Rest Assured: Emirates Woman tests The Emory’s new City Circadian Reset in London

Ask any woman what is one of modern life’s most elusive luxuries and she will likely tell you it’s sleep. We track it on our watches, take magnesium before bed, invest in blackout blinds and promise ourselves we’ll stop scrolling at 10pm, yet many of us still aren’t getting enough of it. The problem isn’t necessarily just how long we’re sleeping, either. Increasingly, attention is turning to when we sleep, and how closely the rest of our lives align with our circadian rhythm, the body’s natural internal clock. Running on a roughly 24-hour cycle and driven primarily by light and darkness, it helps regulate everything from sleep and alertness to metabolism, body temperature and hormone release, yet with modern life not particularly well designed to accommodate it – we often spend much of the day indoors, expose ourselves to artificial light and shift our sleeping patterns between weekdays and weekends – it’s increasingly easy for our internal clocks to fall out of sync. It’s for this very reason that The Emory, London’s first all-suite hotel, recently introduced the City Circadian Reset, a two-night wellness retreat designed to help guests bring those rhythms back into line. Emirates Woman checks in.

THE SUITE LIFE

The experience begins as soon as you arrive at the hotel. Guests are met by a personal Retreat Concierge and taken straight to Surrenne, the wellbeing members’ club spanning four floors beneath the hotel where most of the action happens, for a quick tour before being whisked upstairs for a private check-in in their suite. And as to be expected, these aren’t exactly standard hotel rooms. The Emory opened in Knightsbridge in 2024 with interiors created by a roll call of designers including André Fu, Pierre-Yves Rochon, Alexandra Champalimaud, and Patricia Urquiola, and my suite was a masterclass in quiet, contemporary design complete with kitchen, living room, bedroom, balcony and perhaps the most beautiful bathroom I have ever seen. While the room’s amenities list is already impressive (think the likes of three different types of robes and three Dyson styling tools), there are plenty of additional wellness extras added specifically for the retreat including compression boots for post-workout recovery, an LED light panel and a yoga mat, plus a complimentary minibar stocked with electrolytes, kombucha, cold-pressed juices, magnesium drinks and chilled 111SKIN eye masks. It’s definitely not hard to forget you are supposed to be looking after yourself.

THE HEALTH MOT

The retreat itself begins with an in-depth consultation with Dr Liza Osagie-Clouard, Surrenne’s medical lead and an award-winning orthopaedic surgeon who trained in New York and London. Rather than focusing solely on how well I sleep, she took a forensic look at the rhythms of my everyday life: when I wake up, what and when I eat, how much I exercise, my digestion and energy levels, and my caffeine and alcohol intake. It quickly became clear that sleep doesn’t begin when your head hits the pillow, with Dr Osagie-Clouard explaining how everything from getting enough natural light in the morning to the timing of meals and exercise – and what we do during the hours before bed – can help reinforce, or confuse, the body’s internal clock.

My prescription therefore wasn’t simply “sleep more”. Alongside magnesium and 5-HTP, a supplement that the body uses to make serotonin, which then converts into melatonin, she recommended getting outside soon after waking, keeping my sleep and wake times more consistent, and establishing a proper evening wind-down routine. Dr Osagie-Clouard also ordered me a Nurosym device, a CE-certified, non-invasive neuromodulation wearable system designed to help regulate the autonomic nervous system and manage stress, improve sleep, boost energy, and reduce inflammation. What’s more, when I mentioned that my body often feels tight due to long hours at a desk, she also prescribed a deep-tissue massage incorporating assisted stretching to be enjoyed later that afternoon. Depending on what comes up during the consultation, other guests might be directed towards acupuncture, reflexology, red-light therapy or hyperbaric oxygen therapy instead, with one treatment per day included in the stay.

Next came what was essentially a very sophisticated fitness MOT – a series of assessments that tested everything from mobility, strength and cardiovascular fitness to balance and body composition, before the results were combined to calculate my “wellness age”. Mine came back at 34 and, considering I turn 40 this month, I was more than happy to take the win.

