jilla ad final

Lomax yoga at home

Lomax: Bespoke Fitness, Nutrition and Wellbeing

The Blurb:

Lomax offers a bespoke range of fitness, nutrition and wellbeing services to keep busy people on top form. The emphasis is on effortless health; choosing the most appropriate combination of treatments or activities to fit into a client’s life and help them achieve their goals. Most treatments come to you, so you just arrange a time, and the therapist rocks up at your house. I decided to road-test a 40-minute Home Yoga session, followed by a one-hour Relax and Restore full body massage.

The Process:

Suni, my yoga instructor was positively buoyant. She took me through various Ashtanga sequences, and forced my body into positions I hadn’t known were possible.  Reassuring me that I’m extremely flexible didn’t go far to ameliorate the (momentary) pain. But I experienced an endorphin high stronger than any amount of cardio can induce. As an exercise-phobe, I’m not normally one to extol the virtues of endorphins.

Suni focused on my breathing throughout, ensuring each position, and transition between positions was choreographed to specific breathing sequences. Each movement was either on an intake or expulsion of breath, or part of a larger in or out breath. I’d never understood the apparently contradictory instruction to both tense the stomach muscles while simultaneously breathing deep into the lower belly, allowing it to expand. After years of confusion, Suni clarified this brilliantly. She explained that there is so much space in the stomach right under the ribs, you can simultaneously tense your core muscles and breathe deep into this space without your breath becoming shallow or restricted.

Next up was Philly, the absurdly intuitive masseuse. Philly looks after the complementary medicine side of Lomax, and brings her knowledge and understanding of various disciplines to each treatment. Arriving with a state-of-the-art table and selection of oils and blankets, she could tell that (due to idiosyncratic ticklish spots) I hate my legs being massaged before we’d even begun. And when performing Reiki above certain energy centres, picked up on the fact that I was having palpitations without even touching me. The Swedish massage itself was divine. Striking the elusive balance between touchy-feely and painfully deep, she lulled me into a state of deep relaxation, leaving me to focus on previously half-formed yet nagging thoughts.

Philly concluded the treatment with various energy-work to ground me. Focusing on bringing energy down into the feet can centre people who are inclined to live in their head at the expense of their body.

The Result:

Years of sporadic yoga attendance, combined with seemingly contradictory instructions meant I had never even learnt anything as concrete as how to breathe properly. Unlike many yoga instructors, Suni wasn’t allegorical or metaphysical in her instructions, which made it much easier to gauge whether I was actually following them or not!

I found it massively helpful to have someone ensuring I engage the correct muscles, and holding me in positions I wouldn’t otherwise contemplate.

The massage was one of the best I’d ever had. Philly was very careful not to do anything too detoxifying, as I normally feel dreadful the evening after a massage. Almost a week later my writer’s neck, the result of constant craning over a laptop, is still MIA. I was very impressed by her energy work. I’ve met various charlatans in fields such as Reiki, but when someone does it this well it’s surprisingly powerful.

Relax and Restore massage £80 for one hour; Relaxing Yoga Flow £80 for one hour.

Lomax, 159 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11; Lomaxpt.com; 07946 604 604

Tried & Tested |