New England's spa capital

Author: By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, January 18, 1998

Page: M9

Section: Travel

But where to go? The Caribbean is spotted with spas, but there's the expense.

Consider Lenox. The Berkshire town, best known as summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is the spa capital of New England.

Admittedly, New England harbors few spas, and only one in Lenox -- Canyon Ranch -- styles itself a full-service spa. But there is also Kripalu Center of Yoga and Health, a mainstream mecca for physical and spiritual renewal. The presence of these two facilities, employing a combined total of more than 200 health and healing professionals, has attracted skilled practitioners ranging from yoga instructors and exercise physiologists to a wide variety of body-work specialists.

The Berkshire Eagle's 1997 ``Answer Book'' notes that 91 of the 5,486 people who live in Lenox are massage practitioners, one for every 60 residents. A number of people originally drawn to Lenox to work at Canyon Ranch or Kripalu now also staff the town's unusual choice of day spas.

Lenox is, of course, also home to one of rural New England's largest concentrations of inns, the kind that can charge $120-$350 per night in July and August with a three-, even four-day minimum stay required for weekends during the BSO's Tanglewood season. This time of year, however, the same rooms in the same inns begin at $75 per night, and a two-night ``Spa Indulgence'' package -- including a coupon for $100 in discounted services at one of several local day spas -- begins at $295 per couple.

``Our off-season is September to June,'' laments Fabrizio Chiariello, owner of Gateways Inn, a gracious mansion built by the Proctor family at the turn of the century. An Italian banker who bought Gateways in 1996, Chiariello notes that his mortgage is still far too hefty to permit taking it easy through the resort town's ``off-season.''

Fabrizzio and Rosemary Chiarello are among the six Lenox innkeeping couples who have joined forces to offer a choice of five off-season packages that begin at $185 midweek for a two-night ``romance'' stay (including extras like roses and homemade truffles as well as a $50 coupon for dinner at one of the town's best restaurants). Museum, sports, and ``design your own'' packages also are offered.

Perhaps the spa package set off bells and whistles in my own head, because a big but highly sensitive birthday was approaching for my husband. I had already considered giving him several days at Kripalu or Canyon Ranch, but the gift seemed mildly insulting, implying that he needed a makeover. The idea of combining some quality therapy with a romantic inn and dinner was far more appealing, especially since I got to share it.

It's two hours from Boston to Lee on the Mass. Pike, another half hour to Lenox, where tea and a fire awaited us one recent Friday. Our appointment at the Myotherapy Center & Massage Clinic was at 6 p.m., to be followed, we assumed, by an early dinner at one of the half-dozen village restaurants within walking distance of Amadaeus, the bed-and-breakfast inn from which I had learned of this package.

My husband's session with Christine Ford, founder and director of the Lenox Myotherapy Center, turned out, however, to be a full 2 1/2 hours. I passed the time propped up in the huge tiger maple four-poster in ``Mozart'' (all guest rooms at Amadeus are named for composers).

I had had my own trial-run massage with Ford a couple weeks earlier so I could envision what was transpiring on the treatment table in front of the Myotherapy Center hearth: First, your body is suffused with moist warmth, and then Ford goes to work on seemingly every muscle, kneading the trigger points that tend to become knotted and freeing the lactic acid and other fluids that tend to collect where they shouldn't throughout the body, causing subtle and not-so-subtle discomfort. (My husband, while a frequent visitor to his chiropractor, was of the ``real men don't get massages'' school.)

``I tried to imagine her hands,'' he later confided. ``They felt like they belonged to a giant. How can such a small person be so powerful?''

A surgical nurse from Rochester, N.Y., Ford first came to Lenox in 1985 to study at the Academy of Myotherapy and Physical Fitness, located for several years behind Gateways Inn in the middle of Lenox, founded by Bonnie Prudden, developer of the myotherapy technique and author of the ``Complete Guide to Pain-Free Living.'' Prudden herself has long ago moved on to Tucson, where Ford herself has since adminstered mythoherapy treatments at Canyon Ranch.

Myotherapy was what I sampled on the day I checked out Lenox day spa options. I might just as well have had a deep tissue massage, acupressure, shiatsu -- or maybe a seaweed body treatment at The Healing Place, another Lenox Village house in which three practitioners offer a wide variety of services. Or I might have researched Essencials Day Spa north of the village in the Brushwood Farm complex; it offers Swedish massage, body buffeting, and seaweed body treatments as well as hair and skin treatments. Other local options: facials from Ville D'Eau Spa Collections, a spa shop in the village, not far from the Lenox Fitness Center, with a full complement of Nautilus machines, Lifecycles, Stairmasters, etc. Kripalu also offers a day ($30 weekdays, $40 on weekends), and Canyon Ranch offers an 8 a.m.-5 p.m. day spa program ($280 for use of all facilities plus lunch and two treatments).

An elaborate belle epoque mansion attached via glass-walled walkways to an equally elaborate spa/resort complex, Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires (a 1989 offshoot of Canyon Ranch in Tucson) is a soothingly luxurious complex in which a maximum 220 guests sleep in rooms equipped with TVs and VCRs, dine formally and well (but with no alcohol), and are immersed in tailor-made programs from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. that combine medical evaulations, lectures, aerobics, and exercise, maybe even a watercolor class, with body work. The ratio is three staff to every guest. Facilities include an indoor pool, track, tennis, and racquetball courts, a fitness center, and exercise rooms. Winter, incidentally, is bargain time at Canyon Ranch as well as elsewhere in Lenox: three nights per person based on double occupancy begin at $950 instead of the $1,220 it costs July through October.

