Recharge at one of these luxury spas in Singapore – either at top hotels or great salons. Whether it’s a customised facial, a spa treatment, a couple’s spa or a luxurious massage – you don’t really need an excuse. Drop a hint for Valentine’s Day or your birthday, grab some girlfriends for a bridal party or book a spa for couples. Go on… you deserve it!
# Padma Spa
Bring bliss to both mind and body with a multi-sensorial experience at Padma Spa. In this serene environment, you’re promised the perfect blend of spa indulgence, restorative therapies and personalised service.
Look forward to a suite of massages and other body treatments firmly rooted in the traditional Oriental approach to wellbeing. Available to both men and women, they include: foot massage and reflexology, aromatherapy body massage, acupressure (tuina) body therapy, body scrubs and ear cleaning.
Unwind from the moment you enter Padma’s soothing ambience, then chill in the relaxation zone before being taken under the wing of your highly trained and intuitive therapist – part of a professional team who prioritise safety and hygiene and are totally dedicated to your wellness needs. Finally, go back to your your daily life in a happy and deeply revitalised frame of mind.
Isn’t this something we all need and deserve?
#01-03 Thong Teck Building, 15 Scotts Road 8031 3488 | padma.com.sg
# Raffles Spa
# Raffles SpaTreat yourself to a spa day at the luxurious Raffles Spa in Raffles Hotel Singapore! Choose from a curated list of therapeutic body and face treatments, including the Raffles Signature Gemstone Massage, an indulgent full-body treatment that uses organic botanical ingredients and the healing properties of gem-infused oils.
Raffles Spa uses Biologique Recherche and ISUN brands to deliver the ultimate in luxury spa treatments and experiences. Make sure you arrive early to enjoy the hydrothermal facility – it features a vitality pool filled with mineral-rich Peruvian pink salt, a Herbal Sauna Room scented with a range of calming aromas, an Aromatherapy Steam Room that releases pure salt vapour while you relax in the serene surroundings, and an Ice Fountain for cooling relaxation.
Raffles Hotel Singapore #01-31 Raffles Arcade, 328 North Bridge Road
# La Source Spa & Salon
Located in a quiet corner in the heart of the Orchard Road district, La Source Spa is a tranquil urban retreat that offers a full suite of top-notch face, body and hair services.
Here, you will discover all the benefits of a holistic approach to beauty and wellness – luxury treatments and beauty services designed to balance body and mind and to work harmoniously with one another.
After a morning of shopping or business in Orchard, treat yourself to a relaxing, beautifying and rejuvenating interlude at this urban oasis. Choose from a wide range of carefully chosen services and treatments, each designed for maximum effectiveness. From therapeutic massages and high-tech figure-shaping treatments to skilful eyebrow embroidery and acclaimed hair-cutting, colouring and styling, you’ll find solutions to all your beauty and wellness needs at one location.
Top-rated reviews are a great testimonial to this spa’s award-winning services and warm, empathic customer service.
#02-17/18 Voco Orchard Singapore (formerly Hilton Singapore) 581 Orchard Road 6732 1318 | lasource.com.sg
# Chi, The Spa
This beautiful spa has two locations in Singapore: one at the Shangri-La Hotel in Orange Grove Road, the other at the Shangri-La Rasa Sentosa. With their relaxing ambience and therapeutic massages, they aim to make you feel as though you’ve had a whole holiday after just one visit!
Traditional Chinese philosophy states that to maintain good health, our “chi” or universal life force must flow freely within the body. The products at Chi, The Spa are all made from natural ingredients, and the treatments are delivered by top masseurs and therapists and designed to provide revitalising and therapeutic benefits.
The spa features four single treatment rooms and three for couples, accommodating a range of massages that includes one for mums-tobe. It partners with French brand Biologique Recherche for some of the facials, as well as offering other types of facials. Its host of body treatments includes a Turkish body scrub, an age-defying shea butter wrap and the popular Thalasso slimming detox wrap.
Shangri-La Singapore | 6213 4818
Shangri-La Rasa Sentosa | 6371 1027 shangri-la.com
Spa by JW
A visit to Spa by JW is a luxurious experience but a purposeful one at the same time, addressing four key benefits: “calm”, “indulge”, “invigorate” and “renew”.
The menu incorporates traditional recipes with modern spa treatments that span from a 15-minute shoulder massage to a full-hour Sleep Deeply massage. You can choose an ultimate aromatherapy massage if you’re all about the senses, or a Bespoke Skin Polish if you’re in need of a good exfoliation treatment. There’s more choice with regards to length of treatments and facials too! Other signature treatments include body scrubs, body wraps, eye treatments and couples’ massages.
To complete the luxury spa experience is a separate men’s and ladies’ Vitality Pool, with a sauna and steam room equipped with a Starpool system that incorporates colour, aroma and music therapy.
JW Marriott Hotel Singapore South Beach, 30 Beach Road
6818 1939 | jwmarriottsingapore.com/spa
Remède Spa at The St. Regis
This is the first Remède Spa outside the US, and you quickly get a sense that it’s an urban spa with something special. There’s a wide range of experiences and treatments available, many inspired by ancient rituals around water. The interior design of the spa links to this watery theme, including a Vichy Suite for Hammam treatments. The wet lounge takes things a step further with its cedarwood Finnish saunas and eucalyptus-scented steam chambers. These areas are designed to support hot and cold therapies that benefit the immune and circulatory systems by stimulating the metabolism and releasing toxins.
