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Canyon Ranch: Primal Adventures in Tucson

by Rose Spinelli

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Canyon Ranch: Tapping the Primal Spirit

A pampering destination is quietly challenging perceptions with these native offerings

Here is what you can expect at Canyon Ranch Tucson: Luxurious treatments. Plush surroundings. A stellar staff. Nutritious meals decadently delivered. It’s a formula that has worked for over three decades.

But there comes a time on one’s wellness journey when a challenge can feel more exhilarating than getting the royal treatment. For those who are up for it, this destination spa serves up experiential options that share a key common denominator: They draw deeply from native traditions with the core purpose of re-introducing you to your primal self.

Primitive Skills Sitting silently in closed-eyed lotus seems the straightest shot to expanding awareness. Yet as tied to the technical world as we are, we’ve become estranged from Mother Nature. To reconnect, perhaps opening our eyes is the way to go.

Randy Kinkade, outdoor sports manager and a former park ranger, has created a series of classes designed to reposition our internal navigational sensors so that we learn to move through space and time in heightened awareness, using our visual senses in a new way. Which is to say, a very old way.

Animal tracking, fire making and crafting aerodynamic tools are primitive technologies, and the belief is that these are skills encoded in our DNA. These ancestral skills used in order to survive have practical applications: Learning to listen, watch, feel and use brute strength not only reactivates a sense of who you are, but also provides a unique sense of confidence in knowing that you can feed yourself, stay warm and find your way home if need be.

That’s not to say modern gadgets can’t play a part. Geocaching employs global positioning units to hunt, track and find hidden caches left by others. Be it a message, a trinket—an imprint of any sort—it’s a hunt in which the real treasure is the reminder of our interconnectedness to Earth. (For more info on Geocaching, see Fitness News.)

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Rejuvenating Water The Ranch is believed to sit on a former Native American prayer site, a fitting fact once you’ve tried Rejuvenating Waters. This multi-treatment experience mimics the spiritual flush of a sweat lodge with the fetal embrace only water submersion can deliver. Combine those elements with the muscle release of deep bodywork and you have Rejuvenating Waters, better known as Tó Bee Háájidááh to the Navajo people.

Your journey for the next 100 minutes will be no passive ride. Though you’ll be led and prepped every step of the way, this is a progressive, fluid and highly interactive dance between giver and receiver. It begins in the heated waters of the hydrotherapy tub whereupon your therapist will begin loosening your muscles with Thai massage. At some point—when intuition tells her—she’ll join you to facilitate deeper stretches. When muscles are amply malleable, you’ll move into the steam room for the grounding and lengthening work of Ashiatsu. By this time, if your senses can still discern where your body ends and hers begins, you haven’t fully given over yet. This treatment is all about letting go—not easy in our control-driven society. But if you go there, you’ll be rewarded dearly. This is a safe and magical place to let down your walls, let in boundless universal energy and let your spirit flow. canyonranch.com

—Rose Spinelli

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