ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the practices of rest and relaxation and their role in individual fitness strategies and health routines. It explores the ways in which time to one’s self and a routine of recuperation and relaxation practices have become essential to ideas of general wellbeing and to notions of recovery in terms of both particular illness and also the general pressures of daily life. The chapter looks at the importance of rest and relaxation to women arguing that the medicalisation of particular conditions within the ‘new paradigm of health’, and the health practices employed in response to such conditions, are gendered. Coupled with the idea of escape and relaxation, the spa managers spoke of spas as providing a nurturing environment. The chapter draws attention to the practices of pampering and relaxation in the spa and beauty salon. It highlights women’s engagement with these practices as a means to reduce the physical and emotional effects of stress and tiredness.
