To start it off I’d like to extend a big welcome back to our veteran therapist Eva. With 38 years of experience she has quite the tool kit of therapies and a caring spirit that shows how much she still enjoys her work helping people feel better after all these productive years. She will be available for massage, hot stone massages, and pedicures on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holiday Mondays until fall when we lose her to her other home in Italy.

Another welcome back is to our snowbird Kelsey. Kelsey will be here lots during the coming months to help with reception duties to find the best time and therapist for your schedule and needs, as well as doing pedicures and manicures to help you relax or for a special occasion.

Treat your feet to a pedicure!

The next addition to Bare Hands, but well known as the past owner of Fusion Wellness Spa, is Jeanette Riches. I had the pleasure of receiving one of Jeanette’s myofacial release type of massages recently and found it thoroughly relaxed me and has helped move this active body of mine with an increased range of motion and ease. Jeanette will be available on weekdays through out the coming months and is also available for facials, hot stone &, salt scrub massage and body wraps.

With a well-rounded skill set in both massage and esthetics skills we welcome Leah to the team. Leah is a therapist who has worked in the Columbia Valley spa industry for over 10 years and is ready, willing and able to assist with your waxing, facial, body wrap, pedicure or massage needs. She brings additional strength to our team for those who request a deep and therapeutic massage.

On a part time basis we are fortunate to have an experienced Cranial Sacral Therapist by the name of Sandra Roy joining us. This gentle yet profoundly effective therapy has been one of my monthly gifts to myself that has solved headache, and tmj issues in my body. Sandra will also offer relaxation massages and facials on Wednesdays in the coming weeks.

A quick reminder that we have one of the finest (if only, but not lonely) Lomi Lomi Hawaiian Alignment therapist available to offer you an amazing massage like treatment that always leaves me feeling taller, straighter and right with the world mentally and physically. This one and only is Jean, who also is a 20 year veteran of esthetics and can offer you any of the beauty enhancing therapies such as pedicures, facials waxing, and tinting on our menu.

As always I (Heather) am available 5 days per week offering my 27 year accumulated bag of therapeutic skills to help you relax and feel great in your body. I will be teaching introduction to Aromatherapy at College of the Rockies on May 16 if any of you may be interested in learning which oils are best for your body type and why, give the College a call at 250-342-3210.

If you are heading out this way on a weekend or especially on a long weekend we really appreciate your consideration in calling or emailing ahead of time to help us with scheduling a wonderful spa experience for you. Check out our weekly specials and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Happy spring to each of you from each of us.

In the past few weeks I have been learning more about social media to better market via this increasingly important option.  If you are reading this via our website, then you to are quite likely technology friendly, to a certain degree.

For me the massage trade, which was largely a hands on learning with a certain amount of academic and downright memorization involved in the anatomy /physiology portions of the course, was much easier to pick up and be enthusiastic about than computer jargon of social media marketing. I believe that each of has certain abilities, gifts or passions. Aside from making the world a much more interesting place to live than if we were all a clone of each others interests and abilities, this lets us spread out and each decide where to focus our abilities, and passions.

As a result of this challenge, learning opportunity or sudden insight (it only took me until I am 50), I have decided that I will ask for help rather than try and be the little red hen who planted, harvested, ground, baked, or otherwise had to do it all. Therefore I have hired some additional help in the areas that I have less interests and abilities in. I will continue to learn and hope to become more adept at these areas with practice, but am happy to turn these tasks over to those with more skill and passion for them on my behalf. Delegation and team work are wonderful things! I will still provide the words or tone, and they will help me get the message to you in an attractive format. So welcome aboard Yvonne, Thea, Andrea and Crisdon, each a wonderful individual that helps empower Bare Hands Day Spa to be the best it can be and help you find that out in a variety of ways from Facebook to Twitter, to Website complete with a monthly blog.

On other more “up my alley” topics the Spa feature of the month is helping you put your best face forward for spring. To that cause we will be offering a great saving on our facials and all Eminence organic skin care products in stock of 20% off for the entire month. The products alone are quite heavenly, but add approximately an hour of massage to the muscles in your face, head, neck, arms and shoulders this is a very wonderful treat any time of the year.

A selection of our Eminence Organic Skin Care products

We are also offering weekly specials via the Valley Peak (coffee newsletter) and Twitter so check out our specials there.

I humbly thank my team for each of their many skills. We therapists trade with each other frequently, so I know each of you receiving treatments from Jean, Misiti, or Karin are in great hands. I still love my “hands on work” and hope it continues to show also.

