In Greece, wellness is not a trend, but a fact of life.
I ’ve pass the preceding two month living inGreece , fall ever deep in love with a country that hold regain new ways to bowl me over — with its godsentbeauty , and its cultural allergic reaction to pretension , and its people ’s unlimited capacity for kindness . I ’ve come to watch it as a station defined by its embodiment of what “ health ” really means , or , perhaps better put , as a place where health is not a trend , but a fact of biography .
Here deadening animation is not a pick . It ’s a matter of requisite as you wait three hours for your ferry at a dockside coffeehouse in Rhodes , or pull over on a dusty one - lane route inCreteto permit a stack of sheep swarm past your car . You exercise all day without ever really sample to : climb up and down the unending steps of Greece ’s hilly island towns ; swim in the cool , opaline bays of the Aegean Sea ; betray the backstreets ofAthens , where mopeds and competitive pigeon rick walking into a form of agility preparation . Healthy intellectual nourishment is about the only food there is . You do n’t have to search out fresh - caught fish and local produce — it ’s just what ’s on your plate . Wellness , in a underlying , atavistic sense — what it mean before it became an industry — is baked into everything here , even the language . The Greek word for hello — yiasas — agency , in genuine rendering , “ health to you . ”
It makes sense , then , that when Greece actually seek to “ do ” wellness , it excels . The land is home to more than a dozen world - class health hotels , pop the question everything you ’d have a bun in the oven from such a blank space ( yoga and exercise classes , spa treatments , farm - to - mesa food ) and dozens of things you ’ve probably never heard of : “ craniosacral therapy , ” “ reflexology , ” “ bio - impedance analysis , ” “ modern alchemy harmonizing rituals”—the list go on .
A room with a view at the Kea Retreat in Greece.|All photos courtesy the author.
Over two weeks in late August and early September , I visited as many of these belongings as I could . The best of them , I find , are built less around “ wellness ” in the pop common sense than just living well : using your body , eat fresh solid food , swimming in the sea , seeing ravisher , sitting with silence , and slowing down . They embrace the broad - minded , endemic breed of health I see as part of the cloth of this country — and in so doing , they give you a chance to know , even if only for a few twenty-four hours , what liveliness in Greece is all about .
Acro Suites
Crete
On a bright , cloudless afternoon atAcro Suites , a hillside hotel on the northerly coast of Crete , I sit around by the pond , built in a ring around a naked , rocky hill set with aloe and sawgrass . At its tiptop was a mirrored dagger , reflecting the gradated bluing of the sky and ocean , the blind gold of the sun , and the deep green of the mountains in the distance .
Across from me , Konstantina Orfanake , the hotel ’s carbon monoxide gas - beginner , was explain that the chairs we sat in were hand - build up using Cretan wood ; that there was n’t a exclusive roofing tile at the 43 - room property , only Cretan marble laid by local stonemasons ; that every works , palm , and flower I encounter was aboriginal to this part of the island .
A view from Acro Suites.
Konstantina was born and raised in Crete , and she want Acro Suites to showcase where she ’d grown up . She also want it to shine the kind of nubbly health she ’d been practicing since she was a child .
“ For us , wellness is a life style , ” she said . “ We ’ve always lovedthe Mediterranean diet and heavy quality food . We grew up next to the water , working out and fishing and swimming . We wanted to take all these things and play up them as a style of support . ”
tap into that way of living feel effortless at Acro Suites . I exhaust clean fruit for breakfast , unfermented vegetable and fall for lunch , and fresh Pisces the Fishes for dinner party . In the afternoons , I ’d walk down a long , wind Harlan Stone path to the beach , where I ’d swim out to a string of buoys a after part - mile from shore and back again . I fell benumbed before midnight and fire up up with the sun .
From the author’s stay at Euphoria.
I slept so well in part , I think , because I spent an time of day a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. at the hotel ’s gym , where sunlight poured through floor - to - roof windowpane overlooking the coastline , and where Theo , the hotel ’s in - family personal trainer , had convinced me to connect his CrossFit classes . As I cast off hard roach against the ground , hoisted weight above my head , and hucked medicine ball at the paries , Theo would gently , silently right every mistake I made , mirroring what I was supposed to be doing without address . He was — intentionally , I thought — avoiding drawing attention to me , spare me from judgement . Every time I made an alteration , no matter how slight or ineffective , he gave me a form of jubilant salute .
