TLEE Spas + Wellness and Myndstream Amplify Spa Experiences with Immersive Sound Journeys
In the spirit of World Music Therapy Day on March 1, TLEE Spas + Wellness, a globally recognized spa development firm with a design-savvy, hospitality-driven approach, is proud to celebrate its collaboration with Myndstream in raising awareness around the transformative power of music to create memorable experiences with heightened health and wellbeing benefits. Created as a part of Cutting-Edge Group – the music producers behind renowned television shows and films such as Stranger Things, Whiplash, and Bridgerton – Myndstream has developed a proprietary online streaming platform, “The Stream,” which is home to over sixty playlists that enable therapists to turn treatments into multisensory experiences. TLEE Spas + Wellness has been at the forefront in advocating for layering intentional music and sound to elevate traditional modalities. Together, they seek to leverage the power of functional music and sound to enhance health and wellbeing outcomes.
“In addition to being the ultimate icebreaker, music has the power to calm, excite, focus, reset, and embed memories and experiences,” said President + Founder of TLEE Spas + Wellness, Tracy Lee, who along with Vice President and COO Michael Lahm, is an ambassador of Global Wellness Institute, the leading source for authoritative wellness industry research. “If you are an owner, operator, or brand trying to deliver more thoughtful and impactful guest touchpoints, adding to the therapeutic experience in a spa with intentional music and sound can increase your ROI and encourage guests to come back for more.”
Spas have become more multidimensional, opening opportunities to explore thoughtful applications of music and sound in spa environments. These applications go beyond the status quo by leaving a lasting impression, turning treatments into multisensory experiences that help to instill transformative outcomes.
“While the default has been playing music in the background as a generic accompaniment to an experience, our team approaches music and sound as vehicles that enhance spa treatments and effect outcomes tailored to specific needs,” said Lee. “As the spa experience evolves beyond the treatment room to become part of a holistic wellness ecosystem that nurtures the human experience, it would be a missed opportunity not to integrate functional music and sound that guests can access through mind and body and benefit from on an energetic level.”
Backed by Science and Artfully Executed
Studies* have shown that music can reduce cortisol levels, decrease heart rate, and lower blood pressure. Through a recent collaborative scientific research effort with SleepScore Labs, Myndstream has found that intentionally designed music for sleep objectively promotes deep sleep, reduces the proportion of the night spent awake, and increases the ability to stay asleep. Committed to rooting its work in credible research and science, Myndstream works with a dedicated roster of leading wellness music artists and an extensive network of experts within the world of health and wellbeing to create, curate, and design music that can have a positive impact on health and wellbeing. Through The Stream’s curated playlists from award-winning artists, therapists can set the mood of the room or personalize the music to achieve a specific therapeutic outcome, all at the touch of a button. This focus on intentional audio elevates the treatment and transforms the client experience.
“According to the British Academy of Sound, eighty nine percent of people believe that music is essential for their health and wellbeing, and ninety percent of people already use music to help them relax, so there is an expectation of well-designed audio in relaxing wellness environments,” said Myndstream Founder and advisory board member of Global Wellness Institute, Freddie Moross. “While it’s generally accepted that part of the therapeutic value of a spa experience lies in the atmosphere and sense of rest and calm that guests feel as soon as they enter the spa, our goal is to deliver intentionally designed music as a powerful therapeutic tool, not just a pleasant auditory experience.”
Aligned with this mission, Vice President and COO of TLEE Spas + Wellness, Michael Lahm, stated, “Fundamentally, sound and music provide energy medicine and should be leveraged more intentionally in spa environments to maximize healing effects, from lowering anxiety and reducing pain and blood pressure to boosting your mood and immune system.”
The concept of healing frequencies in music is gaining traction and sound healing is gaining awareness, with an influx of environments, equipment, and intentional music emerging to reset the brain through acoustic and vibrational therapy. Part of a high-tech recovery circuit involving cryotherapy and infrared, a stacked session that TLEE Spas helped to bring to life at Equinox Hotel Hudson Yards utilizes a spa and harmonic resonance table, delivering vibro-acoustical therapy to help guests shift into deep rest mode, improving focus and mental clarity.
TLEE Spas + Wellness also brought sound and music to the forefront of the guest experience at the forward-thinking “Savasana Sound Room,” which launched in 2019 at Spa Alkemia at Zadún, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in San José del Cabo, Mexico. The Savasana Sound Room harnesses the same underlying principles as the Wave Table, but in this case, the whole room is engineered for immersive sound therapy that resonates from the floor and walls throughout the entire body. Designed as a post treatment experience, the Savasana Sound Room helps guests absorb the benefits of a treatment in an environment that maximizes the healing effects through sound and vibrational therapy.
Extending the “Om” and Activating Collective Healing Energies
At the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, a newly imagined spa experience in collaboration with Myndstream will harness the diverse therapeutic, sensorial, and pleasure benefits of music, reposition the spa as a source of celebration rather than a solitary, inward pursuit, and shift the paradigm away from the Vegas norm of hermetically sealed environments disconnected from the natural world. The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino spa experience will bring together the bright lights and high energy of the Las Vegas Strip with the beauty and harmonizing effects of the surrounding Mojave Desert. Creative connections to nature and immersive sound and multimedia installations ground each guest into their diverse spa experiences, while honoring Hard Rock’s original DNA.
Among the immersive experiences, an entry portal conceived as a decompression space will leverage different forms of music and soundscapes to help guests shift gears into a broad spectrum of experiences that elicit distinctive emotional and physical responses, including wellness-inflected pool parties and private social events with DJ sets and live music performances.
“Music is our DNA and our differentiator at Hard Rock,” said the Director of Spa Operations at Rock Spa & Salon, Hard Rock Atlantic City, Ginger McLean. “There is such a strong connection between music and the brain’s pathways which, in addition to bridging mind and body and having calming effects, can make us feel more connected to others around us.”
The Next Frontier: Authentic, Personalized, and Adaptive Music Experiences
A few transformative trends are set to redefine wellness music in 2024, including authentic audio experiences that reinforce brand identities while reinforcing the integrated and multidimensional aspects of wellness.
“We are at an exciting stage in which functional music and sound are truly amplifying the spa programming that hotel brands are introducing to the world,” said Lee. “In our continued work with Myndstream, we hope to showcase the important intersection between music, health and well-being, soundscaping key areas with intentional content, beyond the default proposition.”
At The Little Nell, Aspen’s only 5-star, 5-diamond ski-in/ski-out hotel, TLEE Spas and Myndstream are developing a distinctive spa offering that aligns sound programming with distinctive menu architecture created around three pathways: recovery and repair from physical activities, training regimes, and rigors of daily life; replenishment and restoration designed to energize, nourish and protect the body from Aspen’s high altitude and harsh environment; and resetting and rebalancing to downshift into a more mellow and mindful state of being from which guests can balance the nervous system and restore the mind/body connection. Delivered within an intimate setting comprised of a trio of treatment suites that come with private infrared/halotherapy saunas and hydrotherapy steam showers, each pathway encompasses integrated rituals, bodywork, skincare, and quick fixes that address underlying conditions. Timed sound programming will coincide with the duration of service, with each pathway delivering targeted solutions for different lifestyle factors.
