Pulse : Spa is meant to be a place where individuals can find balance . How does your advocacy for emotional resilience and engagement complement the work done in spas ? Suneel Gupta : One of the things I find interesting about your work is you bring people ’ s lives into balance . What you do is really important — desperately needed . The number one driver of mental health for most of us is our work , our job . There ’ s an intimate connection between our work and our well-being . The reverse is also true : If we aren ’ t feeling good , our work is also exhausted . Our wellbeing harmonizes our work .

Pulse : Spas try to help guests incorporate centering routines into their daily existence — but spa workers are also in need of positive habits in their own lives . What advice can you offer to the helpers , both to guide others and to take care of themselves ? SG : People who fizzle out rarely run out of time or talent , they run out of energy . If you ’ re exhausted , you might have the best vision , the best talent , the best skillset , but you don ’ t have the capacity to enact them . Energy requires rest , and most of us don ’ t know how to rest .

We ’ ve been taught to think in terms of time : How much time is it going to take to do what we want to do ? Rest and recovery are afterthoughts . But without rest , we can ’ t reach our potential .

That ’ s where I think what you do is so important . A spa visit is a small break . For most people , when we think of recovery , we tend to rely on the concept of vacations . But

vacations are infrequent and we ’ re overdue for rest by the time we schedule one . In the terms of a traffic light , we are waiting until the red before we try to get back to the green . Rest needs to happen after you hit yellow .

You look at the research and most people report they are more stressed out one week after vacation than one week before vacation . That ’ s the paradox of recovery : The more you need to rest , the more burnt out you are , the harder it is to achieve that rest . The more clenched you get , the harder it is to unclench . Look at great leaders : They are practicing rhythmical renewal . They are not waiting for long breaks ; they are taking frequent small breaks . That is why the spa is such an important tool for renewing energy . Even if you don ’ t have time for a full spa session , you can take a small session .

Pulse : Tell us about some of the science behind habits that prevent burnout and boost energy . SG : I tell people to follow the “ 55 / 5 ” rule : For every 55 minutes of work , you ’ re building in five minutes of rest . The key is , for every hour of work , build in some pockets of recovery . Some people will find this counterintuitive ; I ’ m asking you to shrink your day by five minutes every hour . But scientists are telling us those five minutes will make the

12 PULSE n JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2024