Nothing finger better than getting in the plunge syndicate on my patio after a CrossFit session ( a deeply pathetic clause I could never have reckon writing before I came to Greece ) . Floating , sighing , finger the tension leave my musculus as the lactic battery-acid bound up in them fade out , I thought of nothing . There was only here , and only now : just the water , and the sunlight , and the wind , and the sky , and under and inside it all , me .
Euphoria Retreat
Mystras
I was up to my neck in crank - cold water system , and I could n’t feel my feet . A valet in a wifebeater and sweat pants hovered over me , staring at a stopwatch . “ Eight minutes , ” he said . I break my regard , letting it fuzz out in the middle distance . I could hear water dripping from the cap . A bodiless voice called out to me from somewhere in the dark . “ You do know what hypothermia is , do n’t you ? ” it said . My tegument tingle . My soundbox had gone bloodless . The man in the wifebeater checked his watch again . “ Nine min , ” he say .
It was my second day atEuphoria Retreat , a straggle chemical compound in the Peloponnese mountains I can best key out as a kind of Zen Disneyland for hyper wellness - conscious grownup . At the heart of the property was a four - chronicle watering place , containing a Finnish sweat room , a steam elbow room , a Byzantine hammam , a tepidarium , a speleotherapy salt room , a Kneipp therapy footbath , a sensory deprivation bedroom , a hydropathy sleeping room , a cold atmospheric plasma chamber , a Watsu pocket billiards , an indoor pocket billiards , an out-of-door puddle , a California hot bathtub , an existential cascade , a gym , a yoga shala , a Pilate studio apartment , a speculation room , and a labyrinth of secret entourage reserved for specialized individual discussion , ranging from the intimate ( e.g. acupuncture ) to the wholly unfamiliar ( e.g. “ electromagnetic pituitary stimulation therapy ” ) , all described with donnish precision in a spa computer menu that was 36 page long . There was also , of course , a cold plunge .
A view from Kea Retreat.
I climbed out of it , throb , and cave in onto a noodle base outside . My vision had take on the at once sharpened and surreal quality I link with being eminent . I sense everything — the water swoosh over the edge of the pool , the wind trail its silken finger over my skin , the smell of pine and citrus tree that hung in the melodic phrase , the air cooling as cloud deal the Sunday — more acutely than I had ever sensed anything . My eyes wilt , and I require for nothing .
Euphoria made it easy to feel that way : that I want for nothing . There were no server at the pool to trigger the pulsation to order a drink . There was no alcoholic beverage in the cellaret in my room ; no alcohol , even , on the card at Euphoria ’s restaurant . If you did n’t ask for it , you would n’t know they serve John Barleycorn . Unlike every hotel I ’d ever been to , Euphoria did n’t seem to want to sell me anything . All it wanted me to invest in was myself .
The hotel organized five guided activity a day , all of them free . On my second day there , I accept a hike in the mountains at 7:30 a.m. , a vinyasa class at high noon , a cold-blooded dip workshop at 2 p.m. , and a lesson in playing the ancient lyre at 7:15 p.m. In the space between each academic term , I used the resort hotel . I barely touched my phone ; they were forbid in most spaces , and mildly discouraged in all of them . There was no euphony on at Euphoria — no sound at all , really , aside from birdsong , the grim drone of cicadas , and the air current brush through the trees . The only stilted haphazardness I heard occur when I dove underwater in the indoor pool . Whale sounds and tinkling bells played from subaqueous speakers I could n’t see .
On my last night at Euphoria , I left the prop and walked down to the center of Mystras , a small small town of about 4,000 people . Locals spilled from the three tavernas in townspeople . They were packed together at long tables , shouting and laughing and singing and smoke . It was a oddly jarring experience . After pass two days in a world of utter tranquility , it was as if I ’d leave there was any other variety of world out there .
Kea Retreat
Kea
It had n’t rained in months on Kea , a small island about an hour Dixie of Athens by ferryboat , and the hillside were destitute , all desert scouring and break rock . On the drive inland from the embrasure , I ’d seen nothing but ocher . But as I descended into a valley , creeping down switchbacks on a steep malicious gossip road , suddenly there was green . I passed Olea europaea tree , grape vines , gridded secret plan of herbs and vegetables , the earth coming active as I approach a glorious blue cove and arrived , finally , atKea Retreat .
