OK, let’s play a game. Guess how much a spa treatment at the new Aman in New York costs?

I’m lying on a double bed, in my own private Spa House with flickering fire, vast balcony and both hot and cold plunge pools overlooking th Avenue. My arms are tightly swaddled to my body in fluffy towels, like a newborn, and I am being spoon-fed honey yes, actually spoon-fed by a spa assistant. Apparently this is to regulate my sugar levels, post extreme heat treatment. It makes me feel utterly and absurdly pampered, like I am being nursed without being ill.

I’m the first journalist to trial the three-day wellness immersion at New York’s long-awaited Jean-Michel Gathy-designed Aman hotel in midtown’s historic Crown building, where a suite they’re all suites costs a minimum of $, a night and where non-resident membership of the Aman Club costs $,, with dues of $, a year. Although good luck trying to become a member; rumour is that all founder memberships have sold out and there’s a waiting list.

What membership gives you, as well as being front of the queue for Aman’s global properties, is access to the hotel’s club lounge spaces which include a cigar lounge, wine bar, basement jazz club, an Italian restaurant called Arva and an outstanding Japanese restaurant, Nama. And Aman’s global flagship wellness and medical spa. “Our owner is passionate about wellness,” the director of wellness operations, Shinichi Kiyose, says of Vladislav Doronin, Aman’s Russian-born owner.

Which is why Doronin has set aside three floors, covering , sq ft, to cater to the minds, bodies and spirits of the world’s super-rich. The spa, naturally, has all the gear: cryotherapy, an infrared sauna, IV infusion rooms and a m pool with double-height ceiling. But Aman NYC has stepped it up further, adding infrared treadmills and all the latest diagnostic equipment – including Brain Gauge Pro, which detects how different stimuli affect cognitive function.

For those overnight hotel guests or Aman Club members who want a wellness deep dive, three personalised immersions are offered: weight management and detoxification; sports performance enhancement; and mindfulness and stress management, which I’m trialling.

As well as an initial consultation and analysis by a traditional Chinese medicine doctor there are also ayurvedic and naturopathic practitioners, activities include private movement sessions such as yoga and personal training, spa treatments, an IV infusion and CellAir intermittent hypoxic training, often used by athletes to improve performance. I’m wearing a mask over my nose and mouth that delivers restricted oxygen, mimicking the effects of altitude training – as if I’m atop Mount Kilimanjaro.

For someone who struggles with mindfulness, the private meditation session was particularly great; in one hour I trialled three types, so I could select which worked best for me. I also had an otherworldly Thai hot-oil massage ask for Pauline, who got rid of my headache with her wizardy fingers and an appointment with the impressive Harvard-trained physician and medical chef Dr Robert Graham, who practises integrative medicine.

Let’s go back to the Spa House, where I lay blissed out by my first ever banya. If you’ve never had this particular Slavic healing ritual, here’s the drill. I lay on a marble slab in a vast sauna, with iced eucalyptus leaves placed on my face, as Igor, an experienced Ukrainian banya therapist, used bundles of oak leaves to draw the hottest air from the top of the sauna and swoosh it over my body to get a proper toxin-busting shvitz going. He also used the leaves to tap me all over, perking up the lymphatic drainage system, with the occasional thwack, like an enthusiastic conductor, to slough off dead skin. He then popped me in the icy-cold plunge pool, then the hot plunge pool while supporting my head and whooshing me around in the water.

After all this temperature change, and sensory overload, my body and brain didn’t know my arse from my elbow. For a few euphoric minutes I believed I saw heaven and felt the soft winds of paradise. Then I opened my eyes and realised it was the LED shining overhead and a polluted breeze blowing up from bustling th Avenue.

While skirting the pain-pleasure threshold, I asked about Ukraine. Igor told me that his brother and niece are both fighting on the front line and that he desperately wanted to join them, but his mother told him to stay in New York and make money to support the family and the war.

Anyway, you’re waiting for the answer. My three-hour banya, one of the most popular treatments at the new Aman, cost $,. And while it was very nice, memorable even, you can get a thwacking with oak branches at Wall Street Bath & Spa for only $.

If you have deep, deep pockets, though, the Aman’s three-day immersion is excellent. Instead of leaving broken and hungover after a long weekend in New York, you head home perky as a Central Park squirrel, with mindfulness practices and a new respect for oak leaves. I just hope lots of those dollars trickle down to Igor and his family in Ukraine.A wellness immersion at Aman NYC costs from $, a night, including full-board and treatments, amanm

Alice B-B meets Selfridges’ new health superhero

Selfridges is always one step ahead. While other department stores doff caps to wellness by installing a generic spa or plopping therapists into the eaves, London’s most creative mega-store has leapt in with both feet.

Head to the third floor and you’ll find what looks like a Martian’s spaceship that has burst in and landed next to La Perla’s undies. Through the sliding doors of this pink pod and you’re on a one-way ticket to -degree wellbeing, courtesy of the cosmetic doctor Dr Vali, one of those names that’s whispered from royalty to Victoria’s Secret models.

Until now, her individually tailored programme has been administered in a discreet clinic in Chelsea, by invitation only. But when she blasted into the product market with teas, gummies and medical-grade skin products using her own patented ingredients, Selfridges gave her a call.

“They knew I would create the most advanced wellness centre in a retail space in London – possibly the world,” says Vali, clad in rock-star leathers and Bottega boots, showing me round her space fitted with IV infusion stations, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and medical-grade facial tech, and white-coated doctors buzzing about.

“My aim is always to give my patients the chance to look like a superstar and perform like a legend.” However, Vali is not for everyone; if it’s lips like hot dogs you’re after, forget it. “I never want to distort the natural anatomy, I just want to enhance it. If educating a client doesn’t work, I’ll refuse to do a treatment.”

I’m impressed. Often, when a new wellbeing space opens up, there is zero direction as to how a client might best spend their time and money. Here, before any treatment takes place, clients have a full hour consultation to create a unique programme, around focus, sleep, energy, libido, mood, skin, body and hair.

That’s because, Vali says, to achieve focused, long-term gainsto wellbeing and appearance, whether through biohacking, tweakments or a lifestyle gear change, you need a plan. What Dr Vali does, like the A-Team, is to bring that plan together.Consultation from £, bydrvalim