Travel Well
Holistic health has packed its bags. From hotels that offer tarot readings alongside a turndown service to spas that spotlight crystals, these are the alternative breaks to book now
01 Portugal
What: Underwater sound therapy in Portuguese wine country
Where: Six Senses, Douro Valley How much: Rates start from €325 (approx £274), including breakfast and use of the spa; sixsenses.com
Who: Nikki Osman, deputy editor
Underwater sound therapy? I’m listening…
You will be. I’m midway through a pre-breakfast length of the hotel pool, with the sounds of subterranean orchestral music floating through my ear canals, when it occurs to me that underwater sound therapy might be the best hangover cure that no one’s heard of. And given this Six Senses outpost just happens to be in the middle of Portuguese wine country, there’s a good chance you’re going to need one. Underwater sound therapy is just one part of Six Senses Douro Valley’s extensive holistic wellness offering. The playlist is curated with the time of day and the light in mind, and best enjoyed – according to the hotel’s wellness director, Javier Suarez – with your body suspended in the middle of the pool, ears just below the surface. By the time I line up at the immunity bar an hour later, I’m in a trance so deep I can’t decide if I want to support my wine-soaked microbiome with a kombucha or a kefir (a #wellnessproblem if ever you’ve heard one).
What else is on the holistic health menu then?
Those familiar with the Six Senses brand will know that it’s a byword for both wellness and luxury – the ‘senses’ referring to sound, sight, touch, taste, smell and intuition. And nowhere does this offering come into its own more potently than in the put-your-phone-down beautiful Unesco World Heritagestamped surrounds of Douro Valley, just 90 minutes from Porto. It’s one of the oldest wine-producing regions in the world and spa treatments lean heavily on grapes (a two-hour vinotherapy treatment involves a full-body exfoliation using grapeseed pearls and port). You can also create your own natural cosmetics at the in-house alchemy bar, using ingredients from the hotel’s organic garden, and go forest bathing in the woodland surrounding the hotel, a renovated 19th-century manor house. But what sets Six Senses’ holistic offering apart from the kind you’ll find at any other five-star hotel is that treatments, sessions and experiences rooted in spirituality sit happily alongside those informed by science; after a 60-minute signature ‘holistic massage’ (which started and finished with a gong on my chest), I slipped into a pair of compression boots – technology that has been shown to support post-workout recovery. (Evidence for its efficacy in aiding recovery from a session that took place in the hotel’s ‘wine library’ is pendi
