Review – The New Sleep Treatment at Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London
For those of us who struggle to drift off; who wake too soon; who toss and turn at night, or those who fear of travel for the resulting jet lag: There’s a new treatment in town, courtesy of the award-winning spa at The Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, combining hypnotherapy and massage in a luxurious double whammy – designed especially for troubled sleepers.
The Mandarin Oriental Spa sits below Knightsbridge High Street in the heart of the bustling capital: a gloriously scented subterranean chamber, offering targetted house therapies with a wellness focus that are a little different to your common massage. OSKIA skincare is its product partner of choice, a brand that boasts impressive clinical credentials in skin health and supplements. Today I’ll be treated to its new body care range developed especially for the sleep treatment. So far so dreamy.
The three hour session starts with a consultation with ‘The Sleep Concierge’ Malminder Gill, the award winning Harley street integrative sleep therapist who can name royalty and A-listers as clients. It surely helps she has a voice like warm treacle. The Sleep Concierge can target anything from jet lag to common sleeping problems, and for any doubters, Malminder’s methodology is backed by scientific research. After a brief discussion of my problem areas we decide that night terrors (niche) and perimenopausal early waking (not so niche) are the issues du jour. Once I’m ensconced on a treatment bed we begin: An hour of allowing Malminders soporific tones to guide me to a place of absolute relaxation and, embarrassingly quickly, a divine daytime sleep. I try to resist to understand the process, to no avail. Malminder assures me that clients still absorb the hypnotherapy when asleep; in fact it’s actively encouraged to drift off. Well that’s a relief after being so easy to talk into bed, as it were.
Job done, Malminder quietly departs leaving me disgracefully relaxed and ready for the next stage of my treatment, a circadian syncing massage designed to influence sleep, mental wellbeing and body systems. (For those not au fait with circadian rhythms, they are the physical mental and behavioural changes an organism experiences over a 24 hour cycle). All of this sounds highly desirable, and my anticipation levels are high.
The session starts with a herbal relaxation inhalation followed by 90 minutes of an eastern inspired full body massage using OSKIA oils and balms infused with a heady combination of melatonin and CBD. And in case anyone imagines something gentle and slumberous think again. Each massage is client tailored, and my therapist obviously deems my circadian rhythms seriously out of whack, as a large element of the session was firm, deep tissue kneading. However as I rise after 90 minutes my neck feels giraffe like, and I positively float out the door. Rhythms synched, tenfold.
And the money question, does the afternoon treatment help my sleeping habits? I certainly see some improvement in my nighttime stirrings that have plagued me all my life over the following days, but the results go further than sleep – my masseur has liberated my painfully knotted shoulders and the relaxation and reset achieved across the two treatments seems like essential intervention rather than simply a luxury. Malminder’s opening words are ‘I’m not a magician’, but it feels like this Mandarin Oriental spa has got an incredibly powerful trick up it’s sleeve.