I climbed out of the railroad car , and Yoni Eshet , Kea Retreat ’s carbon monoxide - founder , handed me a shabu of geranium pee . “ Welcome , man , ” he said . “ Glad you ’re here . ” Yoni spoke in low , hypnotically slow tint . He was dressed in flow white linen and a woven stubble lid , and he travel with a variety of monastic grace .
From a tranquil pool at Gundari.
As he led me on a tour of the property , he explain that most of the metre , Kea Retreat was just that : a true retreat , where groups of seven to ten people come for an immersive week of meditation , yoga , auditory sensation healing , and other holistic practices design to help them connect with a rich part of themselves . That Department of Energy spill over into the weekends , when Kea Retreat operates as a hotel , offer morning yoga session , beachside massages , and lead meditation lead by Yoni , who spends the off - time of year studying substitute medicine .
As we walk , Yoni say me the story of how Kea Retreat came to be . He had spent most of his twenties in New York , he say , and after six days in the metropolis , he had everything he ’d ever wanted when he first moved there : a web of friends , a high - pay job , a overnice apartment in Greenwich Village . But something feel off .
“ I was in a depressive stop , ” he said . “ The task was fill my bank account , but not my heart . And my friendship — I had many , but they were n’t the depth that I really require to finger . I was trying to become somebody , trying to be successful , successful , successful at the expense of connection and collectivism . And I decide , okay : I ’m going to go on a number of a journey . ”
He travel to Pachamama , a health hideaway in Costa Rica , for what was supposed to be a two - week holiday . He wind up know there for the next seven calendar month .
He quit his job and let go of his apartment . After spending two years go to wellness retreats , meditation center , and eco - villages around the world , he decided to start something of his own .
Yoni ’s family had been coming to Kea for 30 yr , and possess a piece of ground of land at the bottom of a vale where they had planned to build a house . alternatively , Yoni work up it into Kea Retreat . The property ’s seven rooms , scattered throughout the vale , are all ancient sheepman ’s homes . Yoni restore them using the same technique and material they were build up with more than 400 years ago . Like almost everything at Kea Retreat — the terrace Olea europaea grove , the rugged footpaths , the shady courtyard , the outdoor kitchen — the rooms are made of stone from this vale , all of it cut down , carve , and place by script by local craftsmen , whose house have been working the slate of this island for generations .
Looking out from Oku Kos
“ We brought it all back to life with a muckle of care , and with this ethos of the Maoris in New Zealand , ” Yoni tell . “ You ’re not the possessor of the res publica . You ’re just a caretaker . ”
Yoni and I had been walk and utter for an time of day , and now our turn was over . He led me into my way at the top of the vale . We stood on the terrace looking out over the sea , the vinery , the gardens — over everything Yoni had made , and made of himself , since he pick out to leave New York behind and start a new life in Greece .
I admired Yoni ; he seemed to possess a indisputable - footedness and internal clarity I wanted for myself . I told him something to that consequence : that it seemed like he had it all figured out . He smiled and shook his head .
“ I ’m not enlighten , ” he say . “ I fall down back into my form . But I try out to bring some level of consciousness into everything I do . Even if it ’s just drink my coffee in the dayspring , I try out to be present with that second . It ’s the intemperate affair for us to do . But you could do it with everything — literally , everything — and when that becomes a mo - to - moment experience , then life is a speculation . ”
I spent my time at Kea Retreat trying to do that . As I moved through the day — talking with Yoni at the taproom , swimming in the true laurel , doing yoga by the beach , drink coffee on my terrace — I tried to dissent my disposition to roleplay on impulse , and to playact , or else , with intent . I asked myself questions : Do you really want a field glass of wine , or do you just want a glass of pee ? Do you really need to take a picture of that sunset , or do you just want to look at it ? The answers always seemed to make me change what I was doing , and that always seemed to feel better than what I had been doing before .
Gundari
Folegandros
To get from Kea to Folegandros , I would have to take four different ferry operated by three different companies between five different islands . But the agenda did n’t trace up . Every scenario I gamed out left me with at least one 24 - hour stop somewhere in the middle of the Cyclades , which could n’t happen . I only had two nighttime atGundari , a hotel on Folegandros , and I did n’t desire to burn one . I seek for a workable path there over and over again , and over and over again I found that it did n’t exist . The only thing that could get me there on time was a helicopter .
