They’re great words, aren’t they? You’ll come across them often in books and articles about health, happiness, technology, trends, and luxury. We spend lot of time distilling the essentials of these concepts into the way we create and present unique spa experiences here at Willow Stream.

Energy: Feeling energetic is contagious. We need life’s basics – food, water and rest  - and we need to surround ourselves with energetic people so we can lift each other up. As soon as you feel sluggish or grumpy, you know that your basics are out of sync (usually sleep). I also know from experience that just a few minutes with my lifelong friend Linda gets me charged up again. Energy is my favorite word – and we spend so much time on it in our spas.

Connection: We need each other and in particular we need to be with people we feel a connection with. Connections can form around interests, family, history, or neighborhood. They can last just a few minutes, discussing something interesting on an airplane for example, or they might last a lifetime. Shared experiences make life rich. We see a lot of connections in the lounges in our spas; they’re such great places to connect with good friends or to make new friends. I recently met Jackie in one of our Willow Stream lounges and we started talking about the treatments we had just enjoyed. After we shared, I told her who I was and that lead to even more conversation. Now we are also talking on line. I like that.

Passion: Wouldn’t it be great to spend most of our time immersed in our passions? I’m lucky because spa is my passion and that’s what I spend my time doing. Of course, we need energy for passions.

Genuine: A lot of research points to “authenticity” as the newest trend. It’s one of the key pillars of our Willow Stream philosophy: however, there is something even more compelling about the word genuine. Genuine, to me, is authenticity delivered from the heart.

Remarkable: In Seth Godin’s book, The Purple Cow, we learn that what is remarkable today might not be tomorrow. If the concept of what’s remarkable is ever changing, then don’t we need to keep creating new experiences that are relevantly remarkable in the sense of “now”? We usually have to push ourselves to try new things and, more often than not, we find that the new experience is …  remarkable! Then we master it and it becomes “ordinary”. Living a remarkable life means adding new adventures, challenges, connections, passions and fun.

Abundant: So much time today is spent thinking about scarcity: do I have enough money?, will the market crash again?, is the recession over?, really? Maybe if we just shifted to focusing on an abundance of what’s important (health, happiness), we’ll be fine. My husband thinks my abundant shoe purchasing is going to single-handedly (footedly?) turn the economy around.

Fun: FUN is truly contagious. It’s also healthy and it can even make you look younger. We need fun every day along with at least five good belly laughs.

Artistic: Things we can’t teach robots and computers to do will be our future –  using our right brain to the max. We need exercises to develop our creative side. Your artistic nature comes out when you are filled with energy and finding ways to fill your life with the power of energy, connection, passion, genuine, remarkable, abundant, and fun.

A worthwhile health goal for right now might be as simple as putting these words into actions. We’re working on putting them into action more often in our spas, too. The best spa experience we can offer is a fun, remarkable treatment delivered by passionate people in a place that is artistic, inspired and filled with lots of social places to make genuine connections. That’s Willow Stream.

When I started my career 25 years ago, I worked for a company in Toronto that did a lot of tourism projects in developing countries. My first big assignment was to be part of a team to develop the first tourism strategy for the Sultanate of Oman.

The country intrigued me. It has an interesting history, quite different from other places in the Middle East. The clothes have an Indian and even African influence – at one time in the mid 1800s, Oman’s capital was actually way down the East African coast in Zanzibar.

The Portuguese controlled Oman for 140 years in the 1500s and 1600s. Their hilltop forts still create beautiful dark silhouettes against the sky at sunset. Oman’s famous carved doors are from the forests that are a rare resource in the Middle East.

Muscat Fort at Sunset

While I was working on the tourism study back in 1984, single women were not allowed into the country, so I didn’t get to see it in person.

Now I’ve come full circle. I finally got to Oman in September of this year to help with the new Fairmont hotel project soon to be under construction at “The Wave”- an interesting mixed use development with residential, our Fairmont Hotel and a Greg Norman championship golf course and of course our Willow Stream Spa – in Muscat, the country’s current capital. 

It was worth the wait.

Oman is beautiful and I was struck by the openness of the people. A great young guide, Majid, took me to all of the sites and openly shared his views on life, what he and his friends enjoyed doing and lots of details of family life. I even met some of his friends over coffee. (He also really liked going to spas so that was very helpful information).

Majid, my driver in Muscat

At first glance, the scenery is similar to other parts of the middle east -  lovely sand and sea – but there is an interesting effect of light and dark here. The land isn’t as flat as many other areas and this makes a contrast in the shades of sun and shadow throughout the day. Looking up at the hilltops, the historic forts are at times black against the sun and other times they sparkle with a golden flow of reflections. The same is true of the colors of the sand depending on the time of day.

