The best post-lockdown services

Country & Town House | 1 Jul 2020

Expect everything from a deluge of divorces (those already unhappy couples who were holed up during the pandemic) through to a mass exodus to live in the countryside, far from the madding, (masked) crowd. Anticipate dealing with your tubby Coronatummy – and body hair (that’s you, ladies) – and possibly finding a new career too.

Here’s our guide to the top dozen services and practitioners for the next steps.  Whether you’re after the world’s best off-Zoom yoga, the ultimate post-lockdown facial or mouth-watering new foodie experiences, read on.

• Food,
• Health, Beauty & Spa,
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Health Heroes

Country & Town House | 16 Apr 2020

Meet the people who will get you shipshape in mind, body and soul.

Deep under Regent Street, you’ll find yourself immersed in the Hotel Café Royal’s specialist Watsu pool with small floats attached to your shins. Here, Steve Karle guides you in an hour- long underwater dance of stretching, shiatsu, joint mobilisation and craniosacral work. You’ll feel weightless, and will leave the pool deliciously spaced out, your aches eased. Then you’ll bliss out again with the other parts of this Four Elements treatment: a body massage, hot stones and scalp massage.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Beauty Test

Country & Town House | 1 Dec 2018

Facialogy? What’s that? It’s a combo of a blissful Vaishaly Signature Facial with a relaxing, health-promoting reflexology treatment.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Our review of trauma therapist Sheryl Close

Queen of Retreats | 20 Aug 2018

The quick read: Sheryl Close offers Somatic Experiencing and Trauma Therapy, and her sessions include an eclectic mixture of skills she’s developed over the years – including psychotherapy, massage therapy, addiction counselling and Gestalt therapy. The focus is primarily on Somatic Experiencing, and Sheryl’s therapy is for anybody who feels stuck in their life, who want to connect more deeply emotionally with him/herself, and who want to release historical destructive patterns. Sheryl can be booked for an individual, hour-long session at private practices in London or Bedfordshire in the UK.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Spa Guide 2018: ESPA at Castello Del Nero

Country & Town House | 23 May 2018

If you want to zzzz in a 12th-century former nobleman’s castle – set in 740 tranquil acres of rolling hills – then try Castello del Nero’s new Sleep Retreat created with ESPA. Bag a suite with Pompeian-style, 18th-century frescoes and let the butler draw you a steaming, essence-infused bath strewn with rose petals.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Soukya: the Bangalore health retreat drawing a starry clientele — and interest from the NHS

FT Weekend | 29 Apr 2018

I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs. They massage in tandem my legs, hip joints and up to my neck. A little gloop escapes the poultice bags each time and soon my body is covered with a gluey white residue. This is navarakizhi, a treatment claimed to reduce joint stiffness and relieve depression.

I’m at Soukya, a health retreat outside Bangalore that offers traditional Indian cures for conditions from hay fever to diabetes and strives to “restore the natural balance of your mind, body and spirit”.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Best in London – the people who really matter

The Luxury Channel | 13 Feb 2018

Caroline Phillips unearths the people who really matter to the people who really matter. The doctors, practitioners, therapists and service providers who celebrities and folk with their finger truly on the pulse have on speed dial. An alphabetical guide to the country’s leaders in everything from psychotherapy to gut health. From who you should visit for semi-permanent make-up to hair removal. Not to mention the super-facialists and who to choose for acupuncture or to accompany you to buy your clothes…

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Shopping & Fashion

Vaishaly Clinic – the ultimate glow-getter

The Luxury Channel | 2 Aug 2017

What links Rachel Weisz, Kirsten Dunst and Sophie Dahl? Oh, and Elle Macpherson, Meg Ryan and Gwyneth Paltrow too. They’re all clients of Vaishaly, the super facialist. She’s also brow sculptor (threader) to the superstars. As if that isn’t enough, she and one of her team of whizzo therapists have just started offering microblading —a form of eyebrow tattooing, about which more later. Plus Vaishaly has recently expanded into the neighbouring building to open a nail bar offering everything you could ever want for the tips of your hands.

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Beyond Mindfulness: The best way to connect with your higher self – creativity and inspiration

Huffington Post | 23 Apr 2017

Dr Shomit Mitter is a hard man to categorise. Yes, he’s a hypnotherapist. Yes, he mentored Booker-prize winner Arundhati Roy —who pays tribute to him in her book, the God of Small Things. Oh and he ran a multi-million pound aviation business in the nineties – and found himself being shadowed by the KGB for his pains. Why? Because he had an M.Phil from Oxford and a PhD from Cambridge and had written two seminal books on theatre – so he must have been a spy doing those aviation deals in the wilds of Uzbekistan.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Escape to Somatheeram Ayurveda Village in Kerala

The Luxury Channel | 10 Apr 2017

There’s a Chinese lady sitting at lunch slavered in a red face pack. Fabric is wound around her crown, like bandages, and she’s wearing a green overall and sipping fresh pineapple juice. Nearby a Russian man wanders around the garden sporting banana, egg white and mango painted on his face. He has also just enjoyed a Thalapothichil treatment, in which the head is covered with herbal paste and topped off with a lotus leaf — a procedure that’s said to be good for depression and stress.

I’m at the Somatheeram Ayurveda Village — India’s first Ayurvedic hospital in a resort setting. Opened 35 years ago, it boasts more awards than I’ve had hot curries (a lot, in other words). It’s situated in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, above a golden beach that extends to eternity and beyond — and where groups of fishermen gather to untangle their Himalayan-size fishing nets.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Get lean, lithe and puma-fit at Target Fitness Retreats

Our Man on the Ground | 6 Apr 2017

Tabata? Burpees? Pad work? Double Dutch to me. But, hell, I’m about to find out what these are. I’m on a Target Human Performance fitness holiday – if doing five hours’ exercise a day can be called a ‘holiday’. I’m here for a five-day ‘get fit fast’ retreat. A so-called health, fitness and wellness break.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Gielly Green one-stop boutique salon and spa

The Luxury Channel | 23 Mar 2017

It’s like a studio that houses some of the capital’s greatest artists. Think of it as a curated exhibition or art gallery — but instead of artworks for sale, it has some of the world’s best hair maestros and therapists offering their services. These are the sorts of things that are said about Gielly Green, a tip-top boutique salon cum one-stop beauty lounge in Marylebone, London. It has also garnered glowing reviews in magazines like Tatler and Vogue.

• Health, Beauty & Spa