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With busy schedules and demanding lives, the perfect night’s sleep has become the holy grail for wary modern travellers. Here, Alice B-B meets the medical experts from Surrenne on a mission to help
Alice B-B
What happened? Hotels used to be about sex. Or at least the promise of sex. Enormous beds ready to be mussed up, slinky bathrooms with soft lighting, mini bars to plunge into and best of all... post-coital room service. While that still holds true of course, today’s post-pandemic, longevity-savvy, biometric-obsessed and quite possibly just knackered traveller is probably more concerned with less prurient and more puritanical matters.
Once upon a time I was the sleep queen. I could curl up like a cat in any old bed, on a floor, in a dentist’s chair, and drift into deep slumber. I’ve snatched forty winks during an MRI scan. As a young rascal, when nights were wild – often starting with a cocktail at Claridge’s – I’d say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ if anyone suggested it was time for bed. Annoyingly, it turns out that, without good sleep, the dead bit can show up sooner. Harvard Medical School tracked 170,000 people in the US and established that poor sleep could shave up to five years off your life. Five whole years. Not to be snored at.
After a scuba diving-induced panic attack, I began waking in the night; heart pounding, eyes wide, ready to wrestle a bear. With these cortisol-fuelled, witching-hour wake-ups came as a deep empathy with the estimated thirty per cent of the world’s adult population deemed chronic insomniacs.
For the first time, I experienced the effects of sleep deprivation: emotions awry, brain sluggish, feelings of depression, sugar cravings. And when I researched the potential of long-term effects – weight gain, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and dementia – I knew I could no longer take sleep for granted.
Dr. Mark MikhailImproving sleep takes time and discipline. Think of sleep as a muscle. Different training protocols work better for some than others. And if you stop training, you lose your progress. It’s the same with sleep. We need to continually work on our sleep. But the great news is, if something doesn’t work, you can try again sixteen hours later.
Sleep is complex. There’s no one size fits all. So it’s not surprising that the global sleep economy is estimated to be worth $95 billion dollars. And to get to the bottom of the issue, it helps to dig deep, as Dr. Mikhail notes: “I like to first assess nutrition, exercise, and stress management,” says Dr. Mark. Then I see if sleep lab diagnostics or medical therapies are needed. Either way, sleep takes focus and consistency.”
Lately, I’ve been trying to stick to an evening protocol. As advised by my functional health practitioner, I don’t eat too late, avoid late-night screens and phones, and opt for a warm, soapy bath with magnesium flakes, followed by journaling with a cup of Sleepy Tea. On sleepless mornings, I try to start the day brightly. I’ll book a PT session in Hyde Park or take a swim in the Serpentine.
“I sometimes imagine how glorious it would be to sleep in a cool, dark cave with no electricity – albeit with 500 thread count, Egyptian-cotton sheets.”
During the day, I make time for NSDR: non-sleep deep rest; maybe breathwork or hypnotherapy with the award-winning Malminder Gill at Surrenne. Through hypnotherapy sessions, she helps me shift unwanted patterns and thoughts, removing the blocks that are preventing a good night’s sleep. Gill uses these techniques to help reduce physical stress and support her clients in accessing deeper states of relaxation and heightened alertness to close the productivity gap.
I’ve discovered that the real secret to better sleep is not deeply worrying about it; focusing instead on energy levels or the parasympathetic phase during the day. Even if it’s just ten minutes, pause and recalibrate the nervous system.
Alas, modern life isn’t conducive to shut-eye. I sometimes ...imagine how glorious it would be to sleep in a cool, dark cave with no electricity – albeit with 500 thread count, Egyptian-cotton sheets – instead of a city with light and noise pollution, tech stress and jet lag. So I try to set myself up for success by creating an environment as close to that cave as possible. I make the house top up its lights-out as an airport runway into a magical fluffy cloud at the end, ready and waiting so I can float into a dreamy slumber.
That runway includes eating at least three hours before I go to sleep. And soaking with my favourite Neom magnesium bath milk relaxes my muscles. A sauna or steam at The Connaught also works well by raising the body’s temperature, which is proven to help falling asleep.
I try to ditch my phone or laptop an hour before bed, dim the lights and order a camomile tea from room service – particularly decadent when sipped from Claridge’s blue china. I spritz my pillow with Bamford spray and slip on a sleep mask from the Surrenne shop, because even the tiniest light can keep me awake. Then it’s time for the fluffy cloud. And if I happen to wake, I’ll take a Snooze pill by Leapfrog (it’s filled with lactium, a bioactive peptide that induces a delicious drowsiness, like a baby who has just downed a bottle of milk).
For jet lag, I’ll ask Dr Mark for supplements to help get my circadian rhythm back on track. And I’ll enjoy a relaxing scalp treatment and a session in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber at ne: flooding the body with oxygen is proven to enhance shut-eye.
Inge TheronMaybourne knows how important a good night’s sleep is for our guests. At Surrene, we took it a step further and created a destination to upgrade sleep, with lighting that mimics the circadian rhythm. Sleep-enhancing soundscapes, and our clinically proven sleep-smell-scape, which is available through treatments in your room.
That thoughtfulness extends to my Oura ring: the sleep tracker. At first I found it annoying that I run on night owl wit at late hours and so was rated the worst sleeper in my group of next-morning master hustlers who show up in gym gear with nuclear wake-ups. But the great thing about the Oura is it’s not bossy or scolding; it’s more like a friend who wants the best for you. So if I score ‘off’ and have a red line, the Oura gently suggests taking it easy the next day. And if my sleep score is high, it’s super encouraging. Carrots not sticks!
Maybe, in future, Maybourne master lists Surrenne members will be able to share their sleep tracker metrics more officially, giving the hotel more insight into the sleep experience and tailoring it to individual guests. “There’s something incredibly powerful in providing better sleep for guests,” says Dr Mark. “We’re on the cutting edge of creating destinations and innovations that take stress off sleep and put people back in touch with relaxation through soundscapes and interior design choices.”
Imagine arriving in your bedroom to find every detail personalised to your sleep protocol. Or… screw sleep and go back to Plan A.
After a sense-stirring aromatic steam opens the pores, you're treated from top to toe with a deep hair cleanse and your choice of nourishing mud mask.
