Travelling to ‘find yourself’ was once, frankly, a bit cringe. But dust off that copy of Eat, Pray, Love and hitch up your harem pants, because with more luxury hotels embracing alternative wellness, soul searching is seriously back in style, from tarot cards to sacred-herb-scented ceremonies. Whether you’re seeking a mental-health boost or need something stronger than a deep-tissue massage, discover yourself at these spiritually satisfying stays from the Athenian Riviera to South Africa.
TAROT CARDS AND CRYSTALS
Marram, Montauk, US
Buffered by state parks, Montauk — with its delightfully scruffy dunes and a serenity that comes from not being the perfectly pristine Hamptons — is a spot where switching off comes easy. On the cusp of the coast, Marram hotel keeps you stylishly cloistered in TV-free rooms, many of which lead directly to the sands. Free nightly s’mores to toast over fire pits remind you of simple childhood joys, humpback whales breaching the Atlantic bring the wider concerns of the world crashing into view, and wherever you look there’s ocean to contemplate.
The treatments
Spiritual guidance is offered here through breathwork, sound baths and meditation; but for more constructive advice, practitioner Diane Ferraro of Tarot Tauk offers up the wisdom of her 78-card deck. There’s no tense waiting for the ‘death’ card to appear: Ferraro emphasises the loving aspect of the practice and her ‘guides that assist us in listening to the soft voice within that already knows our soul’s longings’.
She’ll interpret and plot out a positive course of action for you, then help you harness energy from the earth through her crystal workshop, where sparkly elements will make you tick like a quartz-powered watch.
SHAMANIC HEALING
Cap Karoso, Sumba, Indonesia
To find clarity in your life, the best way to get out of your head is to move your whole self somewhere new. And unless you’re one of Indonesia’s Ta Hau people, their native isle of Sumba will be a world away from your everyday. It’s become more discovered in the past few years, but the kind of respectful tourism Cap Karoso practises involves and benefits the indigenous community, helping the island to keep its authentic feel. Sumba’s culture is celebrated through hotel experiences — it hinges on Marapu, a religion that dates back to the Bronze Age, shepherded by shamans who act as conduits between the living and spiritual worlds.
Hotel owners Fabrice and Evguenia Ivara had to consult with spiritual leaders before building Cap Karoso. They discovered the locals’ healing know-how when Evguenia hurt her ankle and was tended to by a village shaman, who applied herbs and oils and encouraged her to think beyond the physical and focus on mental strength, too.
The treatment
What makes this experience so special is that you can’t just show up on Sumba and demand to see a shaman. Director of Wellness Kiri Desborough says of the treatment’s conception: ‘This journey has been developed in reverence to Marapu beliefs, and with the blessing of local elders and a traditional Shaman. It’s not a curated offering — it is a co-creation rooted in those relationships, trust and deep cultural respect.’ There are limited spaces and only candidates seeking true transformation will be accepted.
After some prepping through ‘immersive movement’ in the spa, you’ll travel to the local village and its distinctive uma houses for medicinal potions and healing rituals focused on your ‘energy centres’. The rest of the bespoke experience will take you to spectacular natural settings to work through embedded traumas and anxieties, or to help you face future uncertainty.
HIGH-END HYPNOSIS
Navutu Dreams Resort & Wellness Retreat, Cambodia
A retreat as placid as the saffron-wrapped monks populating the Angkor Wat temple complex (a 25-minute drive away), Navutu Dreams Resort is the greenest goddess in Siem Reap. Spend time in the sprawling garden, breathing in scents of bougainvillea and frangipani, and you’ll surely save money on a few therapy sessions. There are all flavours of yoga to try here, from dynamic vinyasa to soothing somatic. But these can be enhanced by practitioners wielding crystals or caressing a singing bowl, plus more heavyweight holistic options.
As Yvonne Krisko, the resort’s resident Quantum Healing Hypnosis expert states, ‘Siem Reap is a wonderful place to heal, with its slow pace and the heightened spiritual energy of its ancient temples. Navutu is no exception — most guests and visiting practitioners comment on how the energy of the resort is ‘so healing’. It truly is a special place.’
