HAPPY PLACE

Annabel Rivkin helps crack the happiness code

Massages do not make me happy. Equally, facials do not generally bring me joy. They bring oily hair and a sense of disorientation. In fact day spas, on the whole, are not a one-way ticket to bliss. One minute you’re being kneaded and the next you are getting grubby and tense again on the Central line. Which is why, perhaps, the moodily gorgeous Mandrake hotel just off Oxford Street chose to house a spiritual spa. It appears to have decided that, when it comes to physical beauty and fitness, there are myriad centres of excellence in London. Instead, it’s more interesting to nourish the soul and nurture the essence of our inner beings. Right now, what with everything, our souls are in dire need. In fact, if someone tried to give me a massage right now, I might punch them.

And so it is courtesy of The Mandrake and its reassuringly woo-woo spiritual well-being programme that I found myself sitting opposite the renowned psychic Fleur Leussink as she worked to provide me with a spiritual spark; not so much predicting the future as creating a communication bridge between what my spirit already knew but my conscious mind had yet to pick up on. Food for thought whether you buy into this stuff or not.

If a psychic reading is going too far, The Mandrake has a stable of experts who host weekly goddess circles, shamanic gong baths and crystal singing bowl sessions.

Its spring equinox workshop with creative life coach Marilyn Fontaine is about to land and, if you are feeling some wildness within, shamanic practitioner Eddy Elsey will be running a dreaming and drumming circle in April. Personally, I think it might be time to run with the wolves…