What: The Talise Essential
Where:Talise Spa, Madinat Jumeirah
Tel: 04-3198181
What to expect: After a hectic day at the office and a horrendous traffic jam, walking into Talise Spa was like walking into The Twilight Zone. I don’t know if it was the music, the essential oil aroma or the big dressing gown, but by the time we got to the treatment room, I was so chilled out I was practically levitating. While my therapist Brenda set up, I sat in a chair, closed my eyes and thought, “Even if sitting right here was the treatment, it would be worth it.”
But of course that wasn’t the treatment.
The Talise Essential involves 75 minutes of freestyle massage with Aromatherapy Associates’ Light Relax Body Oil (containing lavendar and ylang ylang essential oils), preceded by an inhalation of tea tree, mint, eucalyptus and pine, and followed by a ten-minute facial cleansing and scalp massage.
The massage was outstanding – Brenda’s freestyle massage seemed to be intuitive rather than planned, taking time over my shoulders and neck (which are problem parts of the body for me) and returning to those areas often. While they became the focus, by no means was any other body part left out – everything from the arches of my feet to the palms of my hands got some TLC.
With quicker-than-normal massage movements, Brenda released tension from everywhere. The rose-scented products were heavenly and the facial cleanse felt gentle and pure. The final hurrah was the firm scalp massage, which brought me back to the real world, but with a smile on my face.
Details: Dh650, 90 minutes.