The treatment
Fertility-enhancing womb healing, consulting with cacao spirits, intuitive life-coaching: this spa break has potentially heavy themes. But Quantum Healing Hypnosis feels like a cheat-code to life, with its core belief that the answers are contained within you — you just have to rummage around a bit to find them.
Yvonne will guide you into a somnambulistic state, during which your ‘higher self’ will answer all those burning questions. Once you’re back in the room, you’ll debrief then leave with a recording of your session for further analysis and a realisation that maybe the answers were inside you all along.
A CELEB-APPROVED RESET
Cape Sounio, Athens Riviera
You can really hammer home the ‘your body is a temple’ message at Cape Sounio, a glamorous Greek resort overlooking the Aegean — front and centre in its view are the hilltop ruins of the Temple of Poseidon. Rooms are arranged amphitheatre-style to ensure everyone gets a good look, and the gods have certainly blessed this place of pines, palms and olive groves, where chefs find fresh bounty in the gardens each day.
Pay your respects to the water god (take a swim alongside the timeless scenery and wallow in the hydrotherapy pool; book your stay to coincide with the full moon) who puts on quite the show here for an even more heavenly experience. One of the reasons wellness practitioner-to-the-stars Vicky Vlachonis chose this setting was because ‘historians know that the ancient Greek temples were always built in special locations, on sites that were renowned for their healing energy’. Vlachonis is also a lauded osteopath, author of The Body Doesn’t Lie, and founder of Saint Supply, a high-phenolic, extra-virgin olive oil backed by none other than Beyoncé.
The treatment
Gwyneth Paltrow, actress and Goop wellness guru, exclusively announced the resort’s holistic revitalising programme ‘Elevations of Wellness’, crafted by Vicky Vlachonis, on her lifestyle platform. The tiered wellness programme combines wisdom from Vlachonis’s 25 years of expertise, folding in her ‘Positive Feedback Method’ (which has a high success rate according to her readers and clients) devised to meet physical, emotional and dietary needs. Through four bespoke levels, you’ll experience methods of deep relaxation, re-energising treatments, tension relief, cellular recovery and somatic release, ensuring you’ll leave at the apex of yourself. For an additional power-up, add on a cupping session.
SOUL SEARCHING (AND FINDING)
Nômade Tulum, Mexico
Tulum is no stranger to ‘woo woo’. A hippie haven for decades, it now attracts wellness-intentioned influencers and some eye-rolling at its perceived spuriousness. But whether the ceremonies, smudging and ecstatic chanting alleviate or aggravate your chakras, Nômade Tulum is a safe — and beautifully boho-styled — space for inner examination, perhaps due to its location away from the town centre, flush with the beach.
Resident astrologer Federico Andrade highlights the significance of the setting: ‘Tulum was a major astrological observation centre for the Mayans. You can feel how close the heavens are on any given starry night. And just a few steps away from the entrance is Sian Ka’an Biosphere, which in the Mayan language means Gates of the Sky.’ There are alternative philosophies to spare here, too, from the Japanese restaurant name Kuu Jū — which refers to a connection between space and creativity — to soundtracks to aid you in your wellness journey.
The treatment
Cleansing with copal and sweating out your stresses in a temazcal only gets you so far towards reaching your healing goals. For those feeling like they’re at a pit-stop in life, a soul-reading session uses a road map of the past — family dynamics, past traumas, a catch-up with your inner child — to navigate the future. As practitioner Mar Triveni explains, ‘The soul reading, or multidimensional healing, I offer is about identifying what people are not yet conscious of. Through these sessions, clients gain clarity and awareness of what needs to be released in their lives.’
If you’re not comfortable with inner probing, look to the great beyond for guidance in an astrology reading with Federico, where insights come from the positioning of the planets and stars, and, as he says, ‘life suddenly becomes much simpler, more coherent and more accurate’. Then continue the cosmic wonder with a fireside stargazing session.
