It’s taken them a little time to get there…but Mandarin Oriental hotels have finally recognised their Asian provenance and introduced a whole series of new therapies to their spas, based on the tenets of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
I’m a great fan of TCM in all its elements, although I’m thrilled you can now get the herbal cures in tablet form, rather than boiled up pond life which you had to smell and drink. And while I’m still not sure about Cupping, if a practitioner said I needed it I would give it a whirl.
What Mandarin has done is simplified the therapies and slightly westernised the consultation procedure. This is turn is based on the balancing of the body’s yin and yang (just out of interest, my yang is almost permanently out of control) you have to do is fill in a simple questionnaire which is them examined by the therapist and a particular massage based on the meridians, is prescribed for you.
Best of all, depending on what your type is you are despatched afterwards with suggestions of which foods to avoid and which foods are healing for you often with some simple exercises.
A new twist on one of the oldest medical disciplines on earth…