You can enjoy the wet lounge before or after a pampering treatment in a single’s or couple’s spa room. Treatments include facials and massages – there’s even a special “Pedi:Mani:Cure Studio” by renowned French podiatrist Bastien Gonzalez. Two highlights from the luxury spa menu are the Black Soap and Rassoul Hammam Ritual, which includes a face and scalp massage with argan oil, and the Argan Oil and Alum Stone Face and Body Ritual, using a traditional alum stone followed by a facial mask of honey and royal jelly, with a relaxing massage with argan oil to finish.
The St. Regis Singapore, 29 Tanglin Road
6506 6896 | remedespasingapore.com
Trimmings Spa in Loewen Gardens
For head-to-toe pampering in a serene location that’s not too far from the centre of town, try Trimmings Salon & Spa. Housed in a beautiful black-and-white in Dempsey, has good massages and facials!
A must-try is the Chakra Balancing Body Massage. Choose your aromatherapy blend from the range of Aveda oils that aim to calm, detox and relieve stress. Using elbows, forearms and knuckles, your therapist will customise your massage based on your pressure preferences. Whether you’re up for a therapeutic and tension relieving treatment, or a soothing and relaxing session to drift off to, all you need to do is specify to your therapist before your massage. This massage can be of various lengths, from half an hour to two hours, so you get to choose according to how much time you have on hand.
75B Loewen Road
8511 5085 | trimmings.com.sg
AWAY Spa
W Singapore – Sentosa Cove invites you to lose yourself in the rainforest design and island setting of AWAY Spa, which is illuminated with a decompression area, sauna, steam room, vitality pool and experiential showers.
The luxury spa in Singapore offers a modern, social environment, and features treatments that are designed to make you look and feel good. Settle into your private spa treatment room and select from an array of massages, facials, body and beauty treatments, manicures and pedicures, waxing and more. They’re all performed with exclusive Ila Spa products – all-natural, organic skincare products that will make you feel great, both on the outside and inside.
Whether it’s a time for relaxation or to refuel for whatever comes next, you can get your glow on and relax with signature treatments such as the Detox massage that promotes tissue regeneration and toxin detox, or the Cove Body Treat, which revitalises the skin from the inside out. You can even book a couple’s spa.
Whichever you choose, you’ll end up with a natural glow that’s worth flaunting!
21 Ocean Way, Sentosa Cove
6808 7290 | awayspa.singapore@whotels.com
awayspasingapore.com
More about massage
Not only is a massage an amazing tool for physical and mental relaxation, easing muscle tension and relieving pain, the therapeutic benefits of human touch extend to healing injuries and supporting wellness in general. Massage is also the perfect opportunity to practise gratitude. Tons of research has shown that the emotion of gratitude brings multiple benefits of its own: mental, psychological and physical.
Perhaps surprisingly, feeling grateful improves self-esteem. It also works to improve psychological health by reducing toxic emotions such as frustration, envy, resentment and regret. What’s more, grateful people have more mental resilience, experiencing lower rates of PTSD following similarly traumatic events.
One study even showed that grateful people experience fewer aches and pains – and, unlike NSAIDs, gratitude won’t raise your risk of internal bleeding or a heart attack.
Tellingly, gratitude increases levels of societal harmony because it reduces aggression and enhances empathy. That’s something the world could do with more of right now. May I suggest a massage prescription for warmongering politicians? Or a hot-stone rub-down for those antisocial New Year sale shoppers in a frenzy of FOMO; or some gentle facial lymphatic drainage for those nasty trolls sowing misery on social media?
Which massage?
I’m a grateful recipient of all sorts of massage, be it Chinese, Hawaiian, Thai, Swedish, Indonesian or other – and baby-naked and oil-based, or performed through a full set of cotton pyjamas.
I could be in the luxurious surroundings of a five-star resort spa, in the cramped cubicle of a Bedok neighbourhood massage joint, or on sandy, salt-stained bedding on a Phuket beach. (As for therapists, their gender matters to me as little as their pronouns of choice!)
Then there’s the question of soft, medium or hard? Like your breakfast order for boiled eggs, it’s important that they get this right. Disconcertingly, one individual’s definition of medium can be another’s “Ouch! Stop! Stop now!”
As for me, I like a gentle facial, and a firm body massage. But not so firm that I’m left with visible bruises. In fact, over the past 20 years I’ve toned down my request from “hard, please”, to “medium-to-strong – and gentle on my sensitive feet”.
Therapist recommendations
In my opinion, the best therapists don’t necessarily have the strongest hands, the jazziest techniques or the longest list of certificates. (Though there’s nothing wrong with any of those.) What truly lights my gratitude is an intuitive therapist with an instinctive touch – whether it’s for a full-body Swedish or a rejuvenating facial.
I don’t think this is an entirely trainable talent: I think you have to be born with the potential for it. And, as the recipient of one of these instinctual healers’ touch, you’ll know at once how lucky you are to be at the receiving end.
No matter how upmarket the spa is, or how sensuous its surroundings, there’s no guaranteeing a superb massage, facial or other treatment. That’s where it pays to follow trusted recommendations – like the ones that follow here. So, as we close one door on a testing 2022 and open another to the promise of another brand new year, what better time to practise hope and gratitude while indulging in an uplifting spa treat?
Here’s wishing you good health, happiness and the luxury spa treatment of your dreams!
This article first appeared in the January 2023 edition of Expat Living. You can purchase the latest issue or subscribe, so you never miss a copy!
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