London’s most exciting wellness launch for years

Immersive meditation and cleansing colonics top the bill at this clubby Kensington space.

The new five-storey Knightsbridge branch of Urban Retreat is a space where “beauty meets hospitality” – as described by managing director Reena Hammer. This means an in-house restaurant will be accompanied by the first London salon of fêted hairdresser Frédéric Fekkai, alongside an outpost for sought-after celebrity facialist Clare Marie Peters. But it’s the health and wellness offerings that really up the ante, making Urban Retreat at The White House the most exciting and innovative new holistic destination to hit the capital in many years.

Options include facials by Clare Marle Peters and bespoke massage treatments

The star of the just-launched wellness floor is the Khera-Griggs Cleanse Clinic – a co-venture between PR Meena Khera and Amanda Griggs, a renowned nutritionist and colonic practitioner. For colonics (from £140) or “infusions” – to use the terminology of the trade – are the name of the game here, with a pro team using warm water, coffee, prescriptive herbal enemas, garlic or probiotics to cleanse and rehydrate, depending on the clinicians’ diagnostics.

More palatable, perhaps, are the clinic’s BodyFriend Massage Chairs; developed by a team of leading South Korean doctors and imported exclusively, they scan the body for areas of tension to create a bespoke massage (from £30 for 25 minutes) from head to toe. Dr Deepak Chopra’s Inner Space Immersive Meditation Experience (from £60 for 30 minutes) is led by Catherine Turner, who trained at a remote Sivananda Ashram in the Himalayas and teaches novices and advanced meditators global and ancient techniques. And the Studio Masters Series, curated by Sadie Frost, will offer Body Based Mindfulness yoga and Pilates from award-winning and globally recognised Pilates studio Exhale Pilates London.

Urban Retreat at The White House includes a floor dedicated to wellness, with a new Cleanse Clinic

In January, three new cleanse programmes will launch: one for weight loss, another with a focus on gut heath, and a conscious breathwork cleanse with breathing expert Alan Dolan.

Urban Retreat’s mascot: a pink Minnie Mouse on the building’s Kensington balcony.