ORGANIC skincare brand ila has opened a new day spa in the Cotswolds.

Ila spa Cotswolds launched in May, offering guests the chance to spend a day enjoying the luxury of the British brand, which was founded by Denise Leicester.

The Woodstock headquarters are both a spa and a workshop where the ila products are made, and Denise is very much at the heart of everything.

A woman who has met the Dalai Lama, there's far more to Denise than just the entrepreneurial spirit which has seen ila become such a success. Her journey has seen her take on many roles – as a qualified nurse, aromatherapist, yoga teacher, sound healer, holistic body-worker and spiritual philosopher.

Between 1983 and 1987, in her 20s, Denise nursed one of the UAE’s rulers in Dubai after he became seriously ill.

"Ila certainly wouldn’t have existed without the sheikh," she said. "He was an amazing man, and those years nursing him opened my eyes to alternative medicine. I went from being a nurse used to strict, traditional protocols, a drug for this, a drug for that, to realising what incredible natural sources of help and healing the Earth gives us. I began incorporating essential oils into the sheikh’s treatment plan – the results were incredible."

When she returned home to the UK, Denise enrolled at the Institute for Complementary Medicine in London. She also travelled extensively to India, qualifying as a yoga teacher, staying in ashrams and studying Ayruveda.

A seven-year setback, suffering from chronic fatigue and being immobilised, turned out to be a blessing as Denise experimented with her own skincare range after mainstream cleansers and moisturisers started to leave blisters on her skin.

Starting from her kitchen table in the Cotswolds, Denise and her husband John began their business, researching and sourcing ingredients from remote parts of the world for nearly two years, and in 2007 ila was born.

The brand was named after the Hindu goddess of truth and the Sanskrit word for Earth, ila, and all of the products are handmade from natural ingredients at the Woodstock base.

Denise’s vision was to "create a range of highly potent and sacred products, which channelled the raw remedial power of nature, using her most ancient and purest sources of energy – plants, flowers, and herbs - and proving that results-driven products and spa treatments can go hand-in-hand with the highest standards of natural and ethical integrity".

An example of the high standards of ila is that it took Denise two years to find the right type of roses to use, sourced from India and wild harvested at dawn by artisan producers, and that the petals of 38 flowers are used for just one drop of oil.

Denise, who has previously designed spas for luxury hotels, said she decided to open her own spa to help people experience the ila philosophy for a whole day.

There are a choice of stress-releasing massages and facials, and each treatment comes with a complimentary sound healing session, in which Denise specialises. She said: "The specific vibrations produced by the singing voice and the crystal bowl resonate with various parts of the body to bring peace and restoration on many levels."

See ila-spa.com for more.