“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
Mount Etna blows its top theatrically behind, the Ionian Sea twinkles in front and clementine groves jostle for space with fig trees on this blissfully stylish organic estate.
You won’t find a spa with a more peaceful view. The snow-capped Himalayas and the glacial Mo Chu river gushing past are a sight to ease a troubled mind like no treatment ever could. The hotel is gorgeous, and the spa simple – just two buildings and a tiny menu that makes decision-making a cinch.
The Quick Read: Accessible only by boat, Playa Nicuesa is an eco lodge set in a 165-acre private reserve in Costa Rica’s Golfo Dulce region, bordered by ocean and rainforest that leads onto a national park. The location is paradisiacal – an emerald coast with jade water in which dolphins play and turtles dive. It’s one of the most biologically diverse places in the world, with lush forestry, humongous leaves, three types of monkeys, iguanas, sloths, toucans – it’s like the Oscars for wildlife. There’s yoga and massage, but really you come for the wildlife. It’s perfect for hiking, snorkeling, fishing and jungle kayaking expeditions – though you can just meditate in a hammock. With a carbon footprint so small it’s almost a paw mark, the lodge has 5 leaves – the highest award for sustainability in tourism – but deserves an entire tree.
My husband and I are sitting at a table, being instruted to look deeply into one another’s eyes. Opposite us, a softly spoken American is coaxing us to make statements about what we like in one another, with real feeling. I’m not in a loving mood, as we’ve bickered about the best route to the appointment. But I grit my teeth and tell my husband, Charles, that he’s sensitive and intuitive. That he makes me laugh. And that he’s kind. Then it’s his turn.
I’m on a retreat in my bedroom. Call it Bed Spa. This because I’ve broken my ankle and had an op. My life is normally crazily busy, but now I’ve been forced to stop. Suddenly I realise how much of my running around is unnecessary. And what’s important in life. The chance to be unfettered by the outside world is rare, especially at home. My bedroom has monastic white polished plasterwork, a Moroccan bedcover twinkling with sequins and a view of trees. Anyone would want to spa here!
This is the spa with the best and most healing view in the world. No treatment or activity – anywhere – could beat the ‘om’ effect of just gazing through its floor-to-ceiling windows at the snow-peaked Himalayas and glacial river.
Ivana offers Life In Movement therapy, a brilliant combo of postural movement analysis, aerobics, Pilates, Alexander Technique, Ayurveda, Feldenkrais Method and Gyrontonics. Perfect for those who have injuries or sedentary lifestyles, it features bespoke exercises – mostly on pilates machines – tailored to your postural misalignments, muscular needs, lifestyle and ayurvedic body type. The aim is to help you attain a fully functioning body that operates at its optimum. As well as working out of her own clinic at 61 Wimpole Street, she is much sought after by private clients globally and works for retreats run by Aman Resorts on a consultancy basis.
A rarity: an amazing man who looks like a gap-year student, used to be a zookeeper (he loves gorillas) and is now a healer. Paul Lennard has an uncanny ability to read people’s energy and highlight any issues. Then he addresses them through an eclectic mix of sports massage, Chi Nei Tsang (Chinese tummy massage) and craniosacral therapy.
Mornings were worst. I would wake with lead in my veins, a jackboot pressing on my chest and my body rigid, as if set in formaldehyde. I’d be beset by a terrible inner loneliness and desolation, paralysed with foreboding. I became destructive, self-sabotaging and impulsive, forgetting that I’m a successful, loved woman with a good life and an exciting future.
This is depression. A crippling depression that has been with me all my life. So who would have thought that the best help would come in the form of a spa therapist?
Katie Winterbourne works with your energy, reading your unique energy ‘signature’ and using her intuition to give you a better understanding of your life – to deliver healing in whichever form her higher consciousness reckons is best. You can have a reading with her by Skype or over the phone, at a clinic on Wimple Street and or at Harrods Urban Retreat in London, or alternative locations by arrangement.
It started with home shopping and home office. Now it’s home everything. You don’t have to schlepp anywhere nor waste time travelling. There’s no need to sit in waiting rooms, deal with receptionists or make small talk with salon assistants. Nor go food shopping, dirty so much as a saucepan or wash up after your dinner guests.
Rossano Ferretti is that rare breed: a hairdresser-cum-architect with a good splash of the designer in him. In fact, he has designed twenty salons across the globe – from New York to New Delhi – and is a world-renowned crimper. He’s known for a way of cutting hair that’s not simply described as a ‘haircut’ but instead is dubbed ‘The Method’ – a unique and patented technique of cutting tresses that apparently has something to do with snipping the hair based on its ‘natural fall in motion.’
Facialogy? What’s that? It’s a combo of a blissful Vaishaly Signature Facial with a relaxing, health-promoting reflexology.
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.…
Mornings were worst. I would wake with lead in my veins, a jackboot pressing on my chest and my body rigid, as if set in…