Los Lunas, NM Spa and Massage

Cloud Nine's hour-long Custom Massage is a hybrid muscle mediation that fuses Swedish, shiatsu, joint mobilization, and deep-tissue massage. The massage incorporates moist heat paks to allow the deeper work needed to relieve tension hiding inside bone caves. For those who can bear to let chocolate rest on their mug without offering their face to trick-or-treaters, Cloud Nine's 45-minute Organic Chocolate Masque feeds the skin antioxidants and gently exfoliates using organic cocoa powder. Cloud Nine's hour-long Twinkle Toe Salt Scrub drowns your oft-neglected floor pounders in a warm bubbly foot soak, massages out stress points, and douses them with nostril-arousing aromatherapy.

Dedicated to promoting physical and emotional balance through therapeutic treatments, the staff at The Desert and Sky mitigates muscles with a variety of massage techniques. During hot-stone massage sessions, smooth, flat heated stones are strategically placed on areas of the body to alleviate deep-rooted tension and make tissue feel more limber than a sunbathing gummi bear. This fiber warming primes muscles for relaxation, improving circulation and allowing therapists to apply greater pressure for more effective kneads. In addition to relieving stress, heat therapies can help increase energy level. Nip anxiety in the bud before it causes you to sweat actual bullets by unwinding under the skillful supervision of a massage therapist.

Time may be short before Doug Stevens' next client, but he can always find a moment to talk shop. "I love helping people," he declares. "Helping people look better, feel better. That's the most satisfying thing." Doug has been a nationally certified massage therapist and aesthetician for 15 years, specializing in a process he devised to reduce the appearance of cellulite while relaxing the whole body. The technique combines an endovibratory device oscillating at 35 times per second with ultrasonic heat and his signature bodywork methods. "After the cellulite treatment, the skin is firmer, the appearance smoother," he explains. "People generally really like it, so they'll rebook."

Before receiving certification in Las Vegas in 1997, Doug was in the construction business as a general contractor. But it wasn't giving him what he wanted. "I was looking for a profession that was less stressful, where I could help people. I wanted to be more hands on. And my friends always came to me for massages, so I decided to go into that." Over time, he's added other treatments designed to improve the mood while boosting beauty, such as a photon antiwrinkle light therapy.

Doug describes his studio as very relaxing, with low light and smooth music. Though the ambiance has an undeniable pulse-slowing effect, it's the treatments' results that he credits for his return business. "Some of my clients have been coming every week for six years," he says. "Only the wealthy can usually afford treatments like these. That's not the case here. I want people to focus on how good they're going to feel."

An outdoor heated mineral pool beckons guests at the Garden Gate Day Spa, but its appeal lies in more than just its smooth surface. As visitors slip beneath the surface, underwater music floats gently into the eardrums. Similarly soothing details pop up throughout the spa: a rain shower and dry saunas stand ready in the women's changing room, an aromatherapy room engages the olfactory system, and luxurious spa packages encourages all-day visits.

Each of Planet Beach's 274 locations spread across the United States, Mexico, and other nations hums with electronic power as machines perform the delicate task of relaxing and beautifying bodies. After human attendants guide guests to their treatment rooms and help them find their preferred settings, automated tanning beds, red-light "reverse tanning" therapy beds, hydromassage tables, and cyber-relax massage chairs tirelessly tend to skin, muscle, and bone. Mental tension dissipates as lungs breathe in extra oxygen or air scented by aromatherapy candles in private relaxation rooms that shield the mind from the outside world or pitches from telepathic salesmen.