Our Willow Stream spa here is being developed as an aqua thermal spa  inspired by the healing waters of the sea and the detoxifying heat of the desert.   All of its touch points will be in the Omani style. Rosewater and rose oil are very popular in all of our spas and I didn’t know that they are a centuries old tradition in Oman. Rosewater here traditionally comes in small copper bottles.

You will be hearing much more about this exciting project soon. In the meantime, I am delighted to have come full circle, after 25 years, once again working on hospitality in this lovely country. Wow.

I love this.

So I wrote myself something that I would like to be quoted on:

A life with laughter and love is the only thing that is important – except for breakfast.

Maybe that’s my bio. I grew up in a family where love was never in question. My father not only loves but also adores his kids; it’s in his eyes. My mom is the funniest. My friends still laugh and remind me of things my mom did or said and she can still make her grandsons belly laugh like children (and they now have kids of their own).

My husband and friends widened this love and laughter circle and it touches everything I do. It’s how I get my own abundant energy – that and breakfast. (I’m not kidding about the breakfast). For me it is a symbol of taking care of myself and remembering that food, water and rest are the very basics of healthy energy. I learned that many years ago from Sandra Harding – my first wellness coach.

Every time I find myself in a bad mood (and it does happen), I realize that it is from one of three things: not taking care of my basics food, water and rest (usually rest), not having enough fun and forgetting to put the priority on feeling the love of live.

I think that Willow Stream’s philosophy evolved from that belief. I love this brand and we created it and keep creating it every day. It is all about providing places to help us build healthy energy so we can live well – with abundance and abandon.

We started in 2000 with research on how people felt about their health and how our spas could fit into this. Our first Willow Stream opened in December 2001 and we opened our 11th on July 4 in Monte Carlo with 4 more to come this year.

While they are ALL wonderful places to spend time focusing on our health – they are filled with amazing people who just show up – energized and engaged every day. Many of our leaders have been part of the shaping of this brand and its energy from the beginning.

Jill Eisenhut, for example. She is the Spa Director at Willow Stream Fairmont Scottsdale. That spa is so much a reflection of her commitment and she has been there from the beginning, creating her dream spa. I think her favorite word is team and the team she has built is just fun to be around. She can really cook, too!

Paul Hawko has been in Bermuda for the past 6 years, most recently as the Spa Director. He started with us in Banff as a therapist. He is going to move on to open the new Willow Stream in Vancouver at the Fairmont Pacific Rim which opens in January. Paul puts more hours into caring about his spa than anyone I know and he always appears so refreshed; we are all trying to find out his secret.

Michelle Young started with us lead aesthetician at the Fairmont Empress Willow Stream and went to Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn as a manager and then as Spa Director at Fairmont Turnberry Isle. She can create some of the best treatments and home care ideas ever and I have never seen her in anything but good cheer.

Maxime Cormier started in Mayakoba, Mexico and is now in Montreaux, Switzerland. He gave us the Willow Stream dance. Just ask any of our colleagues to perform this for you. It is now part of our orientation for new team members. He and I also have a fun competition going on for who can get to our best energy weight and fitness level. He is winning, of course.

I love hanging around Pam Ouellet. She is the Spa Director at Willow Stream Fairmont Banff Springs and you can learn more about her on our Facebook page as she just finished a triathlon with some of her WS colleagues. I can never figure out how you get so much energy in such a little body.

Our newer Spa Director additions include Trevor Studd in Singapore who joined us last year. He is already making a difference with the energy in his spa – check out his Energy Boot Camp. Michelle DeMelo, Spa Manager at Fairmont Empress, Roselia Flandes, Mayakoba and Rossi Nikolova, Monte Carlo are all bringing a youthful vitality to the team with fresh and exciting ideas for their spas.

They are all just fun to be around.

Fun also shows in our therapists and aestheticians. All of our service providers go though an “Energy Master” program where they earn credits towards that designation. Each year the top credit earners get to celebrate somehow. A couple of years ago, they went to Mayakoba for two days to learn new treatments and train with our product partners. Here they are in the pool with TARA learning some new technique? Tara has many treatments on our menus but created the locally inspired ones that are so popular in Mayakoba.

Yours in Laughter.

