Tag: health

 I enjoy a good spa experience, and luckily for me New York City has endless opportunities. I posted once about the fabulous experience at QC NYC Spa on Governor’s Island, and will soon write about Aire Ancient Baths. Both of those are fully immersive, with lush surroundings and multiple types of experiences. For this post, however, I will describe something completely different – Aescape robot massage! Most of us have sat in a massage chair, and it can be a pleasant few minutes. But the Aescape claimed to actually customize a real massage, so I decided to check it out

There are multiple locations for Aescape in New York City (and some in Florida), most within Equinox fitness centers. I decided to go with the one at the ila Only Spa at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel. I imagined that the fitness locations might smell like workouts and thought going to a spa might be more fun (the spa location is slightly more expensive). Checking in was pleasant, and the spa smells delightfully spa-like! I was sent to the lounge first, and able to enjoy citrus spa water and little spears of fresh berries. From this lounge there was a spectacular view of St Patrick’s cathedral.

When I was invited into the room, they had very form fitting (skin tight) long sleeve tops and bottoms to change into. They asked about size when making the appointment, and recommend you go smaller than you usually wear, as the machine slides along the slippery surface of this clothing. You are entirely alone in this room, and you can lock the door, although they have a heavy tassel on the door letting people know not to enter (unless you summon someone during the massage using the screen, I presume!). The room looked and smelled just like a spa massage room, only with the face rest looking onto a screen and robot arms hovering above.

Once I lay down on the table, I could see a screen directly under my face welcoming me, and walking me step by step through setting up. There is a large button on the screen if you want it to stop immediately (good for those imagining one of the machines from the Terminator going rogue). You are walked through adjustments for the headrest, foot bolster, etc., to be sure you are comfortable. Then it makes a scan of of your body, so that it knows where to massage. If you aren’t perfectly straight on the table with your feet in the scoops for your ankles, it will ask you to reposition before it scans. You can see the outline of your body once the scan is done. When that was done, I hit go – and it started. You could change the music (I left it as it was), and either watch the default, which was a schematic of your body and where the robot arms were and how much time you had left, or change to relaxing scenes. I left the schematic on, and had my eyes closed most of the time but it was good to be able to peek at how far along it was. You could see how long you had left, and the steps of what it had done and what was still to come. You could also move the pressure up or down, and you could “heart” things or skip them to customize. I just let it do its thing. You can do “Power Up” – which is a all-over massage, and I did this – or pick specific areas to target. The robot arms are heated and sort of push and slide, much like a strong Swedish massage.

The room actually had a phone cradle set up for you to take a video of your experience if you wanted (and encouragement to tag them on Instagram), but I chose not to do that. All in all, here’s what I feel it did better than a person – it can get two sides of your body at the same time, while a person usually does one side then moves to the other. And it was good on the glutes, which people usually don’t touch for obvious reasons. But it is not a person, and definitely does not provide the experience or level of pampering/relaxation that you can have with a skilled massage therapist.

For people who are made anxious by the idea of being massaged by a person, or of being unclothed during a massage, I could see this being a wonderful option. However, for those (like me) who don’t feel those limitations, I would say at this point, it is still too expensive (between $60-75 for 30 minutes) to replace a massage by a real person. There is no tipping of course, since there is no person massaging you. But all in all, I would say I liked it much better than I had anticipated, and if the price comes down I could see it being an adjunct to massages by a human being, especially for recovery of large muscle groups like glutes and hamstrings.