LEARNING HOW TO SWITCH OFF

If the daytime is about movement and treatment, the evening focuses on sending the right signals that it’s time to slow down. Following dinner in my suite (more on that later), it’s time to relax, read a good book, throw on those compression boots, enjoy a cacao smoothie made with adaptogenic mushroom powder and be in bed by 10pm. The room temperature is also set to support sleep.

Morning has its own ritual, with guests encouraged to expose themselves to natural daylight soon after waking by taking a walk around nearby Hyde Park, stretch, practice some deep breathing and take a cool shower. None of it is particularly complicated, which is arguably the point. While Surrenne has plenty of high-tech machinery at its disposal, some of the most useful lessons from the retreat require little more than daylight and a bit of consistency.

THE WORKOUTS

There was, however, plenty of technology – and considerably more sweating – waiting downstairs. Surrenne is home to London’s only Tracy Anderson studio, and the following morning I tried the celebrity trainer’s signature Tracy Anderson Method. Taking place in a heated studio, her classes combine dance cardio with mat-based exercises, resistance bands and light weights to target smaller accessory muscles, with no scheduled breaks. Unusually, the instructors don’t speak either. Instead, you’re expected to watch and copy their movements – a method designed to make you more instinctively aware of your body rather than waiting for verbal instructions. Every class is choreographed to an upbeat playlist, and the result is fast, focused and very sweaty.

For those who would prefer something less high-energy, the retreat includes a daily 60-minute personal training session, or one-to-one yoga or Pilates session. You don’t even necessarily need to leave your suite: a custom-made Surrenne gym trolley can be rolled upstairs for private workouts. There is also a daily infrared iDome session, while even the lighting in the gym changes throughout the day in line with the circadian rhythm. My final treatment was a lymphatic drainage massage, a much gentler contrast to the deep-tissue treatment the day before, using rhythmic movements designed to encourage lymphatic flow and help reduce fluid retention and puffiness.

EATING BY THE CLOCK

Food is another important part of the equation, with three meals a day included in the retreat. The anti-inflammatory menu has been devised by nutritionist and functional medicine practitioner Rose Ferguson, with the team advising on the most beneficial windows in which to eat them. That said, this retreat is all about balance, and if you fancy something a bit more substantial, you are also free to eat in The Emory’s abc kitchens, overseen by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, where Surrenne’s doctors can suggest dishes that best complement the programme. For dinner, I kept things healthy with chicken breast, grilled asparagus, spinach and sweet potato fries while, for breakfast, expect the likes of sautéed wild mushrooms with scrambled eggs, avocado on toast and Scottish smoked salmon bagels, delivered to the suite at a time that works with your schedule.

CAN YOU REALLY RESET IN TWO DAYS?

Probably the biggest lesson from the City Circadian Reset is that there is no single treatment capable of fixing years of late nights, lie-ins and staring at a phone before bed. Nor does Surrenne pretend there is. Instead, the programme looks at how lots of seemingly small behaviours – light, movement, food, stress, sleep and recovery – interact and gives you a framework for making them work better together.

And as it happens, I slept brilliantly on both nights, and plenty of the advice has followed me home. I’ve continued with the morning and evening rituals, particularly getting outside into natural light early in the day and being more conscious of properly winding down at night. I still have the odd night when sleep refuses to come, but overall, it has definitely improved. And that’s arguably what makes the programme useful beyond two very relaxing nights at The Emory. Rather than promising to magically “fix” your sleep, it teaches you how much influence the rest of your day has over it – and gives you practical ways to work with your body’s natural rhythm rather than against it.

The retreat doesn’t simply end at checkout, either. Guests leave with their monthlong supplement prescription – and, in a particularly nice touch, their gym kit freshly laundered – before having a virtual followup consultation a month later to see how they’re getting on. The treatments and technology might be what draw you in, but for me, it was the small changes I could take home that made the biggest difference.

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