Wellness & Spas

The Wellness Treatments We'll Travel For

Sound bowls, salt floats, and energy healers are all feeling a tad… done. Here are a few emerging trends we’ve noticed at spas around the country.
The Remède Spa at the St. Regis Aspen Resort
Josh Bishop/Courtesy The Remède Spa

You can tell a lot about the kind of pampering a culture is craving from a snapshot of a spa menu (where’d you go, digital detox?). This year’s crop of out-there therapies are split between the spiritual and scientific. “People are searching for answers to make them stronger in body, mind, and spirit—and they want to live longer, but healthy lives,” says Susan Zurbin-Hothersall of Power Travel International, a member of Virtuoso’s Wellness Community of advisors. “But nowadays the path to wellness is not one size fits all.” Here’s a sampling of some of the newest offerings from spas around the country, and the world.

Relaxation, Stoner Style

The gradual legalization of marijuana across the U.S. must have something to do with the weed-inspired therapies giving spa-goers a major buzz. CBD oil—the non-psychotropic substance extracted from the cannabis plant, which some research shows can be mood-enhancing and anti-inflammatory—is turning up in all sorts of treatments. The Spa Solage at Solage, Auberge Resorts Collection, in Napa, will incorporate the local brand Healthy Lotus CBD oil into virtually any of their massages, facials, or scrub treatments on request. You can do the same at a couple of Auberge’s sister properties, like the Spa at Auberge Beach in Fort Lauderdale, where the 80-minute Quartz Sand, Sound, and CBD Body Wrap lets you zone out listening to your choice of mood-altering “Binaural Beats.” The The Logan Philadelphia, Curio Collection by Hilton has introduced The CBD Quartet Treatment, which doses your body wrap, scalp massage, or reflexology session with cannabinoid oil. Meanwhile, the CBD Healing Massage at the The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles incorporates CBD-infused products from Mary’s Nutritionals—and, for a vegan high, The Spa at Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach is doing a 50-or 80-minute CBD Remedy Massage using products by So-Cal women-founded company W!nk.

A yoga room at YO1 Wellness Center in New York's Catskill Mountains.

Courtesy YO1 Wellness Center

Ayurveda Goes Hard Core

Ayurveda—the Hindu system of medicine based on physical and energy types, or “doshas”—has long been incorporated into beauty and body treatments. Now some wellness centers are rolling out more authentic and immersive approaches. Last summer, YO1 Wellness Center opened in New York’s Catskill Mountains on the site of the former borscht-belt resort, Kutscher’s. But you won’t find any kugel or comedy here: The center offers 50 therapy rooms for six customized Ayurvedic “Pathways to Wellness” that range from three to 10 days; these aim to get at the root of health concerns—migraines, hypertension, infertility, insomnia—with programs that balance the doshas through diet, yoga, naturopathy, acupuncture, and body treatments like warm oil massages and herbal compresses. YO1 is not a place to go to relax (just sample the salutary effects of yoga done outdoors by a frozen lake); it’s more like boot camp for a serious health recalibration. Meanwhile, Shankara, a retreat center in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, continues to add new offerings, and is one of the few places in the U.S. where guests can do a full-on Ayurvedic Panchakarma cleanse, a customized and intensive combo of detoxifying body treatments, herbs, food, and yoga.

Over in Switzerland, the three Giardino Hotels—in Ascona, St. Moritz, and Zurich—are the first five-star resorts in the country to offer comprehensive Ayurvedic programming. This India-in-the-Alps regimen lasts from three to 21 days and might include a pulse diagnosis from an Ayurvedic doctor, nutritional advice and cooking lessons, as well as oil treatments like a kati basti, in which a chickpea flower dough ring is centered on your back to contain healing herbal oils.

And for those looking for some dosha-balancing on the beach, the newly-renovated wellness resort BodyHoliday in St. Lucia has an Ayurvedic Temple, where guests can do a “Pariksha” analysis of their tongue, skin, and other vitals as a prelude to a tailored dietary and treatment program. And at Anatara Dhigu Resort in the Maldives, an Ayurvedic doctor assesses a guest’s health by listening to their pulse, then prescribing a diet based on their needs.

