Body and Soul

A new breed of luxury retreat looks beyond the massage table to offer guests a more meaningful spa experience.

In years past the typical spa experience focused on shrinking waistlines, not expanding horizons. Recently, though, the focus at many premier resorts and retreats has grown beyond mere pampering to provide guests with a new range of activities, from mountain biking across canyons to painting the perfect sunset.

"People are searching for much more meaning in their spa vacations," says Ginny Lopis, co-owner of The Lodge at Woodloch, an Adirondack retreat in western Pennsylvania. "They want to be introduced to new experiences and discover new things about themselves in ways that will be useful to them in the future." Spas are reinforcing the mind-body connection by providing guests with traditional treatments like seaweed wraps and shiatsu as well as exposing them to nature, art, and social activities. The following gold-standard luxury properties go beyond scrubbing and sloughing to instill total wellness.

Go Play Outside

The Lodge at Woodloch | Hawley, Pennsylvania
"We attract a lot of people who've never been to a spa before," says Lopis of The Lodge at Woodloch. Men especially appreciate the lodge's relaxed approach to spa-going, she says, as well as the ready availability of such outdoor pursuits as fly-fishing, mountain biking, and kayaking. The majority of Woodloch's guests are couples, many of them Manhattanites in search of a weekend escape from the city, just two and a half hours away. The lodge also offers more sedentary pursuits—in a forty-thousand-square-foot earth-toned spa, which features separate men's and women's areas, each equipped with its own fireplace lounge, rocking chairs, and tea bar. (Couples can enjoy customized treatments—such as sports massages geared toward tennis buffs or golfers, or Thai bodywork—in suites designed for two.) There are also painting, photography, and drawing classes taught by local artists. One of the lodge's most popular pastimes, says Lopis, is fishing in the private lake: "Men often disappear for hours on end, fishing off the end of our dock. They remind me of kids, walking down to the lake with their tackle and poles."

Bask in Beauty

Therme Vals | Graubünden, Switzerland
Worship at the mountain temple of high architecture in the Swiss Alps. Widely viewed as a masterpiece of design, Therme Vals is the signature work of Peter Zumthor, winner of last year's Pritzker Prize (often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture). Consisting of a hotel and adjoining spa built into the side of a mountain over the region's only thermal spring, Therme Vals's Spartan design was inspired by stone, water, and air—indeed, the building appears to hover weightlessly alongside the mountain's rocky face. Even the spa menu hews to the essentials. Beyond a fairly intensive selection of massages, including a half dozen of the ayurvedic variety, there are facials, baths (rose petal, eucalyptus, milk, and thalasso), a few wraps, and mani-pedis. It's as though Zumthor wanted as few distractions as possible from the baths themselves, a series of indoor and outdoor thermal pools that are some of the most jaw-dropping examples of minimalism ever set to stone.

The Healing Seas

The Spa at Pelican Hill | Newport Beach, California
The palladio-style Resort at Pelican Hill, overlooking some of Southern California's most sought-after beachfront property, takes full advantage of its choice perch. "Our location lets us use the outdoors as a pivotal and natural part of our programming," says Landry Fuller, director of public relations at Pelican Hill. Guests are encouraged to explore nearby Crystal Cove State Beach, where bottlenose dolphins and gray whales are frequently spotted from the vantage points along more than three miles of hiking trails. The wealth of natural beauty surrounding the resort has also prompted Pelican Hill to offer private and group instruction in herb growing, flower arranging, and oil painting. Even the twenty-three-thousand-square-foot Spa at Pelican is infused with a sense of place: sea salts and locally grown plants, herbs, extracts, and botanicals inspire a range of therapeutic spa treatments. This year the spa will offer for the first time monthly Balanced Wellness retreats, a three-day program that aims to help guests make lasting lifestyle changes via motivational sessions, cooking demonstrations, and workouts led by Ashley Borden, a celebrity fitness trainer who has worked with Natasha Bedingfield, Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling, and Mandy Moore.

Fountain of Youth

The Spa at Icon Brickell | Miami, Florida
On the other end of the sybaritic spectrum is The Spa at Icon Brickell, whose hedonistic pleasures come with a decidedly high-fashion gloss. Design impresario Philippe Starck takes the humble home pursuit of reading in the tub to Wallpaper-worthy extremes with a five-thousand-square-foot Water Lounge—a "floating library" equipped with three hot-and-cold plunge pools, a reflecting pond, and built-in bookshelves lining double-height chocolate-toned walls. Outside there's an endless stretch of deck featuring Florida's longest swimming pool and a hot tub built for a crowd. Signature spa treatments include a raindrop massage, in which droplets of seven essential oils are massaged into the spine, and the Metamorphosis, which combines a "noninvasive facelift" (using muscle-tautening microcurrents) with ultrasonic exfoliation and light therapy to enhance guests' eternally youthful glow. It doesn't get much more Miami than that.

Horse-Country Glam

Espa at The Europe | Killarney, Ireland
This five-star retreat in Ireland's spa capital sports a sleek, glamorous design with some fabulously high-tech touches—such as workout stations equipped with iPod docks, an infinity pool studded with jets that bear swimmers aloft on a spray of bubbles, and a core-strengthening Kinesthetics Wall that appears to be made from Lucite. But there are simpler pleasures on hand, too. After all, Killarney is horse country, and just outside Espa's gleaming row of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shores of Lough Lein lies a small herd of Austrian Haflinger ponies grazing the hotel's immaculately manicured grounds. Guests can opt for a gentle amble along the resort's bridle path or embark on a more adventurous ride through ruggedly scenic Killarney National Park. Ease saddle-tested muscles with Espa's two-hour holistic total body ritual, featuring an aromatherapy massage with essential oils tailored to each guest and tension-releasing hot stones.

A former editor at Women's Wear Daily, Kristen Carr Jandoli is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

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Kristen Carr Jandoli, Ralph Lauren Home 05-2010

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