Eleonora Sanchis

I am Eleonora, and Almond Rest is the small journal of letters I keep alongside the spa practice I run out of an amber-lit room in the old part of Trieste, two streets from the sea. The room is small. The light is warm. The journal began as a letter to a single friend and has become, slowly, a small public letter to whoever finds it.

I trained as a massage and aromatherapy practitioner in Bologna in my late twenties and worked for some years in a larger clinic in Milan before opening the room here in Trieste in 2019. I have been in solo practice for seven years. I add a small herbal infusion to most sessions; the smell of warm almond oil and dried orange peel is part of the room.

The letters began the year I moved south. I had a friend in Vienna who had also been a practitioner and had stopped; she asked me, in the way old friends do, what I was learning at the table now. I started writing her short letters. After a year of letters she suggested I let other people read them. That is most of what this site is.

What the room is

A single quiet room on the ground floor of a small building near the canal. One table. A window with linen blinds. A wooden floor. A small kitchen at the back where I keep the oils, the herbs, the kettle. A few brass dishes for the warm towels.

The practice is solo. Four sessions on a busy day, three on a quiet one. The first session is usually at half past nine. The last ends by six. Between sessions there is always a long pause — the room is small and it carries a session in its air for some time.

What the journal is for

The journal is mostly for me, in the sense that the discipline of writing things down has changed how I work. It is also, openly, for the friends who started reading the letters and for the readers who have arrived since. Some of you have been at the table with me and recognise the practice you are reading about. Some of you have written from rooms in cities I have never been to. Either is welcome.

The pieces here are the ones that have been worked on enough to feel honest. The drafts in the small kitchen notebook are about three times as long as anything that ends up on the site.

What you will not find here

Sales. No products. No affiliate links. The brands and oils I name are named because I use them; nothing more.

Wellness shouting. The letters move at a letter's pace. They do not respond to anything currently being argued about on the internet.

Medical claims. I am not a doctor. For anything medical, please see one.

How to write to me

Write to the address on the welcome card in the room, or to the address on the small printed cards I leave at the apothecary down the street. I read everything that comes in and answer as much of it as I can, slowly.

Thank you for reading. I am glad the letters have reached you.