RHAPSODY IN BLÚ Rocky Road into the Wellness Industry
	JULY/AUGUST 2005

by Trayse Johnsen
Photos by Russell Byrne

The focus of my whole life, since I was a young girl, has been based upon taking care of myself through nutrition, training, and being aware of what was going on with my body. The initial reason for such an intense focus was due to the fact that I spent most of the first 18 years of my life as a competitive figure skater. The sport of figure skating has to do with beauty-aides almost as much as it has to do with physical training. You have to look good and feel good before you can really perform to the peak of your abilities.

I had my first skating experience when I was three years old. I won my first competition when I was six and won my first regional championship at age ten. In between those two events my life underwent a profound change. It started when Evy Scotvold watched me skate. He and his wife, Mary, are nationally acclaimed teachers of champion figure skaters, such as Nancy Kerrigan and other international and Olympic champions. Evy told my mom that he thought I was a natural. He picked me to become part of his program of training talented ice skaters at his center in Wisconsin.

Skating Right Past my Childhood
So I left home at age eight and never again spent any significant amount of time with my parents. I found myself living in a dormitory with other figure skaters. From morning to night my life was geared around skating. I would get out of bed “at the crack of dark,” as my friend likes to put it, before 4:30 a.m., so I could be on the ice by 5:00. I spent five hours every morning skating. Sometimes between the morning and evening sessions, I would also be studying ballet and taking stretching classes. One part of the training we all hated was called “power stroking, which consisted of flying around the ice as fast as we could skate, for up to one and a half hours every day. During my first year of training, when I was still only eight, one of the older girls instructed me in the important skills of binging and purging. One generation of skaters passed these things down to the next. The goal of the program was to create tiny girls who looked like little boys with no breasts or butts. If I gained any weight, I couldn’t do my jumps. If I couldn’t do my jumps, I couldn’t win competitions. If I couldn’t win competitions, I wouldn’t be doing my job. The goal of my training was to keep me looking as much like an 8-year-old as possible.

Young figure skaters and gymnasts back in those days were trained in what were essentially abusive environments. Bulimia is an expression of self-loathing that was an unintended outcome of the drastic ordeal that we lived through. There was never any “good enough” to be found any place in the program. We were trying to attain an impossible ideal and felt guilty and chubby because of our failure to get there.

At about age 14 I stopped enjoying anything about the life of a skater. None of us in the program were happy, well-adjusted people. We all developed obsessive-compulsive disorders. You can never have any fun about something you’re doing compulsively. Nobody cared, however, that we weren’t having fun. Feelings like pleasure and joy weren’t on the radar screen of anybody running those programs at that time.

I was good at what I was doing; I was a champion! I have more trophies than I ever bothered counting. I was heading for the Olympics. But it was a house of cards that collapsed in a single instant when I was 17 years old. I had been training in Lake Arrowhead, near LA and, while warming up for a competition in Spokane, Washington, I ran into another figure skater. Her blade slashed into my tibia, breaking it in two places.

I’ll never forget my depressing experience in the hospital following my injury. Not one person asked if I was ok. The only thing they wanted to know was if I would be able to get back on the ice. When the doctor said, “I don’t think she’ll be able to skate again,” my life as a contender was over. Falling out of my role as a champion was very humbling because people who had been fawning over me when I was winning now wouldn’t give me the time of day.

To make a bad thing worse, a week after my leg was broken my folks split up so by the time I got out of the hospital I had no place to go that would be anything like home. I was 18 years old and felt like my life was over. The experience really pointed out the dysfunctional character of my life up to that point. The normal progression of friendships, school, hobbies, etc. are supposed to lead a person to a point that by age 18 there’s a feeling that life is just beginning. In my case, at age 18 my life seemed to be ending. That happens a to a lot of us child athletes. My career ended prematurely, but the fact is you don’t see any 30-year-old figure skaters on ESPN.

