Feb 3

Feb 3 The Soul Spa | A conversation with founder Madeline Blackburn

A center dedicated to the mind-body-soul connection, The Soul Spa was founded on a site of healing — legend has it that King Bladud was cured of leprosy from the hot springs that the building, one of the oldest in Bath, is situated on. For years people have come to this location to get well (the energy of Sulis Minerva has even been felt in its rooms).

We talk to founder Madeline Blackburn about how The Soul Spa is providing ways to treat our modern-day ailments and creating the space for people to just pause.

The Soul Spa feels like a new model for the mind/body/spiritual in our communities.

When I was thinking about how to create this space, I knew I didn’t want to be the church hall, because the environment matters so much to me. I was in a flotation tank in Colorado, and I literally sat up in the dark and the idea of “soul centers” came into my head. I went home and wrote and wrote and wrote. I noticed that there were workshops in spaces, nice retreats, and meditation and mindfulness classes. But what’s unique to The Soul Spa is that we’re in one building and have a permanent offering. Though workshops and courses might change, our practitioners and team of people are here all the time and here for you if you need them.

Often practitioners can be quite siloed but maybe, for instance, a client who comes in for psychotherapy finds it won’t work for them and that they would do better with a reiki healer. You offer a more client-led model, giving possibilities for accessing healing in different ways.

Absolutely. From a holistic physiotherapist and an astrologer to a shamanic healer and nutritionist, we try to foster a collaborative nature between us. We know what each other does. All the therapists say how refreshing it is to feel part of something, rather than just renting a room. That’s quite unique about us. Also what I understand of the human brain is where your beliefs are, if you believe in something, that’s probably going to work for you better than something that you don’t believe in. I’m here, not to make any comment or judgment about what anyone’s beliefs are, but to give them the smorgasbord of choices that will fit in with their view of the world. And then maybe even open people up to new ways that they haven’t thought of.

We don’t want to make people feel like it’s going to be work or difficult though but approach from a place of relaxation and calm, peace, and time out. We have a Quantum Field room, so people can just drop in and tune in to one of our guided meditations or bring their own.

There’s a shift in wellness now: it felt like before it was something you did over there, there was a certain audience for it and that audience looked a certain way. But with The Soul Spa and the other places we cover in this guide, we’re finding that where we locate wellness is more fluid. It’s shifting in how people are bringing it more into their everyday lives.

We’ve also noticed how people in the UK now talk about wild swimming or forest bathing, or other activities that are right there in their communities, and actively reach for something locally. It feels like people want to be doing these things and your space, and the others that we feature, give us permission to bring more of what we need into our lives.

Because you don’t do it. Most of us don’t do it at home. It’s hard to do it at your desks. Summertime yes you might sit in a park. But where is there to go in winter? I was brought up Catholic and the other week I just sat in a church for a bit, just to defrag for a few moments and calm my head down. We do need spaces that give you that permission to hang whatever is happening in life up in the cloakroom and just come and be for a bit. For The Soul Spa, I want people — whether they are shopping or a tourist or a local worker — to know there’s a space they can go for twenty minutes or half an hour where they don’t need to think about anything else.

I think we all need that space.

So many people say that they wish they had something like this in our town. Every High Street needs one.

If there was intentionality about it, the High Street would look so different, and serve us as people. What we’re really craving are these spaces that hold us differently and not on our own but together. Somehow to be around one another in positive, more human-minded ways.

I think The Soul Spa is that. I’m not a shopper but I love the energy of the High Street. That’s why it was important to be situated in a quiet place near the center of the city. I would love to think we could prove this as a model and then bring it into other places, just like how the idea of gyms developed before when they’d never existed previously.

I also like that we’d be for everyone, children and old men, fat and thin, every color and creed. Everybody. What we do here is a human thing. It’s fantastic that it appeals to people who already do yoga or meditation: they are intrinsically very interested in their health and more likely to do this, but I want other people who have never done anything like this to know it’s for then too

Why do you think wellness can be associated with being aspirational, a commodity, an appearance, and not for everybody? Is that cynicism, money, equity? Why do you think it has that weight to it?

I think it’s partly cultural because I don’t think it’s in every culture like that. There are cultures that do see it as intrinsic. But here, before the 80s, everyone was just trying to survive. My mum was born at the beginning of the war, and for her generation there was nothing. It really felt like a luxury to even consider looking after yourself. As we were growing up that was still in the mix. Then we had the 80s which just became uber materialistic and we’re still in the back end of that somehow.

It’s very natural for people to try and make themselves feel better. It’s just where you look for the thing that’s going to make you feel better that’s shifts so much. In our culture now it’s getting lots of likes, social media shaping our self-perception, and that’s not working so well.

I really think that people are going to want places like The Soul Spa more. It’s all life though. And I absolutely love life so even the bumps are kind of interesting when you can view them from that perspective.

Our model for mental wellness has been one around crisis management. For a long time, when we’ve thought about accessing therapy and medication, it’s about quickly reaching out, finding resources in the moment of high need. But what I’m seeing from you and your work at The Soul Spa is that there’s a different way of navigating our wellbeing, by developing a practice that people can build and access every day before they get to that stage. That means that when a crisis happens there’s that foundational piece, tools that people know work for them and they can use. It’s the other way around.

Most of us know now how to look after ourselves physically, and most do a bit of the right thing. We know how we should eat, and about exercise. We do all of that so that we don’t get ill and if we do, our bodies are stronger to cope with that. It’s the same thing for the mind. But I think that’s what puts so many people off, is that they think they can’t do it. Like with meditation, people often worry that they will think about what to have for tea and getting the shopping…

… they worry about getting it wrong. For many people meditation comes with the perception that their mind needs to be empty to get it right…

…and they say but my mind is too busy. But welcome to being human beings. That’s not that special, it’s not unique to them. Everybody has this experience and it’s learning that’s ok that might get someone to try it.

I come from a hypnotherapy background, and it’s all about your deep-down beliefs, where they’ve come from, and how they drive all your automatic behaviors, reactions, and thoughts. When I’m helping people relax, I’m thinking about the brain state, and about getting them into an alpha state, and potentially into the theta state because I know that in that state the rest of their body can go off the sympathetic into the parasympathetic nervous system. It can rejuvenate, it can heal. That’s the state you need to be in for your body to be well, for your mind to take a minute, to take a break.

For people who find it harder, my method is much more spoken and guided. I’ll use little hacks from hypnotherapy like a countdown or an eye-roll, or something for people to get into the alpha state a bit faster so that their neurons then fire together. The more they do that, the more they practice it, it becomes automatic, like a habit. Instead of responding when someone cuts you up on the road with adrenaline and anger, you can be more chilled out about it, understanding that maybe they are having a bad day and need a bit of love.

Just a bit of compassion

I just feel like positive things could happen if we can get more people responding like that or at least seeing or understanding why they are responding the way they do, looking at it, and being willing to shift. Instead of looking at the external world and blaming it for everything but wondering actually how can I change because I’m probably not going to change that external thing. Though in reality the more we can all change the more that can change too.