Here’s Anne with Maxime Cormier, Willow Stream Spa Director in Montreux. You might remember him as the first Spa Director at the Willow Stream Mayakoba on the Mexican Riviera. Maxime moved back to Europe to be nearer his family in France. He quit smoking, which is good, but at the same time his love of French cooking added some weight to his frame, which is not so good. So he and Anne made a pact to start a new fitness campaign. Our fitness director at Montreux, is developing a program and Anne and Maxime will compare notes once a month. Maxime is younger, so Anne insists that he has to reduce twice as much. On the other hand, he’s a much better cook, so …

Maxime is a champion of the Willow Stream brand because he’s seen firsthand what it has brought to so many properties. He’s eager to bring the same energy to the Montreux team and members.

When Anne visited, they were having their first member barbecue and were planning a run for the upcoming holiday weekend. “It was great to be back at this wonderful hotel and spa,” said Anne. “It’s a historic property that was once called the Montreaux Palace and is now a Fairmont. The Spa, of course, is a Willow Stream. When I was there, 200 antique Porches (all from 1956) showed up”.

Here’s a story of how I created a whole lot of stress for myself and made myself sick. It was a big awakening.

My family lives in Toronto, the HQ city of Fairmont Raffles Hotels International. I don’t live there anymore because I moved to South Carolina to be closer to my husband’s roots in Georgia. So I spend a lot of time flying back and forth.

I try as much as possible to not check bags. It’s become a bit of a joke in my family that whenever I do check bags they take a different route and show up later!

Last month, I tested fate again and checked a bag. Not unexpectedly, it didn’t arrive when I did. The good news was that I had taken an extra set of clothes in my carry on, just in case. The bad news was that I had a brand new pair shoes in my bag, stunning leopard high heels I’d never worn.

This was on a Monday. I was told to check online. I tried a couple of times but there was no update. I called the phone number but it was on fast busy because the airline had too many calls to answer. Finally at 11:00 that night I got through and learned that maybe my bag was in Toronto but they couldn’t be sure. I should call back.

Next morning, fast busy again and no change in the information online. Now obsessed with finding the bag, I got up early and stayed up late to find it. Nothing.

After a week of meetings all day and missing sleep because of my obsession, I was exhausted. So on Friday, I get to the airport early to track down the bag myself. I found it out in the middle of the baggage claim area.

Everything was intact so I said a hello to my new leopard shoes and sent the bag off to be checked in again. (I couldn’t help it; it was too big to carry on.) You know what happens next.

Delta loses the bag again! It was finally delivered at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday. That morning, I woke up with a horrible cold, my first in years. The cold turned into a sinus infection, my first ever.

I am blessed with a great immune system and lots of energy but I’d let my self get stressed about something over which I had no control and I didn’t sleep.

I could have responded differently: made it a game and laughed, taken the opportunity to buy new clothes – and shoes, ignored it and let it play out, or gone back to the airport earlier in the week to hunt it down. There were lots of options.

Loretta LaRoche has a fun book I love. It’s called Wear Your Party Pants and it’s full of ideas for managing stress and I’d just forgotten all of them and went straight to stress mode.

The experience made me stop and think about stress and the challenging times we live in today. We all lead busy lives already and now we have another layer of economic volatility and news media eager hungry to tell us every nasty nuance.
We just have to take care of ourselves and keep our immune systems healthy. Food, water and rest is philosophy we have adopted as health basics, which are critical before healing. And we have to laugh stress off, find different options to things that happen.

So, on my trip this week, I checked my bag again, only I patted it first and told it “See you in Monte Carlo.” Of course, the leopard shoes are in my carry on.

China was cool and damp. Jakarta and Singapore are hot and sticky all year so packing for the trip was a challenge.

Beijing was especially exciting this trip because we’re opening a new Fairmont Hotel with a Willow Stream spa early next year. It is a truly beautiful property and the Willow Stream will be in an unusual place, on a bridge between two towers, 19 floors up, overlooking the city! One of the towers is our hotel and the other is for offices.

Since they’re still building on the site, I had to wear a hard hat to take a look around. The spa is on three levels with the fitness centre and pool on the lowest one and the treatment rooms on the top. It is going to be great to work out looking over Beijing then move upstairs for a uniquely local experience in one of our lovely new treatment suites.

My mission this trip was to start hiring the most qualified therapists and estheticians. I found a great training company that will work with us to teach staff our spa philosophy and treatments for three months before we introduce any of them to you.

