In Tucson: Balancing the Triangle of Life

By Jane O'Reilly

It is late afternoon at Canyon Ranch, "America's first total vacation/fitness resort." The sun slants across the roofs of the patio homes strung out across the desert, tinting the Santa Catalina Mountains, lengthening the shadows of the giant saguaro cacti.

Inside the spa building, in a small windowless room, an uptight, burned-out, more-fat-than-fit East Coast Type A female is submitting to an herbal wrap. A cup of alfalfa-mint tea precedes mummification. She sweats to the faint chimes of "music to relax and meditate by." The East Coast Type A resents being told to relax. The ranch's resident psychotherapist, Richard ("Bud") Murphy, will later tell her, "Many people come here seeking withdrawal from something--food, a bad marriage, personal problems, smoking--but they feel ambivalent and resist change."

Linda, the wrapper, is soothing. "Of course you have a headache, you are withdrawing from caffeine and salt," she explains. "The wrap is drawing the toxins out of your body, you are beginning to balance the triangle of life: the body, mind and spirit."

The wrappee glowers ambivalently.

She rejects toxins and triangles, and even people who jog, and meditates stubbornly on chocolate nut crunch, red meat and salted popcorn. She is intensely aware that it is impossible to smoke while the hands are bound across the chest by hot herb-soaked sheets.

In the lobby, a small group of newcomers ignore the desert vistas and seek out the nurse, the herbalist, the dietician, the three pools, four racquetball courts, six tennis courts and beauty salon. They disperse to the appropriate locker room where, overdressed in clothes, they encounter the smug incumbents. In the women's room, all physical indignities, personal tribulations and great accomplishments are revealed and shared. Shelly, a Chicago mother of two and an architecture student, says, "Being here is most akin to the experience of having a baby."

The ranch is very laid back, so first names are the style. Within hours everyone knows that Marvin the doctor flunked Smokenders and needs encouragement, Carol is going through a difficult divorce and needs to be taken care of, Jessie is nearly 70 and loves exercise classes. Another Carol, an inner-city emergency-room nurse from the Midwest, cannot trust herself with a handful of change near a candy machine. The couple from Park Avenue play backgammon at 7 in the morning; the amiable rotund man is a rock musician, and the lithe woman with him is his secretary, who considerately flew in yet another woman, his girlfriend, "as a reward."

The three women from Tulsa look like teen-agers but are actually in their 30s and mothers of three children each. Marilynn, a wife-mother-student, is ecstatic to be here alone: "I've never had a room of my own before." The mother and daughter with matching sulks are inveterate spa-hoppers. They are accustomed to the "pamper places," where guests are practically carried to exercise class, and they find life at Canyon Ranch irritatingly spartan. They are especially cross about being asked to think. "We have to choose our own classes here," whines one. The quiet blond in the corner has been here for six months and has lost 100 Ibs. The pounds, sad to say, do not come cheap: Canyon Ranch is not wildly expensive as such spas go, but it still costs about $1,000 a week during the peak season.

About 80 guests, a quarter of them male, gather in the clubhouse for cocktails (Perrier and bitters), then dinner (coq au vin, 221 calories). Conversation immediately turns to food. "Frozen Milky Way," intones East Coast Type A. A short, wistful silence. "Frozen Haagen-Dazs," invokes Marilynn. All furiously chew their detoxifying greens. "But," says Marilynn, "everyone knows that frozen things have no calories, right?" The table breaks up laughing.

Wholesome fun continues after dinner. Most people go to sleep, some smoke contentiously, and a small band of merrymakers try bingo. The game is disturbed by a trio of bicoastal Type A males who cry, "Cheat! Cheat!" and refuse to play unless they can win the Canyon Ranch tractor hat. Earlier, they were seen calling their offices for an adrenaline fix before they had even checked in. One of them is already in the lobby inquiring about the last plane to Burbank.

The next morning, at 7 sharp, the group divides by energy level, either for a Vigorous Morning Walk or a slightly less robust Awake and Aware Walk. At 8 a.m. the marginally intrepid set out for a hike in the desert, marching spryly behind Phyllis Hochman, a former New York City schoolteacher who has, she says, achieved her private fantasy and become "the only middle-aged Jewish female trail leader in the West."

The balky bicoastal trio prove predictably inelastic in Men's Stretch, their first class. "Men are not as flexible as women," says the instructor encouragingly. Few women are as flexible as the instructors, who are all shimmeringly sleek, exotically turned out in leotard and leg-warmer ensembles, and able to lie on their sides and circle one leg in the air hundreds of times without getting cramps.

"Remember to breathe!" shouts Dee Trayers, as the people in her class turn scarlet from the effort. A great gasp goes up. They had, indeed, forgotten to breathe. Still glowing, they head for a juice break. Deprivation seems to produce a high level of camaraderie; many people can spend half an hour eagerly discussing the best way to enjoy drinking one-quarter cup of tomato juice.

All day the bicoastal trio stubbornly cling to their surplus pounds. They skip yoga ("Imagine you're a pink cloud," urges the teacher). They miss pool exercises, which involve strenuous efforts to drown plastic balls by pushing them "down ... aaand down .. . aaand harder, again!" During Shintaido, an unlikely hybrid of martial arts and modern dance that starts with an excruciating series of froglike hops, the trio sit in the lobby complaining. They are wondering about flights to Las Vegas when Karma Kientzler finds them.

Karma is the physical-fitness guru of Canyon Ranch. Named Karma 39 years ago by her wonderfully prescient father, she loves her work, loves the "aura and tranquillity" of the ranch, and loves the guests no matter what. "You are carrying a lot of anger," she advises the grumblers. They melt at once. "I'm 63, I'm an old, fat smoker, I'm out of control," explodes the most discontented. "Awww," coos Karma, "you need some warm fuzzy." The man retires peacefully dreaming of a massage.

Mel Zuckerman, super Type A, has a massage every afternoon. "That's why I built this place," he says. Zuckerman loves to tell the story. There he was in 1978, nearly 50 years old, a fat, rich real estate developer with high blood pressure who was reaching the dispiriting conclusion that this "was the prime of my life, and it wasn't so great." Then he went to a California spa and "experienced a natural high for the first time in my life." So, with his wife Enid, he bought an old dude ranch, spent $6.8 million converting it, and now says, "It's a whole new life."

Not entirely. Next door to the ranch, Mel, the hard-driving relaxer, is tearing up the desert to make room for a Canyon Ranch town-house development.

The East Coast Type A female is no longer interested in such dichotomies. She is interested in cardiovascular improvement, multistriped leotards and having her hands and feet tucked into warm moisturizing mittens at the facial salon.

The life of the body seems by and large much pleasanter than the life of the mind.

Laboring through her fifth exercise class of the day, East Coast Type A puffs "shoo shoo" in response to a dazzlingly fit former cheerleader's exhortation to "blow it out." The formerly flaccid Type A has lost 5 lbs. and 3 in. She has stopped smoking and can jog for 20 minutes. She agrees with Mel: "I want to feel like this forever. ' ' --By Jane O'Reilly

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