Aspen Therapies is one of those hidden gems, tucked away in a residential area of Edinburgh, and yet uptown and boutique in its luxury. Recommended to us for its pampering OSKIA treatments, StyleNest couldn’t resist heading along to enjoy time out of a busy day, a wonderful treatment – and of course free out-of-town parking…
Aspen Therapies is somewhere you could drive past ten times and not know it was there, which is part of its charm. An Edinburgh secret adjoining the house where expert therapist Cari lives, it’s like stepping off a street of houses into the spa of the most luxurious hotel. Cari offers facial and body treatments, massage, reiki, hot lava shells and much more, but I was having an OSKIA Signature Glow Facial – something I was very excited about, given my love of this wonderful brand.
Cari made me feel at home and asked me about my skin and any current concerns. Then she led me through to the treatment room which was warm, beautifully lit and smelled heavenly – a promising start. The OSKIA facial I had chosen (having tried a couple of products from the range and been blown away) ‘uses a combination of anti-ageing and glow-inducing techniques to illuminate, brighten and hydrate the skin’. I could see this would be an excellent choice at any time, but especially for after the Christmas party season when your skin has had a bit too much stress from late nights or indeed wine.
First, Cari cleansed (twice) with hot towels – my favourite type of cleanse – and exfoliated. After this, she used a warm rose oil mask with fragrant steam to hydrate and smooth my skin, and gave me a blissful facial massage, focusing on the eye contour area – probably why I looked so ‘plumped up’ and wide awake afterwards.
After the oil, she used a passion fruit enzyme mask and while it got to work gave me a rejuvenating hand treatment and a relaxing shoulder massage (I could have had scalp too but I skipped it as I didn’t want to get my hair oily). For this she used oil from the OSKIA Rose Lychee Massage Candle, and, finding knots in my shoulders (too much bending over a laptop) she expertly released them to the point where I started to drift off to sleep.
As I came to I realised I had been in a relaxation zone that I hadn’t visited since before I had children. (You can’t put a price on that…). But Cari wasn’t rushing me out. I was offered fresh passion fruit ‘for a gentle return to reality’. I had to do the school run straight afterwards and the other mums were either sniffing me and telling me I smelt heavenly, or asking where they could go for a treatment that left them looking as relaxed.
6 Wolrige Road, Liberton, Edinburgh, EH16 6HX