on a massage table. Fill. Pause, two, three.

Release.

Sheetz says she can feel my cerebrospinal fluids circulating through my body, just as you can feel the heart pump when taking a pulse.

My fluids, she tells me, are moving like water through a partially clogged kitchen pipe.

The amplitude is weak, the rhythm restricted, with no symmetry in the various touch points. She says she can fix that.

Time for some craniosacral therapy and somato-emotional release.

These are two of a variety of therapeutic treatments available at St Joseph, a "wellness spa" in central Pennsylvania that is part of one of the biggest new trends in travel.

It's also part of what is by far the largest new trend in the spa industry. A wellness spa typically offers all the massages and facials and wraps you'd expect at any day or destination spa, but with an additional array of health services — sometimes mainstream, sometimes alternative and sometimes a bit of both.

The International Spa Association had identified 310 wellness spas in the United States in 2004; last year, the trade group counted 915.

Wellness spas produced $469 million (Dh1,722 million) in revenue last year — a leap of more than 340 per cent in two years.

And at $155 (Dh569) a night for two on weeknights, including dinner, St Joseph is among the cheapest.

We turn off a two-lane road to an empty stretch that is about a lane-and-a-half, both sides lined with forest.

I get increasingly excited about spending a night at a rural retreat with spa. My mother, who is in the passenger seat, is not impressed.

Growing reputation

Speaking like a true country girl who couldn't wait to move into town, she complains: "Who'd want to come way back here in the boondocks?"

Me, a transplanted city girl, for one.

We drive through the open iron gates and park in front of a stone and wood building. The air smells of pine and fireplaces.

Inside the spa, sun streams through oversize windows and the smells of jasmine, rosemary and the oils of exotic flowers fill the air.

Opened about a year-and-a-half ago, St Joseph is in the pretty much nowhere-town of Port Matilda, about a half-hour drive from Pennsylvania State University's main campus.

Many guests come simply for pampering, with regular spa treatments, others in search of life transformations.

Treatments include acupressure and other "healing massages", exercise and diet programmes, laser treatment to increase range of motion and provide pain relief for ailments such as carpal tunnel syndrome and sports injuries.

You can get just a facial, or treatments said to be good for autism, or others for arthritis. If you're recovering from an injury, the staff will oversee a gentle, rehabilitative workout.

I found St Joseph at SpaFinders.com, in the "medical/wellness" listings. This category includes spas whose medical services may be limited to a couple of alternative therapies with an Eastern or New Age bent.

At the other end of the spectrum, your wellness spa vacation could include a huge range of mainstream medical treatments delivered by doctors, sports therapists and nutritionists, complemented by naturopathic experts trained in Chinese medicine, massage therapists who can pamper and treat your ailments and, perhaps, a mental health expert.

Take, for example, Canyon Ranch — which operates resorts in Arizona and in Massachusetts. It employs seven board-certified physicians.

"People come for different reasons," Canyon Ranch spokeswoman Erinn Figg says. "Some come just to get spa treatments and lie by the pool, others to lose weight or stop smoking or recover after breast cancer surgery."

Some procedures, particularly those that are mainstream, such as a Pap test, may be covered by health insurance, but it is up to you to pay and then fill out the necessary insurance paperwork.

St Joseph Institute falls somewhere in the middle of this continuum of mainstream and alternative therapies.

Sheetz and her husband, Michael Campbell, are searching for a medical director. Under the supervision of a doctor, their alternative therapies will become "integrative".

That will allow them, Campbell says, to take on a variety of complicated medical issues.

When I arrive at St Joseph, the receptionist suggests I might want to use the "dry hydrotherapy" machine.

I climb aboard the bed-like apparatus, which moves heated water under pressure up and down the surface of the bed.

I lie down and soon feel some of the stress of driving oozes out. Besides the name and the statue of St Joseph inside its spa doors, the chapel is another obvious clue that the owners of St Joseph are Christian.

Beyond the physical

But the chapel — a non-denominational one — celebrates spirituality, Sheetz says, and the oneness of all faiths. Some guests might go inside to pray, others to meditate.

Still others, like me, might find deer grazing outside the windows and find that peaceful and somehow restorative.

Although I've booked time in one of the spa's nine treatment rooms, I haven't chosen a therapy. I'd been thinking a pampering massage, but Sheetz suggests craniosacral evaluation and somato-emotional release. OK.

After evaluating the fluid flow in my body and the six pulse points typically measured by Chinese doctors, Sheetz begins touching my back, chest, stomach. But I hardly notice what she's doing because I've begun to tell her about my life, every heartache and trauma since I was a child.

I have a sudden realisation: "We're in a counselling session."

Turns out that in addition to being licensed to do a variety of massage therapies and in addition to being a nutritionist, Sheetz has a master's degree in counselling.

Various parts of the body, she says, hold certain emotions. She says she can feel the tension easing as I talk and she touches.

Campbell suggests I check out some books related to my treatments from the library in the main lodge. Dinner is served in the main lodge anyway, so I head in that direction.

The main room of the lodge has a two-storeyed ceiling and giant windows that frame a big stone fireplace. I sit to watch the fire and chat with a couple that has come overnight just to get away from the kids for a while.

The dining room is down the hall. Guests share a series of wooden tables in the dining room. The food is simple but delicious.

Everything, including bread, soup and salad dressing, is homemade and gluten-free. Sheetz discovered she was gluten intolerant after years of suffering from illnesses that went undiagnosed by mainstream medicine. That is what got her into alternative therapies.

As we drive away, I do get some unexpected gratification. My mother, apparently no longer disturbed by being in the boondocks, mentions how much she liked her lymph massage, said to be good for detoxification. She starts dropping hints about how she'd like to return.

Port Matilda from the UAE

Closest airport to Port Matilda is Philadelphia.
US Airways flies daily via London from Dubai.
Lufthansa flies daily via Frankfurt from Dubai.
British Airways flies daily via London from Dubai.
KLM flies daily via Amsterdam from Dubai.

How much

US Airways fare: Starts from Dh3,370 exclusive of tax.
Lufthansa fare: Starts from Dh3,600, exclusive of tax.
British Airways fare: Starts from Dh3,500 exclusive of tax.
KLM fare: Starts from Dh3,520 exclusive of tax

Information courtesy: Al Tayer Travel Agency