The Chakra Lounge, Matlock Bath

The Chakra Lounge did not begin with a shopfront. It began with a small ritual: water set to sing, leaves offered to heat, bread broken so no one eats alone. In my mother’s kitchen there was a saying—tea poured with the hand nearest the heart tastes kinder. I believed it then; I believe it still. From that tenderness the first chapter was born in Buxton, where the air is brisk and the hills hold a quiet that steadies you.

 

Now the story comes to Matlock Bath, beside limestone and river light, carrying older threads. In the fires we tend, we remember Agni - the guardian of the hearth; in every welcome we keep the vow of Atithi Devo Bhava - honouring the guest as sacred. Food, our elders taught, is more than hunger answered. Annam is breath. Rasa is the mood of the soul. When a table gathers, the world feels briefly like one family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam -hands reaching, voices softening, time untying itself.

 

Here, Veronica and Matthew keep the flame. Two journeys from the same vast country meet and knit their colours quietly into this valley’s day. They carry recipes learned by listening: how to wait for the cardamom to open, how to salt by memory, how to leave the last piece for the latecomer. This is their house and yours—a place to pause, to be mended by warmth, to leave lighter than you arrived. If you stay long enough, you’ll hear it: the cup finding the saucer, the steam a little hymn, and the old promise kept—no one sits here as a stranger.