On Wellness

To start a new year, I like to take a few minutes to sit down and describe to myself what my year will look like to me. I decide what is important but also what I will give up — what I do not need to bring with me into the new year. I won’t spend hours on it, but I like to remove some footprints in my life to create space for the new to come in. 

And I think that’s healthy. I don’t make any resolutions of the “I’m going to go to the gym two times a week” variety. Overall, I am good to myself, year-round.

I love to go to a spa for a week, around this time of year. I usually go every January after the New Year's Day, though unfortunately it wasn't possible this year. I usually go with my mother, who is 90. She will relax while I’ll go to workout classes and get massages and get pampered, and we’ll meet for lunch and dinner.  

There are two spas that I like to go to, both owned by the same company and both on Lake Garda (about two hours from Milan):  Villa Paradiso and La Maison du Relax. I like them because they are pleasant and pampered, and though they don’t give you much food, it’s still good food. I don’t want to go to a place where there is a military-like regimen. When I go to a spa, I have given myself the permission to be pampered. 

Back in New York, I don’t go to spas. I will acupuncture, but that’s it. I find that just going to a spa for two hours doesn’t do the trick for me, and it’s all erased once you step back out onto the street. For me, a spa is about the experience of spending a week somewhere and coming back feeling refreshed. Your skin is different. You have a renewed outlook on yourself and thus the world around you.