NOTABLE NATURE IMMERSION
The Inns of Aurora, Upstate New York
The Inns of Aurora is formed of six historic houses from the 1800s onwards, set by Lake Cayuga in Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region. They have quite a pedigree — the main house was once home to Edwin Barber Morgan, co-founder of both The New York Times and American Express, and restoration work was carried out by Pleasant Rowland, the creator of American Girl Dolls. Here, history is enhanced with holistic wellness experiences — the hotel’s spa is a huge, farmhouse-style complex: ‘a place that one must travel to reach’. Once you’ve arrived, run hot and cold in the hydrotherapy circuit and saunas, and keep calm and book a CBD-infused massage, scrub or pedicure.
The treatment
There are 350 acres of grounds to cover here, including follies to watch the sunset from, jetties you can jump off and forest trails to follow. Get better acquainted on a nature-journaling experience (held on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings), where the resident ecologist will lead you into wooded areas and point out what’s flourishing (grapes, garlic, strawberries…) and encourage you to put pen to paper and let your emotions flow onto the page. You can also embrace your inner self from Monday to Friday in the Schoolhouse, when you set an intention and draw a card from a special deck to discover your spirit animal, which could be anything from a moth to a tiger.
SMOKING — THE GOOD KIND
The Rooster, Antiparos, Greece
After a spell at The Rooster, you’ll be strutting around like its namesake bird. This intimate retreat sits amid the tumbling hills and dunes of teeny isle Antiparos. You’ll live indoors-outdoors in one of a handful of secluded katikies (a mod take on local farmers’ cottages), each with sapphire views and a private pool.
Your day might involve sun-beds and cicada songs, movie-star moments in the hotel’s Riva yacht, or perhaps a grounding play-with-clay session. Come evening, you get a real sense of Greek hospitality and island community as you gather for all-together-now feasts of honied peaches, lemon-spritzed squid and tomahawk steaks hot off the grill.
The treatment
As salivating as the scents from the hotel’s barbecue and wood-fired oven are, the smoke emitted from the spa may actually change your life. The signature Smoking Stool for Energy Cleansing ritual starts with an intro to your root chakra (at the base of your spine, FYI) and some self-reflection, before oracle cards are drawn to set the emotional tone. Then you’ll meditate on a stool draped with a red cloth (an intentional colour), underneath which reinvigorating herbs are burnt, while ocean drums, rain sticks and gongs play.
It draws on cross-cultural initiation rites and energetic cleansing and is sometimes so potent guests feel they’re being ‘held by the earth’. Hot stuff, which you could make even steamier by adding a fire-cupping session or by being anointed with warmed Ayurvedic essential oils.
GIRL POWER
Sterrekopje Healing Farm, Franschhoek, South Africa
Sterrekopje Healing Farm is South Africa’s very own Elysian Fields, set in the foothills of the Franschhoek mountains. You half expect a nymph to come frolicking through the sun-dappled meadows and gardens bursting with life, but it’s more likely to be a farmyard friend like Frangipani and Croissant, the resident pot-bellied pigs.
The hotel’s creed is ‘soil to soul’, because its romantic reverie of a setting plays a role in the guest healing process, whether you’re joining in the daily harvest, tending to the beehives, making bread with the chef or connecting over feasts made from your spoils. In the Bath House spa, your soul is treated with just as much loving care — guests get one treatment included each day, which might be a sound bath, reflexology, yoga and more reviving rituals.
The treatment
From 29 November to 5 December, it’s girls to the front at Sterrekopje for the Wise Women Retreat, with a full complement of female staff. Owners Nicole and Fleur created the retreat they couldn’t find, one with time for being and doing, in tune with women’s cycles. With a safe — insanely beautiful — space and supportive company, this is an opportunity to be vulnerable and open, to let go of past trauma and habits that don’t serve you, and envision a healthier, happier future.
How is this achieved? By celebrating the moon, kundalini yoga sessions, sacred circles, planting seeds, taking a soothing ‘medicine walk’, and other self-love practices intended to ‘stimulate a deeper connection and appreciation to guests’ femininity, bodies and in particular the parts that make them a woman.’ Book now, and you’ll be the wiser for it.
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