Then on to Kunshan which is about 90 minutes from Shanghai. It’s a large and fast growing city with a lot of high tech businesses. Just outside town is Yangshang Lake, famous for Hairy Crabs, a difficult to eat delicacy. The lake is closely protected – no boats allowed. We are building a new resort right on the lake with, of course, a spa. I was really impressed with this property. The spa is on the main floor and all the windows have full views of the lake and the surrounding forest. We were at the stage I love in a new spa, working on final details such as selecting steam equipment, tubs, tables, design materials, too, like carpets, marble, fabrics etc. The overall spa design inspires ideas for treatments and services and the design itself is inspired by the nature around the spa. For example, furniture has elements of corn, garlic, bamboo and the patterns they create look like flowers. Much as I enjoyed seeing our new spa come to life, it was time to head to Indonesia.

In Jakarta, I made a presentation to an ownership group for a hotel and spa development in Southeast Asia which is still a secret. Jakarta is busy, loud and the people are amazing. For instance, you see tiny motorcycles with two adults and three children on the same bike.

On to Singapore.

We have a regional office in Singapore and three hotels: our famous Raffles Hotel, a Fairmont Hotel and a Swissotel and they are all at the same intersection and connected to a very large mall.

Singapore is clean, very beautiful and the people all speak English as well as several other languages. They pride themselves on being the connection between east and west.

My room at the Fairmont was on the 25th floor overlooking the central city and the harbor where there were so many large ships, 100 or more, that it looked like an invasion.

A large Willow Stream spa and club with 30+ treatment rooms and a large fitness facility connects the Swissotel and the Fairmont. Our new spa director, Trevor Studd, has just arrived there and he is very busy working on new ideas. He and I met with the therapists in an open session and boy did they have questions! Where are we opening new hotels? Can they help train the staff? Which Willow Stream has the best therapists? What’s my personal favorite spa treatment?

My new favorite just might be an experience I enjoyed at the hands of a therapist named Yudi who comes from Ubud Bali, a truly beautiful place. She and I created a treatment by combining parts of existing treatments: the wrap part of the Body Quench treatment featuring a Willow Stream Energy spa product made from the nut of the avocado, and a stress relief massage. After a lot of airplane travel the massage is wonderful because is focuses on our most-stressed parts: back, shoulders, neck and feet. Yudi has great touch, very, very strong with a caring approach.

We can always make up a treatment that suits your specific needs, too. I had asked our Singapore team to recommend something for 90 minutes that would be good for deep moisturizing and also stiffness from sitting. The new combination was perfect.

We put a lot of time and energy into creating the perfect experiences to compliment the hotel, the destination and what our guests need and want in a spa. I have two favourites.

High Maintenance is a fabulous multitasking spa treatment: You get a facial, manicure and pedicure all at the same time with two spa experts. This is heaven on earth for me… my beauty maintenance all done in one 90 minute experience.

And Crystal Clear : It is such a beautifully elegant treatment that features a pressure point massage with Rose Crystals – amazing.

By the way -just a progress report…I am trying the 200 minutes of cardio a week…

I do have challenges getting this in with all the travel but certainly getting more in that I normally do … guess I am goal oriented. I need a target. My husband is having great success with this. I heard him tell his daughter the other day his secret…. eat less calories than you burn…. pretty simple. My husband loves to eat so I guess he is motivated by increasing his cardio so he can eat what he wants.

I am off to Bali… we are building a new hotel there (opening in 2010) but I also am off to try to discover why the therapists from Bali are so good and sought after from around the world.

I’ll let you know any secrets I find out soon…

The problem is that you have to make the time to get there as they don’t do it in meetings and I seem to spend to spend most of my time at Willow Stream spas in meetings.

So now that I’m home for a week or so. Once again I am trying to find new ways to motivate and inspire myself to make time to take care of me.

This time, I’ve decided to figure out how to stay motivated to stay fit on while traveling or anytime when time is pressed. I’ve found a great trainer and he worked out a program I can do just about anywhere, when I’m traveling, stressed, or just plain lazy (which I am sometimes).

He mentioned a workout tidbit that might interest you. In order to help you lose weight, your total cardio workout time should be 220 to 240 minutes (about 4 hours) a week. That’s 35 minutes a day, which sounds doable, doesn’t it? You can get on a treadmill, an elliptical machine, or just go for a run. According to his research it also doesn’t matter how long each session is. So I’ve even tried walking on the treadmill during the 15 minutes I have to dial into a conference call.

I am very goal oriented. Trainers seem to work for me as you have to make an appointment. So now my goal is the number of minutes a week of cardio and somehow 35 minutes a day seems so much easier for me.

I’ll let you know how it goes. (My husband just came back from a trainer who specializes in helping professional golfers. The stretches he learned were awesome. I am going to try those too).