Somebody said that you can’t see the stars until the sun goes down and during the darkness of that time I really did begin to see a Higher Power who is taking care of me. And after my recovery I began to sew the seeds of a normal life.

Taking Spa Treatment to the Next Level
I eventually experienced a spiritual renewal and came to realize that family and friends — the human beings we surround ourselves with — are more important than fame, money, or any business. I began seeking an answer to the question, “How can I learn to show people how much I care for them?” I found a great answer in creating Spa Blú. I had always found that massages and facials helped me relax and seemed to reset my adrenaline. Most of all, they brought about peace. The music and the repetition of the massage always created a calmness that I needed.

So I was led, perhaps, to start a spa. Of course, I attacked the challenge with the same passions that mark everything I do. I began reading, researching — traveling throughout the United States and to Europe…. I continue to devote myself to my business and especially to my clients with the same passion I employed on the floor of the ice rink. I don’t know where this enthusiasm comes from. Usually it feels like a blessing these days; sometimes it’s difficult. I become part psychiatrist; part skin care specialist, and friend altogether. If I know clients are going through some deep waters, I will sometimes call them up to make sure they are all right.

I’m never going to get rich with my spa because we donate 40 percent of our profits to charities. Beyond that, we often give services away to deserving people. Anyway, we measure wealth by the wrong standard, I think. If I got sick and ten people called to ask about me, that would be real riches, to my way of thinking.

We want to really help people. We’re creating an actual wellness center and trying to implement an European-type philosophy of skin care — such procedures as thelossotherapy, hydrotherapy, and baleno (bath) therapy. I appreciate the way Europeans often incorporate wellness with skin care and skin care procedures. Like them, Spa Blú has a purpose that goes beyond mere beautification. We go beyond basic pedicure, for example, to incorporate such things as scrubs with Dead Sea Salt, which contains some of the richest mineral components found in nature. The effect is to bring about a complete remineralization of the skin.

Pedicures at Spa Blú can also be done with Moore Mud Wraps using 20,000-year-old mud dug from beneath bogs in England. The mud coats the body in a sort of ultimate compost that can give a person’s legs, for example, a perfect mineralization or can be used for full body mud baths to detoxify and remineralize the entire body. The effect is wonderfully revitalizing. We also use special lotions, like Shea Butter Creams.

We do full body detoxifications; every body wrap has a purpose beyond feeling good. We have the only Vichi shower in the East County, which provides hot hydrotherapy through seven heads of hot water, giving the sensation of being in a warm torrential downpour. Everyone who has it says they never felt anything like it; it is wonderful for mind, body, and spirit.

We also have a lot of fun in our spa; it is a joyful as well as peaceful place. We try to make guys feel welcome in our facilities and offer new and interesting services with fun names like “I’m Not a Girly-man Pedicure,” “Menicure Manicure,” etc.

Riding a Tiger
The day we opened our spa we had a line out the door before our opening time. The crowds of people made us so nervous that we were afraid to open up for business; we didn’t know what we would do with them all. We had 500 clients our first day of operation. We opened in December 2004 and the first three weeks before Christmas we did 200 thousand dollars in gift certificates alone. We never dreamed we would have this kind of success! The line didn’t stop; it was overwhelming. One reason for our success is that we were providing levels of service that some area women had been going to places like the Claremont for.

Now it’s on to the next thing! I was giving a facial to a client who said, “I love your facility. I wish you would open one near where I live.” “Where do you live?” “Discovery Bay.” I told her “I always wanted to open in Discovery Bay,” and she responded, “My boss is opening a new plaza. Talk to him.” To make a short story even shorter, Spa Blú Soleil will open in Discovery Bay in the fall.

My plate is really full these days, but I’ve got peace. I’m having the fun that I never had with my skating. People say this place feels like Cheers. They just say names like “Becky!” instead of “Norm!” You would think we had known each other forever after clients have only been here for a couple weeks.

I feel that my business is a blessing to our clients and, in return, my business and clients continually bless me. I really believe that I’m finally living life the way life should be lived.