Healing cafés

Shim Story is one such space that commoditizes peace and calm for city-dwellers. The “public convenience lounge” in Seoul’s Gangnam district provides a new kind of social venue with massage chairs, heated beds and video games to help visitors to unwind and decompress. Soothing music and scent diffusers create a calming environment in one of the busiest districts in Seoul. Mr Healing, another lounge chain, also offers massage chairs where visitors can wear eye masks and relax as lavender, rosemary and peppermint aromas fill the room. Mr Healing has 60 branches across South Korea, according to the Korea Times.

“There is no place in Korea to stretch one’s legs before returning home, so I decided to open a relaxing lounge that is as comfortable as home,” Shim Story founder Jung Oon-mo explains to JWTIntelligence. “Nowadays, city life is causing high competition and life patterns are changing to reduce sleeping time, so most people are stressed and tired. Coffee shops don’t allow people to rest, so lounges can help them spend time well while away from home through four different themes: sleeping, relaxing, massage and talking.”

The First Class café chain offers another opportunity to unwind, pampering shoppers as if they were in a luxury airplane cabin. First Class’s service menu includes massages, eye masks, waffles, and complimentary beverages, as well as semi-private cabins where guests can rest. With kiosks in malls across South Korea, the chain is transforming the healing café format into a mass-market service.

These healing spaces are also emerging elsewhere around the world. Chubby Cloud, an installation at the September 2018 London Fashion Week, offered “the world’s largest beanbag” for visitors to “relax and recuperate.” The sold-out relaxation event included a bedtime story reading from TV broadcaster Claudia Winkleman, a guided meditation from the mindfulness brand Happy Not Perfect and a lecture on the circadian rhythms of sleep from University of Oxford professor Russell Foster.