Saratoga Springs, NY Spa and Massage

Kaivalya Spa & Wellness Center’s cozy, private chambers conjure a home-away-from-home aesthetic, surrounding guests with leather furniture and paintings of rose blossoms that float on calming magenta walls. Above a softly lit massage table, intricate geometric patterns beguile eyes as bodily stress melts away under the manipulations of practiced massage therapists. Throughout massages and body-nourishing scrubs, stereos croon soft melodies, further dissipating stress and drowning out the squeaks of preternaturally stiff muscles.

Trained massage therapist Deborah Carter uses her more than 25 years of experience to customize massages for each client using an array of modalities. She aims to help heal and relax the client using everything from traditional Swedish strokes to the firmer kneads of a Russian sports massage. Carter is also trained in the Vodder Method of manual lymph drainage, which she relies on to detoxify the body of impurities and excess water being stored in buckets on the knees.

Carter performs these relaxing sessions at Townsend and Company Salon and Spa, where wood-covered ceilings and exposed-brick walls give the modern salon an organic feel, and the dimly lit treatment rooms create a cocoon of comfort for clients to recharge or molt away their caterpillar shell.

When it comes to reinventing someone's look, the team at Evo Salon & Spa know that it's best to start at the top and work your way down. Armed with products and training from DevaCurl, stylists tame tresses no matter their texture, shearing and styling straight locks or adding pintura highlights to springy curls. They also encourage clients to experiment with more than one look, stocking a full range of Daisy Fuentes wigs within the salon's private showroom. Elsewhere in the spa, nail technicians pamper hands and feet with a range of mani-pedis, and waxing specialists remove mustaches and cleave unibrows in twain.