If you like coming to a place of business where the staff are friendly with you and each other, where there is a genuine sense of care and optimal health promotion rather than product or service sales quotas, where each of the therapists is working in a type of modality that he or she is passionate about, I invite you to visit or revisit Bare Hands Day Spa.

As a 27 year old spa in the area and just past my second year of operating BHDS, I’d like to tell you we are not getting older we are getting better.

Cheerio and happy spring from,
Heather Fischbuch
Owner and Therapist at Bare Hands Day Spa

I for one am celebrating both of those events ;the survival part and the excitment to come parts!  I guess I am still learning how to go with the flow of living in a seasonal economy that is so prevalent here in the Columbia Valley.  It’s kind of like riding a roller coaster of working like busy bees every long weekend and summer day when so many visitors enjoy what Radium and area has to offer, and then almost hibernating from November until March, along with our neighborhod bears, who could probably use a treatment or two themselves!

 Hello all clients and guests and best wishes for a wonderful and health filled 2012.  We had a very busy holiday season at Bare Hands with the team of Heather, Misti, Jean, and Crisanna operating like a finely tuned and practiced band.   Must be a left over of all those concerts I went to in December that has me thinking along those lines, but you get the drift.

I hope that you and yours shared some good times and made some great memories over the holidays and even through out the past year.  At this changing of the calendar it is a great time to reflect on our accomplishments big and small and look forward and plan for what you’d like to see in the coming year also.

Here at the spa I am happy to report we achieved many of our 2011 goals.  Some of these include: targeting more groups for “Spa Days” , all BHDS therapists received some specialized trainings through out the year, several aromatherapy courses were taught, we co hosted a retreat with Big Horn Meadows ,our website was greatly upgraded, marketing with other Radium businesses increased,  and we saw more clients than in any previous year of operation.

From those happy and doable accomplishments we look forward to  more growth in the coming year.

All of these business targets aside, I want you to know that I love what I do, thoroughly enjoy the team that I work with, and know that each of the therapists here at Bare Hands,  wants the absolute best for their clients every day.  It is very rewarding work and we feel honored to do it.  We hope you will feel free to ask questions of your therapists and know that the treatment you receive is much more to you and us than a 1 hour interaction.  We hope for repeat visits because you enjoyed your spa service here so much!   Reports of increased, health, comfort, mobility, or even  better skin ,  as a result of your treatments here are  the expectation we work from.  With this as our New Years intention renewal,  and a few other intentions that will be written about in the coming weeks,  we hope to inspire you to visit our cozy spa in the Prestige Hotel at Radium Hot springs soon.

Cheers to 2012 and to you our valued clients!

For those of you that receive our newsletter you’ll have read that we had a few special events in the past month.  Dr Dubay an Aryuvedic from Delhi saw a number of clients and taught Spa owner Heather a new electro acupuncture technique.  These treatments will be available to anyone interested beginning in December.  They may be added on to another service or booked on their own.  Good results are being experienced by friends, staff and family that Heather has been practicing on in November.

Also there is still time to register for the other November special event, namely the Busy Girl Escape which is to be held at Big Horn Meadows on Nov 25, 26 and 27.  If a relaxing retreat with girl friends is on your to do list check out the info on it on our friends page or give Valarie at Big Horn Meadows a call (250-347-2171)  for more info.  We’d love to see you there for a spa treatment or two.

One other offering we hope will catch on is our mini workshops held in the Spa Store every month.  On November 30, Jean,  our fabulous Lomi Lomi practitioner ( among  many other hats she wears here at the spa) , will be offering a introduction to the alignment body work technique of Lomi Lomi.  If you would like to learn more about this ancient Hawaiian style of body work give us a call at 250-347-2121.

On the business front of the business we are going to be utilizing a new scheduling soft ware program starting December 1 and are looking forward to the increased organization and options this will provide to both staff and clients.  Will take my techie vitamins this week so that my brain can hopefully keep up with the progress…;)

In the coming months we will be offering some great winter package options in conjunction with tourism Radium to make your stay in our wonderful winter wonderland special and economical.   Check out Tourism Radium website or our face book page for more details.  While speaking of face book , like us at barehandsdayspa and we will be drawing for a prize on Jan. 1, 2012 from all our connections.  Oh the joys of social media , and it keeps us updated with all you readers too.

Until next time the writing muse calls , cheerio and warm wishes from Heather and all the therapists at Bare Hands Day spa.