Allin the mind

You have a background in hypnotherapy and meditation. How are you working with spas and salons?

“I’ve been running retreat weekends in Norfolk for a long time and I’ll take a yoga teacher and a massage therapist along. Spas are gradually waking up to the idea of introducing a retreat-style package to their clients because they know more people now want to feel that they’ve had an element of retreat as well as a treat. So, I’m talking to a few spas at the moment about organising those.

“I have a platform called Beautiful Thinking, which is all about keeping the body healthy to keep the mind healthy; I’ve been working with spa therapist teams including at Weavers House in Lavenham, Suffolk, helping them de-stress.”

What sort of training do you give therapists?

“I go in to various companies (not just spas) to help staff with wellness and mental health. I talk about what you should and shouldn’t be eating for stress, anxiety and depression – which is an epidemic now. I often do group therapy work to start then get them to lie down and take them into a deep relaxation before teaching them some quick NLP [neurolinguistic programming] techniques to use at their desk if they’re feeling tense.

“I work with therapists a lot and two reasons have come up in terms of why there is a high turnover of staff in spas: they get quite down because they work in areas with little daylight, and they’re touching people all the time so they’re picking up on the energy of their clients.

“I talk to them about how to self-protect and not to tap into other people’s energy and how to restore their own energy at the end of a treatment.”

What practical tips do you give them?

“Because I work with clients myself on a one-toone basis, I know how draining that can be, so I teach therapists to keep checking in on themselves.

“We do visualisation exercises, for example, where they surround themselves in bright white light or a mirrored ball. If you’re working with someone who is very draining, that can really help you feel as though you’re not absorbing their energy but you’re still connected to them and can still give. That helps the client too, because if you’re absorbing their baggage from them, they’re never going to deal with it.

“Another tip I give – and this sounds a bit ‘out there’– but let’s say you’ve done a 90-minute massage on a very emotional client who has offloaded on to you, I advise going outside to cleanse and ground yourself by taking your shoes and socks off and walking in the grass. Then come back in and cleanse the room. I’m not saying that works in a practical way but the ritualistic idea of cleansing yourself can be very powerful.

“I talk to them about their diets as well. I was at a spa the other day and the therapists were all eating crisps and sweets and I thought, ‘your brain isn’t going to cope with stress and anxiety if you’re doing that to your body’, so we talked about a lot of that as well.”

How can spas integrate hypnotherapy into a client offer?

“I believe massage and facials could go further. Your mind controls your body, we know that. And when you go into a very deep relaxed state, as you do during a treatment, there is research to suggest that you can change your body from the inside out. So, let’s just say you’re having a pro-age facial, if you were to listen to a recorded therapy meditation that was specifically for cell renewal, then theoretically, that treatment is going to continue to work even after you’ve had your facial. Or instead of listening to whale music during a massage, a guided meditation then you’re giving your body a massage from the inside as well.

“One thing I am exploring with spas now is tailor-made meditation massages. Either the therapist would listen to my meditation and choreograph their massage around it, or could do it the other way around and time what I’m saying to the movements of the therapy. It’s then played during the treatment, which becomes a meditation massage. The spa could charge more, and can give the client that download to listen to afterwards to bring back that feeling. “When I’m doing hypnotherapy, it can be for anything from addiction, to pain relief, to fear. So, depending on the budget of the spa, if they had a standard massage, they could offer a choice of existing recorded guided meditations, as a simple, low-cost add-on.”

How can salons and spas introduce spirituality in an authentic way?

“It might be something as simple as giving everyone a positive affirmation to go home with. That sort of touch allows the client to feel a little bit as if it’s a spiritual experience. And that’s where client demand is really changing – a lot of people choose things like yoga retreats over spas now because they want a spiritual experience. “You can carry on doing exactly what you’re doing but you can question, ‘am I giving that client the sort of care that touches the mind, body and spirit?’. Spiritual doesn’t mean being ‘out there’; it’s about making clients feel cared for on a deeper level, so they feel a bit more empowered. Even if they don’t believe in the spiritual side of what you do, they leave feeling more connected.”