Lounging in a reclined chair alongside the calming pool at Cheval Blanc smoothens all the wrinkles in your mind as the chronotherapy of smoothly changing lights, like a relaxing piano composition, calms and sneds the positive dream-like waves into your head. An azure tranquility, warm yellow energy, move as in a romantic film into soft purple and then deep red hues over the wooden Alpine ceilings and rocky wall, that somehow naturalises the indoor pool, and transfers you into a cosy and warm cave sheltering your body from the winetry cold outside.

LVMH Maison Cheval Blanc Courchevel

If your body is not weary from skiing on the slopes swishing alongside the spa facility, a private aquabiking lesson, will take care of the flying-like experience you get on a fresh powder day. Your limbs will be spared from your own body weight while plunged in the crystal clear water. A jacuzzi overlooking the snow-covered slopes is also useful in relieving aching muscles.

The serious skiers in need for muscle recovery might switch the sport suits to a loose towel mantle to promenade around the sauna and steam room like in the ancestors in the ancient Mediterranean. The modern crystal sauna world offers a cooling plunge pool and crushed ice dispersed sequentially into an attached basin – both effecting in a rush of your blood to the heart after a vein-dilating warm session in the sauna.

Standing under the rain shower transports you immediatelly into a wild forest, and it feels so invigorating that you might hang under it for – a while. The dry finnish sauna is lit in a sexy blue tone, and its into a stone-cut wall interlaid with wooden beams make it feel like a mountain challet. Chic and tender music penetrates your resting mind as you dive in the ocean of hot air inside. Its unisex build-up is perhaps the only disadvantage, but then it depends for whom and also with whom you need to share it. Coming before most families and skiers return from the slopes around five o’clock almost always secured my private sauna.

The hotel was the first of the luxe portfolio in the folder of the same company owning Louis Vuitton, Dior, Guerlain, a couple of top-notch wineries and Champagne houses, and other ultra-expensive products.

Guerlain spa at Cheval Blanc

Guerlain cosmetics, including the massage cream are used in most of the spa treatments. From anti-aging facials accompanied by a rigorous facial ‘gymnastics’ give your skin more than a meditative session in a soft chair as the muscles release tension and the skin feels stretched like after an intense yoga session, the puff goes away and the products can penetrate deeper into the epidermis.

The orchid line has been developped at Guerlain’s own orchidarium, where an orchid with the best capacity to hold water was discovered after 10 years of research and now is used to moisturise effectively the deep layers of the skin.

The concentrated extract from the royal bee gelly in the Abeille Royale range smoothens wrinkles by awekening your skin’s own renewal.

The Spa at Cheval Blanc hotel in Courchevel

Body scrubs brighten, while fat-breaking massage slims (the claim that you will literally see centimetres rolling away from your limbs and belly applies to a number of sessions and not just one-hour-lasting magic whip of the therapist’s lash). Apres-ski, instead of hectolitres of mulled wine and a tipsy head, can include a muscle-relaxing massage in one of the freshly designed, ultra-modernly equipped and spacious rooms. Miriam has been tending my sore body for years now, her always smiley attitude and firm touch work such a magic on me, that I request her each time she is in. As all of the staff at the hotel’s spa she speaks English fluently with a charming French accent.

What I like about seasonal hotels and spas like at the ski resorts is when they keep the same staff around as years pass. It intensifies my emotional attachment with the place so I look forward my next visit even more. Overseen by Sophie, whose allways perfect apapearance reassures you of the capabilities of the therapists, the spa although tiny, is always kept sharp and bright clean.

Ostheopath is on hand if something went off balance on the slopes, and a cellebrity hairdresser John Nollet’s salon will tend to your hair whether for a festive New Year’s eve party or a dinner out at on eof the Courchevel’s chic and trendy restaurants.

Sipping on a cup of uplifting orchid tea blended for Guerlain in Paris as I fluffy into one of the veiled dove-white cushioned relaxation beds after each tretment, the sensation of bliss and balance penetrates my every cell.

Website: www.chevalblanc.com

Contact: spa.courchevel@chevalblanc.com