New Year’s Resolution: Serious Wellness
It’s one thing to schedule a 90-minute deep tissue between a morning at the beach and an afternoon at the pool, and another thing all together to dedicate a trip to detoxing and resetting. With holiday parties in full swing and January right around the corner, you’re not alone if you’re starting to think wistfully of taking a break from canapes and cocktails in favor of yoga, breath work, and probiotics. Read on for five properties we love when the goal is a full reboot.
SHA Mexico | Costa Mujeres, Mexico
SHA Mexico brings the brand’s internationally acclaimed health philosophy to a dramatic Caribbean setting. The property itself feels more like a cutting-edge wellness campus than a traditional spa hotel, with glass-walled architecture designed to mimic DNA’s double helix housing minimalist interiors. Guests, many of whom come for weeks at a time and return for annual tune-ups, undergo a full health intake, diagnostic testing, and personalized planning across nutrition, fitness, sleep, and mental wellbeing, and every day is anchored by visits with an elite medical staff. Programs range from weight loss and detox to stress relief, aesthetic medicine, and peak performance, but the real differentiator at SHA is the focus on longevity. Nutrition is a cornerstone: There’s no calorie counting here, but meals are free from dairy, sugar, and meat, and the personalized menus are intended to improve gut health and attack inflammation. The spa itself is expansive, offering everything from cryotherapy, oxygen therapy, and IV infusions, to acupuncture, hydrotherapy, and state-of-the-art aesthetic treatments. Movement is integrated across yoga decks, Technogym studios, aquatic areas, and outdoor trails. What sets SHA apart is its true medical oversight, making it ideal for guests who want real, measurable results delivered in an environment that feels restorative rather than clinical.
Who It’s Right For: Travelers who want measurable, medically guided health results with a strong focus on diagnostics, nutrition, and longevity.
Brenners Park & Villa Stéphanie | Baden Baden, Germany
In an impossibly scenic valley on the edge of the Black Forest, Baden-Baden (literally “Bath bath”) has been Europe’s grande-dame spa town for centuries, famed since Roman times for its mineral-rich thermal waters. This is a place for fresh air, forest hiking routes, and a soundtrack of classical music (the Festspielhaus, Europe’s second-largest opera house, is another major draw). Baden-Baden’s thermal springs feed historic bathhouses and modern wellness centers, but there’s way more than water at Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, which recently reopened after a two-year facelift of its own. The hotel’s dedicated wellness house, Villa Stéphanie, is a sanctuary within a sanctuary, a 15-room mansion dedicated to health, digital detox, and structured medical programs. Guests undergo tailored diagnostics involving nutrition and metabolic analysis, cardiology, sleep studies, physiotherapy, and integrative medicine; the spa comprises hydrotherapy pools, saunas, steam rooms, and advanced treatment cabins, and the medical wing partners with leading German specialists. Privacy, discretion, and personalization are hallmarks, with the team designing everything from fasting protocols to emotional-balance therapies.
Who It’s Right For: Guests who love the charm of a grand hotel and a wellness offering that draws on both a deep tradition and contemporary techniques.
Lanserhof | Lake Tegernsee, Germany
Four hours east of Baden Baden, nearer Austria than France, you’ll find Lake Tegernsee. The landscape look like the set from The Sound of Music, and many of the visitors are weekending from Munich in search of slowing down and getting some fresh air. It’s no surprise, then, that nature is integral to the treatments and DNA at Lanserhof Tegernsee, the leading wellness clinic famed for its energy-medicine philosophy. The architecture is sleek and contemporary, allowing the region’s beautiful light to slice across the space in a way that’s both smoothing and dramatic and allowing plenty of opportunities to admire the alpine views. The wellness experience centers around the FX Mayr method, emphasizing digestive health, fasting protocols, posture correction, detoxification, and metabolic optimization and guests typically commit to multi-week stays to allow time for medical diagnostics including blood work, gut health analysis, cardiac testing, and body-composition monitoring. Meals are highly structured and portion-controlled to reset digestion, and silence, nature immersion, and digital minimalism are additional core tenets.
Who It’s Right For: Highly disciplined wellness travelers who want a structured, clinically rigorous reset rooted in fasting.
Ananda in the Himalayas | Rishikesh/Narendra Nagar, India
If you’re looking for a dramatic reset with the emphasis on drama, it’s hard to top Ananda in the Himalayas, not least because it’s set in the foothills of the world’s highest mountain range. Once you’re dressed in the customary white cotton kurta given to all guests, roaming the grounds of what was originally a maharaja’s private palace, making big changes to your lifestyle and habits doesn’t seem like such a distant goal. An hour away lie the ashrams and temples of Rishikesh, the world capital of yoga, which unsurprisingly forms the foundation of the wellness program here. Guests begin their stay with an Ayurvedic consultation to determine dosha balance and design a program customized to wellness goals, and treatments are deeply traditional, including Abhyanga massage, Shirodhara, Himalayan salt rituals, pranayama, meditation, and naturopathy. The 24,000-square-foot spa is one of the most comprehensive in Asia, and cuisine is tailored to Ayurvedic principles, focusing on balance and digestion.
Who It’s Right For: Travelers who are seeking a spiritual and physical reset in equal measure; those for whom setting “real life” completely aside is the goal.
Amanpuri | Phuket, Thailand
One can go to Amanpuri for a world-class vacation without giving wellness a second thought, but it’s also possible to get deep into the programming at Aman’s Phuket flagship hotel. The Aman Wellness Centre is among the brand’s most advanced, offering medical-grade diagnostics and integrative Eastern therapies alongside more traditional spa treatments infused with local minerals and spices. For guests with time to invest in r&r, multi-day and multi-week programs can include detox, weight management, stress reduction, hormone balancing, sleep optimization, or fitness acceleration. Therapies range from acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine to high-tech treatments like IV nutrient therapy, and movement is a key focus, with Muay Thai boxing, reformer Pilates, yoga, personal training, and watersports getting the blood pumping.
Who It’s Right For: Hotel junkies who will be thrilled to learn their favorite resort property has equally excellent opportunities to reset.
Joali Being | The Maldives
If the health of the marine life is anything to go on, it’s hard to beat the Maldives’ Raa Atoll, home to the fantastical architecture of Joali Being. Manta rays ply the turquoise lagoons and local drum rhythms pulse through the air, but there’s even more on offer here than a vacation out of a dream. Joali Being bills itself as a “Wellbeing Island,” built entirely around transformational health and grounded on four pillars: Mind, Skin, Microbiome, and Energy. The facilities offer opportunities to target mental, emotional, and physical health, and include a hydrotherapy hall, sound-healing room, salt inhalation chamber, and herbology center. Therapies range from Ayurvedic rituals and craniosacral therapy to Watsu, vibrational healing, epigenetic testing, and the plant-forward cuisine rooted in nourishment rather than restriction.
Who It’s Right For: Design-savvy wellness seekers who prioritize beauty in their hotels and their treatments.
