As you lie on the table under crisp, fresh sheets, hushed music draws you into the moment. The smell of sage fills the air and you hear the gentle sound of massage oil being warmed in your therapist’s hands. The pains of age, the throbbing from your overstressed muscles, the sheer need to be touched — all cry out for therapeutic hands to start their work. Once the session gets underway, the problems of the world fade into an oblivious 60 minutes of relief and all you can comprehend right now is not wanting it to end.

When we find ourselves lacking in quality family time and touching each other less, massage can serve to reaffirm a close bond with our children, and convey a comforting sense of security and trust.

You're standing over an easy 3-foot putt on the 18th green, $20 riding on dropping the ball in the cup. And yet all you can think about is that sharp twinge in your lower back, that pesky crick in your neck and the growing tension in your hands--which have a death grip on the putter.

How did this happen? Didn’t you take up this game to relax?

"We Type-A personalities all seem to be attracted to golf--then we get out on the course and tense our muscles and stress out," says Marilyn McAffee of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

It’s been dubbed the spa of the future, but the medical spa is as old as “taking the waters.” According to Hannelore Leavy, founder and executive director of The Day Spa Association, European spas have always been medical, centered around mineral springs and waters. “Treatment was and still is prescribed and monitored by a physician,” said Leavy in an interview from her office in West New York, N.J.