The latest wellness experience at the Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown offers to the chance for guests to time travel—through hypnosis.
The Time Traveler, curated by in-house Resident Healer Nicole Hernandez, also known as The Traveling Hypnotist, is a past-life regression elevated with healing rituals such as breath work and energetic clearing.
“While some guests are well-informed about the benefits of hypnosis, the vast majority of people still associate hypnosis with stage shows and Hollywood’s portrayal of zombie-like trances,” said Eric Smith, spa director, Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown. “When, in fact, hypnosis is a useful practice for self-development and habit change. The Time Traveler allows us to meet our guests in the middle. Some would consider a past-life regression experience as entertainment, but the process goes beyond delivering personal insights that be quite helpful and cathartic.”
Hernandez is part of The Spa’s Resident Healers Program, which was created to enhance the guest experience with spiritual healing resulting in elevated overall well-being.
“She’s very interested in the history of wellness modalities among various cultures,” said Smith. “The inspiration for combining spa services and hypnosis dates back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks who practiced Temple Sleep, which was the practice of preparing someone to communicate with the gods via sleep to help them with mental or physical ailments. Before being lulled to sleep, the participant would undergo detoxification rituals to calm the mind and body. Then a priest or priestess would use suggestion (a component of hypnosis) to imply he or she would receive the answers to the ailment in their dreams.”
The Time Traveler experience starts with a private infrared sauna, with the combination of heat and LED chromotherapy lighting promoting healthy sleep cycles, reducing muscle tension and releasing natural endorphins. The experience continues with a full-body salt exfoliation, rich in trace elements that eliminates toxins and restores balance to the skin, followed by a massage with long, rhythmic strokes to ease the mind for deep relaxation and restful sleep. Next, Hernandez works with the guest on past life regression, a hypnotherapy technique that helps people access memories, particularly those from another lifetime. A hypnotherapist assists clients through hypnosis or guided meditation, and then guides them to recall important details of past lives.
During the session, the client experiences visualizations that are more vivid than a daydream and distinct from common dreams. The goal of a past life regression is to garner insight from past lives that can be helpful in this current lifetime.
“I’ve found that a past life regression can be a powerfully cathartic tool for helping us create more meaningful and fulfilling lives in our present,” said Hernandez. “A past life regression allows you to identify patterns in previous lives that may be impacting you now. By exploring past lives, you can learn more about your strengths and weaknesses to understand better how to amplify your natural abilities and change the behaviors and habits that aren’t serving you. You may also find essential details about why things are happening in the way they do. Whether you get one session or choose to explore multiple lives, this type of hypnotherapy has the potential to help uncover essential pieces about yourself so that you can have more clarity moving forward.”
The Spa offers The Time Traveler as an individual session, a four-hour experience as well as an overnight two-day day spa adventure.
Smith said that the experience has been successful among guests. “We’ve had great success with sold-out pop-up weekends at some of our launch properties, including Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Boston and Four Seasons Hotel Austin,” he said. “Now that we’re officially launching a more robust experience at Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, we’re seeing that our residents and regular spa guests are excited to try it. We find people booking in pairs (back-to-back sessions with a family member or friend) so that they can discuss their individual experiences afterward over coffee, brunch or dinner.”
