You wake up at 5:30 in the morning and stretch for 30 minutes. You’ll eat something vegan and organic for breakfast followed by an hour-long hike where you’ll hear words like “verticality.” If you need a snack, you can get six almonds. Not seven — don’t be greedy.
In the afternoon, you cool off, soaking yourself in water cooled to a painful 55 degrees. The throbbing in your body isn’t a hangover — no alcohol — it’s from the 10 miles you walked yesterday, or it could be the 12 you walked the day before. Or maybe it’s the 1,400 calories a day allotted. For all this, you will pay thousands of dollars.
This is luxury wellness in 2024. Some destination spas and high-end retreats are more like Navy SEAL prep — or at the very least, basic training — than five-star resorts.
The standard-bearer of this group is the Ranch, 200 acres of nature and trails in the Santa Monica Mountains of Malibu, Calif. For 14 years, the Ranch has been helping 25 people at a time destress, detox and generally rid themselves of life’s anxieties.
“It’s like no other place,” said Gillian Steel, 69, who sits on the board of the New-York Historical Society and has been to the Ranch nine times. The Ranch, he said, “is not just a one-week experience. They manage to be both stylish while pushing you. You meet the most interesting people and you get a week to yourself at the same time.”
In late April, the Ranch will open a second property, this time in New York’s Hudson Valley.
“For years, our guests have been saying, ‘Please open something on the East Coast,’” said Sue Glasscock, who owns the Ranch with her husband, Alex, both 60. “We’ve been kicking around the idea for a long time.”
They eventually found a lakeside estate on 200 acres of forest and trails bordering state parks near the New Jersey border in the town of Sloatsburg, N.Y. The house, a 40,000-square-foot stone mansion formerly known as Table Rock estate, was built in 1902 by JP Morgan. (This was a wedding gift to his daughter and new son-in-law, the great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, and later owned by an order of nuns.)
“It’s an hour from Manhattan, which drives me crazy,” Ms. Glasscock.
In the mountains
I met the Glasscocks for lunch at their Ranch Malibu home. In front, three bowls of hot cabbage soup, topped with crispy kale and microgreens. In the background are the entirety of the Santa Monica Mountains, and beyond, a shimmering streak of the Pacific. It’s hard not to feel healthier, calmer and more sustainable just being there.
“We don’t think of ourselves as a spa — we never have,” Mr. Glasscock said. “To be honest, I don’t like the word wellness.” Before opening the Ranch, the couple bought and remodeled houses and designed gardens.
The natural world — in Southern California and the Hudson Valley — is the most important amenity at the Ranch. “Nothing we do is trendy,” said Ms. Glasscock. “The point is that you’re in nature. You eat food from the garden, you drink more water, you sleep more, you spend time on your devices. And you play.”
Play, he said, is a proven aid to longevity and something adults don’t do enough of. At the new location, a backyard hill will give guests the opportunity to go sledding in the winter. “The Ranch is basically like a camp for adults,” he said.
But adult camp isn’t cheap. Ranch Malibu has a six-night, seven-day minimum and can cost more than $9,000 a week, depending on the package. The price of a stay at Ranch Hudson Valley ranges from $2,575 per person (three nights, double occupancy, low season) to $6,900 per person (four nights, single occupancy, high season). Along with the high price is exclusivity.
“Difficult,” said Mr. Glasscock. Part of the impetus for opening in the Hudson Valley, he said, was to give people the option to go for three days. “Obviously, it keeps the cost down, and it still gives people time to reconnect with nature.”
From weight loss to longevity
As wellness has gone mainstream, places like the Ranch have played an important role in redefining spa destinations.
“In the US for the last 10 or 20 years, destination spas have focused on weight loss and fixing bad habits like alcohol, coffee, smoking and eating too much meat and sugar,” says Linda Wells, the founding editor of Allure magazine and the editor of Air Mail Look, a beauty and wellness newsletter (to which I contribute). “But the experience boils down to weighing and measuring on Day 1 and again on departure day, with a report card of pounds and inches lost at the end. Weight loss and flat abs are the goal, not health — and certainly not long life.
But wellness has evolved. Even in light of recent controversies, one of the the most popular podcasts on Spotify is “Huberman Lab,” where a Stanford University neurobiologist discusses cold exposure, sleep hygiene and circadian rhythms. And a growing number of spas offer a range of high-tech, often medical programs.
Other luxury destination spas also take the boot camp approach. there is Golden Door in California, Mii Boss in Arizona, and Miraval and Canyon Ranch, both of which have several outposts. It all combines spa treatments, exercise programs, special diets and the promise of a reset to a healthier lifestyle. But the Ranch is singular in its simplicity. There are vegan cooking classes, energy healing sessions and an infrared sauna, but don’t expect Botox or filler injections.
“I’m not against those things,” said Ms. Glasscock. “It’s just not in our ethos.”
The Ranch is extremely luxurious and purposefully communal. Arrival and departure dates are set according to weekly packages, so guests see the same face for a week. Activities – including daily walks – are done as a group. And there is only one dining table, so you eat all the meals with the other guests.
“I was expecting meditation, heads down, keep to yourself, but it is not that at all,” said Jillian Spaak, the director of a real estate investment company who lives in Southern California and first came to the Ranch 10 years ago. when he was breaking up. “You talk to other people, you go hiking together, and you all eat at the same table. You go through peaks and valleys — literally — and you’re all there for the same reason: to feel better, to look better, to be better. ”
“We want to take what we consider important aspects of health, wellness and longevity and immerse everyone in all of it for a week or three days,” Ms. Glasscock. “Most people want a silver bullet, but there is no such thing.”
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