Shamans And Sound Bowls: 5 Luxury Resorts Redefining Wellness Travel

Luxury travel has become more than just caviar and cabanas. Within recent years, extravagant excursions have evolved from pure indulgence to experiences leaving the traveler feeling enriched and awakened.

Travelers are seeking to escape the mundane physically, spiritually and mentally, resulting in an upward shift in the demand for culturally immersive spiritual experiences and healing wellness-focused journeys. The 2024 Wellness Tourism Market reported that global wellness tourism had reached an annual amount of $651 billion, with traveling for culturally authentic healing and wellness techniques listed within the trends contributing to that astronomical number.

World-class resorts and spas have begun to reshape their typical offerings to experiences that pay homage to their locations’ indigenous people and practices. Hoteliers are doing away with the cookie-cutter beauty, spa and restoration services and connecting with local healers, traditions and things endemic to the area.

Being cleansed in sacred cenote water is now favored over the usual dip in a hot tub. The Saturday morning group yoga has transformed into a one-on-one life-mapping session with a Mayan shaman.
Each encounter is thoughtfully designed to honor the land and its people by utilizing local healers, wellness experts, and herbal medicine practitioners. In places where alternative practices were once discouraged, Indigenous culture’s unique spiritual traditions are now celebrated and sought out.

Some resorts and spas are redefining luxury by offering guests experiences that rejuvenate their bodies and enrich their souls.

COMO Shambhala Estate – Bali, Indonesia

Nestled in the river-surrounded forest near Ubud, Bali, the COMO Shambhala Estate offers services designed to rejuvenate the body and mind with ties to several ancient Asian healing practices.

Their Integrated Wellness Path begins with expert diagnostics to create personalized plans tailored to guests’ fitness, nutrition and well-being needs, ensuring a holistic reset. Notable parts of the Path include Detox to Restore, which focuses on gut health and toxin cleansing and Nourish to Glow, which promotes sustainable nourishment for radiant health across life stages. Guests can also experience Ayurvedic treatments and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

Traditional Balinese rituals include the Water Spring Blessing, where participants dress in customary attire and have a local priest guide them through chants and offerings. They can also experience the Water Purification Ritual at the Holy Springs, where they will visit a sacred Balinese water temple and partake in an ancient water purification ritual.

Naj Naay Spa and Healing Center – Tulum, Mexico

Located on a sweeping stretch of Tulum Beach, The Beach Tulum Hotel offers a blissful and restorative retreat in the heart of Tulum, Mexico, at their Naj Naay Spa and Healing Center.

The destination fuses ancient rituals with cutting-edge therapies to provide relaxing and rejuvenating treatments. In addition to a host of classic massages, botanic facials, body treatments and Ayurvedic therapies, Naj Naáy also offers a 60-minute hydrotherapy circuit featuring a sauna, Turkish bath, Scottish shower and hot and cold bathing pools.

The crown jewel of the spa is the rich menu of Mayan therapies, which include full-body, neck and abdominal massages, where a local medicinal healer uses native herbs, copal and sacred fire to cleanse the auric field and open energy channels, ancestral abdominal massages and more.

Stream Dance Spa – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Stream Dance Spa at Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico, offers a serene retreat that concentrates on spiritual well-being for travelers seeking tranquility, self-realization and connection.

Their Rituals for the Spirit selections include shamanic healing with drum-led energetic empowerment and soul retrieval. Local healer Marina Pirkle offers clinical hypnotherapy to release chakra and auric field work to assist in releasing energetic blockages. Guests can immerse themselves in the Symphony of Sound package, featuring Tibetan crystal meditation singing bowls to facilitate healing. Additionally, the spa offers astrology and oracle card readings.

Stream Dance also believes in spiritual wellness for pets; the Animal Life Force package includes a reiki session that allows a practitioner to “hold space” for an animal and communicate its needs to its owner.

Sense – Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Sense at Rosewood-Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen is located on a private island along the Caribbean Sea. The ultra-secluded spa incorporates native Mayan and Aztec practices and traditions into its services. At the same time, cultivating tailored experiences due to the meticulous attention to detail and purpose with which the location was built.

The Cenote Temazcal Purification treatment is a traditional Mayan healing practice that uses herbal-infused water from one of the ancient Aztec cenotes, volcanic rock and a steam bath to take a guest on a journey into the earth’s “womb.”

The onsite sensory garden is the perfect backdrop for the “Kuxtal” ritual, where the beauty of nature enhances a fusion of aromas, sounds and tastes to awaken the senses.

Comano Spa – Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

At the luxe Grand Hotel Terme di Comano, the Comano Spa offers every indulgent service a spa could offer. Yet, its innovative take on nature-based meditation is truly a spiritual experience.

Set within a stunning 14-hectare (34.59 acres) park in the UNESCO-designated Ledro Alps and Judicaria Biosphere Reserve, guests get to revel in nature through their Forest Bathing and Sensory Path services.

Inspired by a 19th-century Japanese practice known as Shinrin-yoku, Forest Bathing is barefoot walking that promotes relaxation and rejuvenation by stimulating the senses. The Sensory Path, part of the spa’s Natural Wellness program, features eleven stations designed to awaken the senses of touch, hearing, sight and smell. This path includes various textures like pine cones, bark, leaves, logs and water.

The expansive space also hosts their Yoga in Flight experience, which combines yoga and aerial exercises. Participants are suspended in soft hammocks between the trees and float away from the daily stressors of life, surrounded by the beauty of the Thermal Park.