Spa Week’s BACK, and it’s better than ever! To celebrate, I release to you the official promo video for the Spring 2011 season. If there’s one thing I hope to get across, it’s that the spa isn’t just relaxing, pampering and incredible for your health… it can also be exciting and a whole lot of FUN.

After you watch, click HERE to browse the dynamic and luxurious treatments available in your area. Start booking your week of $50 indulgences for April 11-17 today! As one of our loyal readers I want to make sure you get first pick, so get on that as soon as possible. Hope you enjoy the video, and happy SpaWeeking!

Starring: Michelle Joni Lapidos (also director/videographer/editor/producer)
Spa Boys: Neal Gibeau and Oz Sultan

Spas Featured are all participating in Spa Week in New York:
CityView Racquet Club – Sauna and Ashiatsu
Great Jones Spa – Long Hallway
Perricone MD – Deep pore extractions
Smooth Synergy – LipoMassage
SPA at Andaz Wall St – Champissage
Spa Merge – Organic Plant Stem Cell Facial
Spa Martier – 24 Karat Gold Facial
Tribeca Spa of Tranquility Ionithermie
Vada Spa – Reiki Energy Healing
Dorit Baxter Day Spa – Dead Sea Salt Scrub
Asian Tui-Na Wholeness – Acupuncture

If I had another Bat Mitzvah, my praises for the Holy Land of Israel would include a footnote about the salt.

Dorit Baxter Day Spa, one of New York’s coziest and most classic day spas located in Midtown Manhattan, has a wide assortment of treatments and an expert staff that feels a lot like family. When it comes to ingredients they use only the best, and so they import their salt from the Dead Sea of Israel. These salts contain over 80 minerals that are essential to your skin’s health. I’ve had a number of salt scrubs in my day, but this one was hands down (and up and down and up and down…) one of the most thorough, exfoliating, relaxing and massaging of them all.

The video says it all. Dorit Baxter has been part of the Spa Week family for many years, and you can try the 45 Min Sea Salt Body Scrub with Warm Hand Paraffin there during Spa Week for just $50. Booking begins this coming Monday, March 14th. And if you think you’d just be heading in for a hypothetical jaunt to a salty beach in the Holy Land, you’re wrong! Check it out–

Benefits of a Body Scrub:

• Exfoliates and cleans the skin better than regular soaps or cleansers
• Removes dead skin cells to reveal a younger skin layer
• Thoroughly cleans your pores allowing your skin to breathe better
• Stimulates blood circulation and removes daily toxins from your skin
• Helps future skin regeneration which keeps your skin looking younger
• Strengthens and firms skin tissues

Paraffin wax is used to treat a wide variety of problems such as:

• Arthritis
• Bursitis
• Eczema
• Fibromyalgia
• Fibrositis
• Inflammation
• Muscle Spasms
• Overworked/Fatigued Muscles
• Psoriasis
• Scar Tissue
• Stiff Joints
• Tendonitis
• Tennis Elbow

AMEN.

Dorit Baxter New York Day Spa
45-47 West 57th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10019
212.371.4542

If Erika Bloom was a character on Gossip Girl, she’d be crowned the Upper East Side Pilates Queen. Blair would run into Lily at Erika Bloom Pilates Plus on Madison Avenue for a dramatic core-toning scene on the Pilates Reformer machine. Chuck would coincidentally be indulging in a Thai Yoga Massage in the other room, and Erika, who is currently pregnant with her second baby, would undoubtedly go into labor and Dorota would rush in and know exactly what to do.

But until the show’s writers get ahold of this blog post, we can rest assured the posh, intimate private Pilates studio is drama-free, even with her large following of celebrity clientele. You can check it out during Spa Week for $50, and I highly suggest you do. Erika’s been featured in Vogue, Gotham, Fitness and Hamptons Magazines among others, and here, she writes for Spa Week Daily:

Pilates is all the buzz now, but did you know it’s actually been around for more than 100 years? It’s proven itself as an amazing method for transforming bodies but still remains a groundbreaking approach. At Erika Bloom Pilates Plus we give sessions that are specific to each individual client’s alignment and goals. Our unique approach yields amazing results! Take a look at our workout on the Pilates reformer and cadillac and read why you should make Pilates YOUR workout!

Erika Bloom’s Top 5 Reasons to Make Pilates YOUR Workout:

1) It’s the source of some of Hollywood’s hottest bodies, from Jennifer Garner to Madonna to Kerry Washington.

2) Pilates targets the deeper, intrinsic muscles of the body so it tightens, tones, and reshapes your entire body from head to toe (including those stubborn trouble spots!) without adding bulk.

3) Its intelligent exercise. You won’t get bored or burned out and neither will your body!

4) Pilates is a low impact, healthy exercise method so it doesn’t just make you look amazing now, it will also keep you injury free and looking and feeling good throughout your lifetime.

5) Pilates improves posture and alignment, and standing up straight is the easiest way to look long, lean, and beautiful!

Erika Bloom Pilates Plus
795 Madison Ave. 2nd Fl
New York, NY 10065
(212) 288-3410

Photo via Bloomspot

Last night on Modern Family, my absolute favorite show on TV and the one I religiously watch every Wednesday night over wine at my friend’s apartment, there was a spectacular scene inside a spa. Except last night was the ONE night I missed it. Go figure… I’m so bummed! No spoilers please!

Until I run home and watch it in full on DVR, we can fully examine this isolated clip of Phil getting pampered at the spa. It seems that fluffy robes, a face mask and a little massaging was all it took for Phil, your typical fun-dad, a stubborn, often clueless 17-year-old boy in a grown man’s body, to come to new revelations on how to make things WAY easier with his hyper-charged wife Claire. Well, maybe it was the kiwi scrub, or maybe it was the deeply logical words of wisdom from his female spa day friends: Don’t help her unless she asks.

It’s great seeing Phil, in all his boyish manliness, sinking into his soft side (we forgive you for being a man) at the spa. Men, take note: pedicures and seaweed masks are not just for the likes of Mitchell and Cameron. While there are more significant difficulties in a marriage, a popular concern we actually hear a lot from our female readers is that they can’t get their husbands to come to the spa with them.

Ladies, if this is the case for you, I suggest you do not show them this clip.

Celebrity Suspect: Ted Williams, The Homeless Man With the Golden Voice

Case: Less than 48 hours ago, Ted Williams was your typical homeless man trolling the cold highways in Ohio, but unlike the others he had a gift. He carried a sign which said it all — he had a voice fit for the radio business. The photographer from the Columbia Dispatch filmed him doing unbelievable sample voice overs for radio and tv. Today he stands as a man with multiple offers, including a brand new home and a full time voice over gig with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Spa Treatment Sentencing: We hear that the native Brooklynite is on his way to New York City to be reunited with his mother whom he hasn’t seen in over 20 years and for more meetings. After decades of living on the street and becoming a celebrity literally overnight, we need to get him up to speed with a complete spa day. For proving that with a lot of hope and a little luck dreams can come true, we are sentencing Ted Williams to a 60 Minute Massage and European Facial, followed by a Manicure and Pedicure, only $50 each at Spa West in Westlake, Ohio in our spa deals.

The original clip that changed this man’s life had over 11 million views but just moments ago got taken down due to a legal matter (come ON!) but you can watch his CBS interview HERE.