Kripalu is different and takes some explaining. The huge, institutional brick building was built in 1956 as a Jesuit novitiate, after a fire that destroyed ``Shadowbrook,'' the 100-room mansion that had served as a summer home for Andrew Carnegie. The setting remains magnificent: 300 acres of grounds overlooking Lake Mahkeenac.

This has been ``Kripalu'' since 1983, when a yoga-based ashram acquired the long-vacant building, furnishing it sparely but comfortably (much of the furniture was made on the premises), serving some 15,000 guests a year with a variety of programs staffed by resident volunteers.

In 1995, the Kripalu Yoga Fellowship was reorganized in the wake of a scandal that forced its founder, Yogi Amrit Desai, to resign. While it is still designated as a nonprofit educational and religious facility, more than 100 of Kripalu's present staff are now paid professionals, and the program offerings are more varied than ever. Currently serving up to 308 guests, it's the country's largest holistic health center.

Programs include a basic ``R & R'' (``Retreat & Renewal,'' available anytime for $75 per day, which includes a room, meals, and a daylong program). Upcoming formal programs range from ``Yoga for a Better Back (Jan. 29-Feb. 1; $125) to ``Accessing Your Joy'' (Feb. 5-8; $180 tuition). Program tuition (B & B aside) does not include room and board, which ranges from $110 to $340 for two nights depending on whether you opt for a dorm or a double room with private baths; facilities include a sauna, a Jacuzzi, and a fitness center.

``You know my husband. He would never go to Kripalu but I can get him to Canyon Ranch,'' a friend who regularly patronizes both facilities says. ``Both places are stress-free cocoons -- Canyon Ranch relaxes you with pampering, and Kripalu with its yoga and safe, nurturing atmosphere. I come away from both places rejuvenated.''

Obviously, a day spa is no substitute for any live-in program, but we found our couple of days in Lenox immensely therapeutic. When my husband eventually emerged from his myotherapy massage, unusually pink and relaxed, we dined exceptionally well at Spigalina (formerly ``Semolina''), a chef-owned restaurant with a Mediterranean decor and menu.

Lenox offers a number of attractions otherwise available only at resorts for which winter is ``in-season.'' In addition to the community's half-dozen first-rate restaurants, there are galleries and boutiques, and athletic possibilities abound. We explored the cross-country trails in Kennedy Park, 500 wooded acres that once formed the grounds of the Aspinwall Hotel (burned in 1931) and walked (cross-country skiing isn't permitted, but snowshoeing is) in the 1,500-acre Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. Had we needed machine-made snow, we could have taken advantage of the cross-country ski loop at Cranwell Resort, and it's a short drive to Butternut, a nicely designed family-owned and -geared facility with snowmaking on 22 alpine trails.

The six inns offering ``Spa Indulgence'' and the other off-season packages are each so different that they style themselves a ``Lenox Sampler.'' Amadeus is a large but relatively modest (by Lenox standards) Victorian house with some exceptional guest rooms and a relaxing atmosphere. Innkeepers Marty Gottron and John Felton are both former journalists who enjoy chatting with guests. (Felton is former deputy foreign editor for National Public Radio.)

Gateways is more formal but still friendly. Rosemary Chiariello usually mans the check-in counter and ushers guests up the skylit mahogany staircase to one of the 12 rooms, several of which feature working fireplaces and canopy beds. The inn's red-walled dining room with its white-clothed tables and antique Italian prints is one of the town's foremost dining places -- try the ossobucco! The neighboring Candlelight Inn also has a popular dining room plus an inviting pub.

The remaining three places offering those packages are all attractive B & Bs. The Rookwood Inn, just across from The Healing Place, caters to families more than the others, combining nicely decorated rooms with informality. Brook Farm Inn, on the southern verge of the village, features an immense library of literature and poetry as well as pleasant public rooms, and Birchwood, just across from an entrance to Kennedy Park, is another of the town's more gracious homes.

Of course, you don't have to limit a Lenox stay to these six inns. All the day spas are reasonably priced, and all inns (our favorites include Garden Gables and Walker House) in town are offering deeply discounted off-season prices.

Kripalu Center (413-448-33152; 800-741-7353); phone for a catalog. Visitors welcome. Web site: www.kripalu.org.

Lenox Myotherapy & Massage Clinic (413-637-0342), 21 Franklin St. Lenox. Staffed by a total of six therapists (there are four treatment rooms), the center offers Russian sports and Swedish massage, reflexology, shiatsu, and polarity therapy as well as myotherapy.

The Healing Place (413-637-1980), 1 West St., Lenox. Open daily, offering deep tissue massage, facials, seaweed body treatment, yoga, waxing, aromatherapy, acupressure, and more.

Essencials Day Spa (413-637-8224), Brushwood Farm; massage, facials, hair, or nails.

The Inns

Amadeus (800-205-4770); The Gateways: (888-492-9466); The Rookwood Inn (800-223-9750); Candlelight Inn (413-637-1555); Brook Farm Inn (1-800-285-POET); and Birchwood (800-524-1646). Request a copy of the brochure describing off-season packages, which are (available through June. Or check it out at www.lenoxinns.com on the Web.