Up until a little while ago I worked for Lush. It was great, I love Lush & working for the company was great fun, but, like Star Trek: TNG said, “All good Things…” and all that jazz.
The only reason I mention this is because I felt really weird working for Lush and then coming home & blogging about it too, I know some staff do, and that’s fine, but it was weird to me so I didn’t. But now I don’t, so I can go on & on & on & on about Lush all the time! Mwhahahaha!
Anyway, lets get to the point.
Last Friday I went down to Liverpool Lush, why did I shlep 44km, when there’s one in the town I live in? Well, because up above the Liverpool store is a Lush Spa.
When you get to Liverpool you’d never notice anything different, it’s just a really busy, big Lush store (the biggest in the world, or it was when I left the company, it could have changed by now.) Now I’d booked my treatment over the phone earlier in the week, and bought a voucher at Preston Lush, so all I had to do was rock up at the right time and give the gent at the till the magic ticket & wait for the Lush Therapist to come say “hello” and lead you upstairs to the Spa.
Lush doesn’t do things like other companies, and the same applies to their Spas. It’s almost an Un Spa, upstairs at Liverpool (and AFAIK all the Spas) is like visiting your Great Aunts house. That eccentric aunt who has a tonne of weird books, furniture older than you, and also 16 types of tea for every possible mood or occasion, and would be mortified if you asked for milk in any of them, but would happily add a little gin if it was after 11am. Flying ducks on the wall, flowers in jugs, that style of thing. The 8th incarnation of The Doctor would have loved it, if he’d gotten more screen time, and Lush did product placement.
I’d booked in for a treatment called The Sound Bath.
A powerful, 60-minute meditative treatment that helps you listen deep within. Primarily focused on the head, this treatment takes you on a journey into sound – and yourself.
I’ll confess when I first picked this, I just wanted an hour to (almost) myself and pampering without having to take any clothes off. I’m not a touchy feely kinda gal, there’s another Lush Spa treatment called The Spell that’s mostly a foot treatment, but has a great head rub in the middle, I fancied 60 minutes of that.
The Sound Bath is a little more than a head rub. It’s like a lot of Lush products, aiming to be something quite normal, but ending up almost as if it’s been designed by an Jim Henson Alien who’s only had John Crichton explain the concept to them.
The aim of The Sound Bath is to relax you to a point where your head, and all the chitter chatter in it, is just quiet, and, if you want, you can listen to the voice within. So what you get is a hot stone facial, a fabulous head rub, mixed with Tibetan singing bowls and Ohm Tuning Forks, with a couple of Ear Candles thrown in too, and cold stone facial at the end to bring you back to the real world.
It doesn’t sound like it should work. The more I write it down the worse it seems. Did I mention that it has bird song mixed into the sound track? See, bonkers. But, like Fish Fingers & Custard, there’s some kind of mad genius at work here, and everything just works.
After the hot stone facial has gotten you really settled and you’ve started to relax, the therapist uses the tuning forks on points of your forehead, the sound literally washes through you and you’re falling deeper down the rabbit hole, by the time the therapist asks you to turn onto one side and starts the ear candle part of the treatment you’re practically on autopilot.
At the end of it all, I left feeling completely zen, but strangely also quite supercharged like “no power in the ‘verse” could stop me.”
Eventually I had to return to the real world, but on the way out I had a quick nip around the shop for some treats.
Firstly, the Inhale Exhale ballistic, this is a limited edition ballistic, and I want to go back and buy about 10!
It’s scented with two different fragrances, Inhale & Exhale, coincidentally the same two scents in the incense used to scent the room for The Sound Bath. One side fizzes quicker than the other, so when it’s popped into the bath you get wafts of one scent, to start, and then part two changes the scent, and eventually the blend together to make The Breath of God scent.
The other treat was a generous sample of Ocean Salt Face & Body Cleanser. I’ve tried Ocean Salt before, but the peeps in the Lush Labs have worked up a self preserving formula, doing away with the need to add in an artificial preservative. It smells much fruitier than the preserved version, and when I was chatting with Emma, the Liverpool Lush’s Trainee Manager, she explained one of the tweaks in the new formula is the addition of Mango Butter.
This is also a good point to mention that the Ocean Salt sample is the only part of my trip I got for free, and also that this is the only photo I’ve taken myself! Thanks to Melissa on the Lush Liverpool’s facebook for letting me use the other 3 pictures.
So anyone else tried The Sound Bath? Or any of the other treatments?
Anyone interested in hearing about the self preserving versions of some of Lush’s classic products?
And that neatly lead me onto the comics I’m currently reading, part of DCs New 52, The Futures End.
