Six Senses adds its first retreat built for women's health at Kyoto and the Maldives, pairing Chinese medicine with modern science
IHG's Six Senses brand will run its first retreat built specifically around women's health at Six Senses Kyoto this December, blending Traditional Chinese Medicine with modern science — part of a broader shift toward tightly targeted wellness programming in Japan's luxury hotel market.
Six Senses will host its first retreat built specifically around women's health at Six Senses Kyoto this December, IHG Hotels & Resorts said, pairing Traditional Chinese Medicine and Taoist "yin" philosophy with modern clinical science. Called The Yin Way Retreat – The Way of a Woman, the four-night programme runs 11–14 December at the Kyoto property, following a sister edition at Six Senses Kanuhura in the Maldives from 1–4 October.
The retreat targets women's wellbeing across life stages — from pre-pregnancy through post-menopause — addressing hormonal balance, sleep, stress and emotional equilibrium, according to IHG. It is led by Hati S. Malinova, Six Senses' wellness director and an integrative-health specialist with more than 20 years of clinical experience in female and reproductive health.
"Women's wellness has often been treated as a narrow conversation, focused on fertility and menopause, but it is much broader than that," Malinova said in the statement.
The Kyoto programme layers yin yoga, sound healing, hormonal workshops, herbal therapies and personalised wellness screenings with cultural elements specific to the city — among them kintsugi (the craft of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold) and ikebana flower arranging — IHG said. It starts from ¥666,000 per person for a Deluxe King Room; the Maldives leg starts from $3,361 per person for a Beach Villa with Pool.
IHG describes it as the first Six Senses-led retreat built around women's health, and the timing fits a wider pattern in Japanese luxury hospitality: as wellness tourism becomes a bigger part of the pitch to affluent travellers, hotel brands are moving from generic spa menus toward tightly targeted, life-stage programming that can justify a premium on its own, separate from the destination around it. Six Senses Kyoto — folded into IHG's portfolio through the group's 2019 acquisition of Six Senses — is a relatively young entrant in Kyoto's luxury hotel market, and a headline niche retreat is also a way to generate press and direct bookings against longer-established rivals in the city.