Merging scientific theory with holistic therapy, Kintsugi Space is a luxury members’ club that promises to rebalance, re-energise and revitalise. L360’s deputy editor Anna Evdokimou put it to the test.
I’m lying in a darkened room. There are large headphones covering my ears and I can’t see anything. High-pitched soundwaves permeate my eardrums.
Kathy Nellikka, a naturopathic doctor, comes in after 15 minutes. She removes my headphones and helps me to sit up. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to readjust to the light.
I’m in Abu Dhabi — my first time here — to visit Kintsugi Space, a women-only holistic wellness club on Al Reem Island. Abu Dhabi may not come to mind as a destination for wellness. In fact, the city is almost the antithesis to the concept: vast skyscrapers, ongoing developments and an energy conference across the road from my hotel all overwhelm. But I was persuaded to visit by renowned spa creator Patrizia Bortolin.
I first met Patrizia at Kintsugi’s launch event in London over a year ago, and her passion for the project radiated throughout the talk she gave us. She spoke of Kintsugi Space like a cherished secret only us women were allowed to know, and it was here that my fascination with the concept began.
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What’s Kintsugi Space like?
Arriving at the club, I’d entered through the large oak door and felt a rush of cool air sooth my hot, prickly skin. I took in the large, bright and immaculate room filled with cream furniture and lush greenery.
Softly spoken women dressed in long white robes came to greet me, offering slippers and pouring lemon-infused water. They ushered me into the changing room to put on my own plush robe and I felt as though I’d stumbled upon a palace of goddesses, with none of them realising I’m not one of them.
The townhouse is vast, taking up over seven floors, and Patrizia herself had welcomed me and showed me around. “Kintsugi Space is all about shaping yourself into who you want to be,” she explained, guiding me from the bottom floor — where the hammam, steam room and sauna are located — up to the biohacking level, where an oxygen chamber and laser therapy room await.
“Here, your senses are heightened because the distractions of daily life are removed from you,” she continued. “Our Quantum Examination has been designed to reveal where your frequencies can be increased.” And this is where Kintsugi Space’s ethos lies — to help members achieve a ‘heightened vibration’. The theory is that the energy particles and vibrations in our bodies should be increased and balanced. If our particles are in equilibrium, our ailments, pains and troubles will dissipate. In a sense, the higher your frequency, the better your mental and physical health.
To do this, Kathy begins with Su Jok, which is an ancient treatment system that involves rubbing a metal roller with grooves over my hand, thumb and fingers to discover which points are painful. This, she’d told me, would reveal which areas of my body need healing.
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My Quantum Assessment
“Your stomach,” Kathy says. “You hold all of your tension in your stomach, and it’s caused your gut health to become unbalanced.” She’s not wrong. I’ve suffered with stomach issues for the last few years, but I’d always attributed them to bad genes.
Kathy goes on to explain that my issues stem from my struggles with stress. That it’s the mental impacting the physical. And she doesn’t stop there. “Why do you think that you resist depending on others?” she asks casually, as if I’d volunteered that information. She continues, sensing my bewilderment: “It’s your shoulders that make it obvious. You’re tense, uncomfortable. You dislike not being in control here.”
I can’t understand how she’s identified all this through a roller and a frequency listening session. Was I visiting a wellness spa or a therapy clinic? Both, I eventually realised.
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My treatment plan at Kintsugi Space
To address my ailments and stress, Kathy prescribes a series of therapies that span three days. A combination of holistic and quantum treatments ensues, including an internal organ massage, a water healing session and zen shiatsu, which involves me lying down in another dark room while crystals are held over my body.
By the third and final day, my body feels like a rubber band. I’ve been remoulded, stretched, kneaded and pressed. My mind’s been freed from the concerns of daily life, because there’s been no daily life to concern myself with. The sessions have eliminated the tension that I’ve been carrying, but it’s renowned facialist Anastasia Achilleos — who’s worked with the likes of Demi Moore and Jodie Comer — who’s had the biggest effect on me.
Anastasia’s 90-minute session, known as the Anastasia Achilleos Method, has been created to align and rebalance the central nervous system and release tension in the connective tissues. This all takes place on a waterbed, which, in Anastasia’s words, “feels like returning to the womb”.
So calming and nurturing are Anastasia’s movements that I find myself slowly edging into sleep, which she warned me would happen. Luckily, I manage to stay conscious long enough to hear her whisper: “Whatever it is, it doesn’t serve you. Let it go.”
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It’s never a comfortable experience when one is forced to contemplate oneself, but at Kintsugi, there’s nothing to do but exactly that. Somehow, however, the therapists make the experience of looking within feel natural — ordinary, even. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold, and you can’t mend your scars if you don’t know where they are.
Between treatments, I spend some time in the library, where I pick up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I open it up on a bookmarked page: “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”
Somehow, I have a feeling that bookmark wasn’t there by coincidence.
