YeloSpa, New York

I absolutely fell in love with this spa when I saw their website - it looked so incredibly amazing that I was already dreaming about opening a franchise in London by the time I even arrived.

Unfortunately it just didn’t hit the spot for me.

Their customer service is excellent, and they have mastered the whole, everyone knows your name thing, but unfortunately because the “treatment” I had was a hands off treatment I felt that the people guiding me through the process were a little out of their depth as “therapists.”

I rocked up after three nights of very little sleep, in part due to jet lag and in part due to some very noisy neighbours.  The herbal tincture they gave me was fantastic, I drank two glasses in two minutes and felt amazing, and very ready to drop off.  Normally they would recommend a reflexology treatment together with a nap treatment but there wasn’t anyone available, so I settled for the 40 minute nap.  You get to choose your music, your sleep scent, and are guided to the YeloCab (just a cabin not a taxi cab unfortunately), where you are tucked up in a type of zero gravity chair, asked if you are allergic to cashmere (oh how the other half live!) and have your feet lovingly swathed in hot towels and then all snuggled up.

It’s lovely and I was sure I’d be asleep in minutes.  However... the wave music was annoying crumbly waves instead of the big crashing waves that I find make me breathe in and out deeply and supposedly create superior brainwaves, the chair was not making me feel great (I felt a bit sick when they tilted it back) and above all I was feeling a little claustrophobic, probably from having been so recently on a plane. 

The up or downside of any spa treatment is that it gives you time alone with your thoughts, and in this case, alone with my thoughts, I realised I was angry with the noisy neighbours, angry with myself for not eating better, and well, just angry in general.  By the time another lady who knew my name came to wake me up I was a little ball of frustration and negative energy.  Yes I freaked her out (this is what I mean about being a trained “therapist”, understanding that any treatment can release pent up emotions, and even create a healing crisis in a person).  This is why a good yoga teacher is never perturbed when people fart or fall asleep, disgusted perhaps, but not surprised.

Anyway, some really good things here, but unfortunately for me it just didn’t live up to the hype, and if I was going to run a nap centre it’d be a lot different to this (now there’s an idea!)

Don’t get me wrong, some of these are excellent, but I couldn’t, in good conscience give them a Pearl Recommendation.  Sometimes they were just beaten to the punch, or I couldn’t decide a clear winner, other times they had a lot right, but I felt they just weren’t there.  I don’t really want to give bad reviews, but anything I felt was really best avoided you’ll find in the Jellyfish section.