I spend my days getting bodies moving again.
The body doesn't let go at two in the afternoon.
My name is Benjamin Chaussade. I am a physiotherapist, trained at the University of Applied Sciences for Health in Leukerbad. I work in a clinic during the day, in the valley where I trained. My days are spent working on bodies: knotted backs, shoulders that no longer turn, people in a hurry to get back to their lives.
Over time, I noticed something. The hands do part of the work. The moment does the rest. An hour of relaxation in the middle of the day, then you put your shoes back on and return to the noise: the body never had time to understand what was happening to it.
The evening is different. No drive afterwards, no next appointment, nothing left to do. It is the only moment when the body truly agrees to let go.
Arriving at the hour when everything closes.
The blue hour is that suspended moment between day and night. Lights come on in the villages, the valley falls silent, and nothing demands anything anymore. That is the hour when I arrive.
I bring everything: the table, the linens, the oils. I need ten minutes to set up and a space of two by three metres. You have nothing to prepare, nothing to tidy, nothing to plan.
One single person per evening. It is not a posture: it is the condition for the session never being cut short — and for me not already thinking about the next client.
When it is over, I leave and you stay. That is the whole point of being at home.
An oil from here.
On my table, one single base oil: fractionated coconut — neutral, light, unscented. And a signature, if you want it: a few drops of arolla pine essential oil.
The arolla — the Swiss stone pine — is the tree of the old chalets. It grows slowly, above 1,800 metres, where almost nothing else survives. The oil I use is distilled in the Valais, from the wood of our forests: the supply chain is about as short as the road between my home and yours.
Its scent is said to be calming. What matters most to me is that it tells exactly the story I try to bring into your home: the mountain, in the evening.
What L'Heure Bleue is not.
A qualified physiotherapist, I work in a clinic during the day. L'Heure Bleue is a separate activity: wellness massages only, with no therapeutic aim — no physiotherapy sessions, no treatment, no insurance reimbursement.
This clarity is part of the seriousness I owe you.