The Spa at Calistoga Ranch in Napa, California.

Courtesy Calistoga Ranch, Auberge Resorts Collection

Beyond Shamans

Now that a resident shaman or energy healer has become a near-requirement at so many hotels, from the Viceroy Riviera Maya to the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills and Big Sur’s Post Ranch Inn, spas are reaching way beyond song bowls and sage smudging to help their guests achieve peace and clairvoyance.

The Spa at Calistoga Ranch, Auberge Resorts Collection, in the Napa Valley just introduced the Spirit Animal treatment, inspired by the resort’s canyon setting and the animals that call it home. Guests begin with an exercise to divine their spirit animal, which becomes a totemic guide for a 60-minute full-body massage with organic Rootfoot essential oils that aligns the body’s “spirit points”—all of this after a palo santo cleansing. Meanwhile, the Spirit Animal and Totem Reading Sessions offered at Sunrise Springs Spa Resort outside of Santa Fe are conducted by a hypnotherapist; you can jump into this personal investigation right after your sweat lodge session. Across the country at the South America-inspired Tierra Santa spa in the Faena Hotel Miami Beach, a certified leader guides a monthly Shamanic Family Constellations Workshop in which participants explore “the unresolved experiences of family members as far back as three generations or more”—and then channel these experiences to peacefully come to terms with them.

Still, others are taking their spiritual journeys outside of the spa walls. The Remède Spa at the The St. Regis Aspen Resort pairs guests with a trained spiritual guide to prepare for a Mala Creation and River Blessing, which includes one-on-one intention setting and mantra-creation, and the consecration of your own gemstone mala bracelet. The ceremony is held during the winter under the stars in the nearby Northstar Preserve, which guests arrive at via a sleigh ride. And across the globe at the year-old Capella Ubud, a tented camp in the jungle of central Bali designed to look like an explorer’s settlement, the Confined to Quarters package offers a full 24 hours of indulgence that includes a body treatment determined by the phase of the moon, raw detox lunches, yoga, and a water purification ritual where a guest is blessed by a local Balinese-Hindu priest in an ancient holy spring near the hotel.

SHA Wellness Clinic in Spain.

Courtesy SHA Wellness Clinic

Bio-Hacking for Better Health

With huge strides being made in personalized medicine, it was inevitable that ultra-high-tech diagnostics would start to turn up in spa settings. The SHA Wellness Clinic in Spain, always on the pulse when it comes to detox and complementary medicine, has new programming that borrows from rocket science: Their Brain Photobiomodulation treatment offers a “pioneering, painless, and non-invasive cognitive stimulation therapy” using a NASA-Harvard University technology that stimulates the brain’s cellular recovery, while combating anxiety and boosting energy. The clinic has also introduced Live Blood Analysis, a diagnostic that’s designed to reveal signs of illness—for instance, cellular disorders that lead to chronic disease—in its early stages, through analyzing the movement, shape, and toxicity of cells in a drop of blood. Blood testing is already on offer at the Cal-a-Vie spa near San Diego, where the results can be a window into a guest’s metabolic, hormonal, and nutritional health.

As DNA testing becomes more accessible, it’s begun turning up in spas and wellness centers as the ultimate way to craft individualized care. Red Mountain Resort in Southwestern Utah’s red rock bluffs is offering participants in its Executive Health and Wellness program the chance to participate in HerediGene, a genetic test that looks for inherited mutations linked to cancer risk, while guests who sign up for RxMatch™ will receive recommendations about medication types and dosages based on their personal genetic results. (The Executive program also personalizes everything from your nutrition program to exercise regimen.) Meanwhile, the Apuane Spa at Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita recently started offering their “myDNA Retreat” ($2,142), a program that uses a DNA cheek swab to come up with individual recommendations to improve skin and diet.

And, finally, The Beverly Hilton has just opened the second outpost of Upgrade Labs, the world’s top Biohacking Health and Fitness facility, dreamed up by the founder of the Bulletproof program, Dave Asprey (best known for his butter coffee). You’ll find cryotherapy and infrared saunas here, and self-quantifiers will love the treatments, which range from therapies designed to reduce jetlag to those that level-up cognition and human performance.