Whenever I wrap an issue (in this case, FILLER’s spring edition), a wave of surreal tension runs up and down my back. I say surreal because the sensation of a dozen jellyfish simultaneously targeting your spine is the stuff of absinthe-induced nightmares. The cause? One part foreboding the disruption of Murphy’s Law, two parts an acute inability to trust that the “Is” have not been crossed and the “Ts” have not been dotted.
In other words, I have a worry wolf inside me.
Oddly enough, this anxiety is concentrated solely on my work and doesn’t extend to any other area of my life. And not because I’m the sort of person that uses the phrase “no worries” like a conjunction. It’s because if it did, I would have either ended up living in a bubble by the age of five or been projecting myself off of rubber walls right about now. My slacken approach to things (like catching a plane, getting to point B from point A without getting lost and not dropping or spilling food/drink on my clothes at formal functions) is the direct result of conditioning. Some (my parents) have argued otherwise, but I’m certain that this is not a chicken and egg question: the bad luck came first, the shoulder shrug after.
That’s the narrative I stuck to last Saturday when I was rushing to walk my dog, Pickle, before getting ready for an impromptu meet-the-parents dinner with my boyfriend, about 30 minutes after the end of a 5 p.m. screening of ReGeneration Kill — a Phillip Montgomery documentary narrated by Ryan Gosling — at the Sprockets Film Festival (official Hardly business). The plan was to get together at Enoteca Sociale, but considering we didn’t have a reservation and it was a weekend, I was banking on having enough time for Pickle and for picking out the most casual of non-casual outfits for dinner. I had just gotten to the park when my boyfriend texted, saying the restaurant called and a table had become free. He and his parents were going to head over now; I would be late — it was inevitable. The question was how late. Approximately 15 minutes were added to this answer when a dog mistook my leg for his favourite fire hydrant.
In the end, I arrived at the restaurant just after the first course had been cleared, a touch perspired and well over a touch stressed from being late. The knots that had colonized my back over the last couple of weeks leading up to FILLER’s spring launch were further twisted. The worry wolf in me suddenly had bad first impressions to agonize over in addition to work. Gripped by stress, my upcoming visit to Langdon Hall Country House Hotel and Spa was the only thing between me and Grey Gardens.
Tucked away in Cambridge’s Carolina forest, an hour outside of Toronto, to say this Federal Revival-style country house boasts the distinct luxury of a Relais and Chateaux wouldn’t do the tranquil beauty of the hotel, and its surrounding two-hundred acres of greenery, justice. The wealth of charm housed under the roof of this majestic property is epitomized by the two serene Bernese mountain dogs — Teddy and Miss Wilks —lounging on its front lawn, while its distinguished history reveals itself through Victorian fittings that make their way down the Astor family tree, and in the form of a century-old Camperdown Elm, a highlight of the manicured grounds, which were — not unimpressively — originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of New York’s Central Park.
I no longer needed wikiHow to figure out how to open up my chakras.
It was impossible to fret in such a picturesque setting, especially with my tummy full of the gourmet delights out of Executive Chef Jonathan Gushue’s kitchen. My mind was free; but my body still ached. The stress in my shoulders remained twined; it would take Hulk-sized strength to undo what the worry wolf had toiled to wrench. Or, an Indian Head Hot Stem Thai massage at the hotel spa.
It was difficult to deduce what this was, exactly, from the name alone – at least I wasn’t able to – but at its core it was release.
More practical than I am spiritual, when stress levels are at a peak, I tend to skip the meditation and go straight for the deep tissue massage (sans aromatherapy) to assuage the consequential muscle tension of my long workdays. And so, when I first saw the stems steaming away in their cradle, I didn’t quite believe that these cute little herbal bundles could compare to a pair of strong hands; I was wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I reconsidered my stance on the benefits of practical versus spiritual remedies in terms of stress relief and did yoga the next day in the hotel’s Orchard Room. The herbal compresses, made of turmeric, camphor, eucalyptus leaves and kaffir lime peels and leaves, to name only a few ingredients, are dotted and rolled onto the skin, alleviating aches and inflammation with their medicinal qualities while lulling you back to your center of balance with their aromatic makeup. Perk: you get to take the stems home with you for some DIY spa comfort.
My journey to the spiritual side continued with the Indian head massage.
Beginning with a fury of fingers pulsating up and down the scalp, the treatment’s frenetic finger massage is periodically interrupted with spurts of hair pulling. Yes, hair pulling. Gentler than Gilbert Blythe’s tug on Anne Shirley’s pigtails and more invigorating than you remember your mother’s bedtime brush being, the tug at the ends of the hair in tandem with the brisk scalp rubdown recalled the sensation of taking out a tight pony tail: the relief of being released. The tension in my neck, shoulder and head regions — nest to the worry wolf — had been drawn out. I no longer needed wikiHow to figure out how to open up my chakras.
“Re-balance” having now officially been inducted into my vocabulary, I let go of work worry, the less than stellar impression I left on my boyfriend’s parents and the unease inspired by an early afternoon facial beauty analysis by Valmont skin care experts (in for a special appearance at the hotel), during which time my skin was scrutinized under a microscope and discovered to be that of old Mother Hubbard’s.
In the sweeping majesty of Langdon Hall, I felt like a new age Daisy Miller: strolling the grand grounds, contemplating the difference between hatha and ashtanga yoga and reading the directions to my new Valmont Prime B Cellular face serum before the formal water garden. I was learning the art of stress relief. Next up is becoming proficient in the art of getting six hours of sleep. It’s the key to passing my next facial beauty analysis and not resembling a certain gray-haired nursery rhyme character.
Toronto-based writer Jennifer Lee is the Editorial Director of FILLER magazine, an online fashion & culture journal. She is also the Co-Editor of Hardly magazine, an arts-centric online teen publication for Canadian girls. Her column, The Dressing Room, appears weekly.
