Laurie Werner is a New York-based writer covering travel and food.
It's the end of the year and both your brain and body feel it. Flying down to SHA Wellness Clinic Mexico would seem to be a proper fix due to its location alone: on the Costa Mujeres facing the clear blue waters of the Mexican Caribbean, 45 minutes north but a world away from Cancun. That setting is the bonus, though; there's so much going on inside in the multi-floor clinic that many guests never make it down the steps to the beach.
Since 2008 when the first SHA Wellness Clinic opened in Alicante, Spain, the retreat has regularly been named Best Spa by the World Spa Awards; the Mexican retreat, which opened in January, was also named World's Best New Wellness Retreat in October. The reason is their comprehensive method focused on nine main areas: healthy nutrition, natural therapies, preventive and healthy aging medicine, advanced aesthetics, cognitive stimulation and emotional health, well-being and inner balance and physical performance. The programs utilizing these elements are divided into four types: detox and ideal weight achievement; optimal mental and physical performance; restoration of maximum vitality and balance and slow down of cellular degeneration to promote well-aging. The program to restore vitality and balance starts at four days; the others have a minimum of seven.
Each program resembles a sort of wellness bootcamp with consultations and treatments scheduled hour after hour. (But there is some flexibility, and a list of other activities, the Healthy Living Academy, open to all in the open agenda spaces.) It all begins just after check in with a futuristic video that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Apple TV+'s "Severance:" a cascade of swirling numbers and terms detailing the tests to come narrated by a computer generated voice while a body schematic rotates. Some terms are expected -- cardiovascular risk, stress evaluation -- others like glycol oxidation are completely mysterious. But they become clearer as the programs progress. And the test results, from both blood tests and computerized analyses, are remarkably detailed and predictive.
Over the course of four days of the Rebalance and Energize program, refined by various medical and nutritional consultations and diagnoses, my agenda was a lineup of esoteric/scientific, alternative therapy and purely sybaritic offerings. Some were new experiences such as the Integrated Bioenergy Assessment which by tracing my fingertips electronically allowed Miguel, the talented and deeply compassionate acupuncturist to know which of my energy centers were blocked (pretty much all of them, apparently) and address them.
Fitness training is offered the old fashioned way -- with a hard-charging fitness trainer -- and a space age version, the Icaros Virtual Reality system that sends you through a VR landscape while you work out. Mixed in with the scientific consultations such as neurocognitive assessment and the corresponding transcranial electrical stimulation were the more alternative/natural pranayama breathing techniques, ginger compresses for stiff musclea and a shiatsu massage that was almost surgical. I did miss Moonlight Healing Meditation, though, mostly because I couldn't find it: there's only one elevator that can reach the rooftop near the lap pool and fitness room when the clinic is closed and the elevator within it that also goes there is unavailable. I never did find it, though, instead winding up near the 35 residences in this massive, curved structure. (There are also 100 hotel rooms and suites.) Arriving guests are advised to pay close attention to their welcome tours.
Down in the restaurant SHAmadi, the three meals a day are also personalized according to a guest's program and dietary needs and are as important if not more so than any of the other parts of the program. Founder Alfredo Bataller Parietti credits a switch to a healthy, healing diet as a major factor in reversing health issues he'd suffered with for years. Guests will notice several things missing: coffee, alcohol, sugar, meat among them; in their place are seafood, organic fruits and vegetables and healthier desserts in creative, really delicious dishes such as line fish with roasted vegetables, holy leaf sauce and matcha sauce and palm heart and radish Peruvian ceviche. You start the day with miso soup, known for its probiotic and detox qualities, that will help bodies absorb the day's nutrients but I sometimes had a few problems with the breakfast dishes that followed such as quinoa porridge with apple and star anise, pea hummus and seaweed bread. But the lunch and dinner dishes more than made up for them. And they did make me feel more energetic.
Guests can take cooking classes with the chef to find out how to replicate these dishes at home and given how they make you feel, it's a good way to spend some agenda free time. The chef packed a lunch to go on my day transiting home so I wouldn't have to rely on the Cancun Airport offerings. But once back with my usual habits, I could really feel the difference -- and had to admit that I really did feel better there.