So it was that I found myself wearing a military - grade headset in the front buttocks of a Robinson R44 , grin so heavily it hurt , cast over the Aegean Sea at 135 mi an hour . My aliveness had been salve byHoper , a Greek helicopter companionship operating flight to and from the islands at about a tenth of the go pace , mean prices in the hundred , not the thousands . Hoper is , fundamentally , a helicopter ride - part service , let strangers carve up a flight without having to reserve out an entire aircraft . Every journeying I ’d managed to organize from Kea to Folegandros would have take somewhere between 38 and 76 hour . Hoper dumbfound me there in 55 hour .
We stir down in a desert landscape . teetotal chocolate-brown plain stitch stretched for miles in every direction . On our ride to the slide , I saw no rest home , no churches , no life of any variety , save an casual butt or sheep that looked baked into the land itself , its fur dye burnt sienna from the dirt and debris that had been collect there for what I imagined was its entire life .
short Gundari materialise out of the diethyl ether , come up from the stone and George Sand like a imagination born of delirium . The hotel was perched at the bound of the world . Everywhere I look , I see 180 - degree views of interminable sea , the curve of the celestial horizon remind me that , though it may not feel like it , I was on earth .
Off of my room was a plunge pool , sitting a thousand groundwork above the water level . Its rimless border seemed to spill straight into the sea . The elbow room itself was sumptuousness bodied , the domestic combining weight of a Fabergé eggs . The front - desk tender register it to me try me say “ wow ” aloud to myself three time .
“ So , ” she said . “ You ’re never leaving the room . ”
I scarcely did that first twenty-four hours . I just sat on the sun lounger by the plunge consortium , star out at the subject water , for hours .
The next morning , Ricardo Larriera , Gundari ’s co - founding father and CEO , asked me what I ’d been up to during my time on Folegandros . I sheepishly secern him that so far , I ’d done absolutely nothing . He seemed thrilled to hear it .
“ Wellness is important — it ’s absolutely one of the strong pillar of what Gundari is about — but I also do n’t need this to be a place where we have people coming here just for wellness and nothing else , ” Larriera say . “ I desire it to be a place where people can resolve how much of that they need to let in within their experience versus just sitting around the pool and imbibing cocktails . Wellness is an active affair , but it ’s also about advert and being freshen . "
There ’s a lot to see on Folegandros — gorgeous beach , an idyllicchora , a staggering scene from the Church of the Panagia — and Gundari control shuttles that will take you anywhere you need to go on the island . But once you get to the hotel , you find it hard to get out . I did , at least . Part of me finger guilty for doing so little during my time there . Another part of me feel like doing so fiddling was the entire point .
AndronisConcept Wellness Resort
Santorini
The are no “ rooms ” atAndronis Concept , a hotel in the quiet Santorini townspeople of Imerovigli , far from the glitzy , tourer - tamp down hub of Oia and Fira . Instead there are 28 lavishly appointed suite and Pancho Villa , each of which felt , to me , like a hybridisation between a Bond villain ’s lair and a Buddhist meditation chamber . I stayed in a two - story suite the semblance of backbone , with an eight - foot stone bath and a rain shower on the bottom floor and , on the top , a king layer framed by lightly glowing , space - age dependent lights . A slide shabu door opened onto a patio with a plunge consortium pretermit the Aegean Sea .
I had a sweeping scene of Santorini ’s caldera : a washstand organize here 3,600 yr ago when a volcano erupted and break up in on itself , leave behind a rotary pool of ocean , 10 mile across-the-board , ring by toothed , thousand - foot cliffs . From my patio , I could trace the curving ridge Mae West to the peak of the island , where the snowy stucco homes of Oia hovered over the water , shimmer in the rut .
I spend my afternoons at the pool roost above the hotel ’s garden , where a farmstand ’s worth of garden truck — bloodless eggplant , acorn tomato , chile peppers , violent ail , rosemary and lavender and thyme — spilled down a terraced slope , dust with sunflowers and bristled pear . As the sunshine seeped into my tegument , I ’d order a Summer Cooler , a pale dark-green cocktail made with gin , elderflower liqueur , and fresh cucumber and mint , pick from within my muckle line . It tasted the way I opine the color salvia might taste : coolheaded and assuasive , remedial , somehow , like an ancient , life - giving potion .
Each Nox , I ’d have dinner at Throubi , Andronis Concept ’s restaurant , where waiters in white linen caftans floated across a concrete courtyard overlooking the caldera , and svelte black lamp throw dense lightness on blunderer block tables . Every clip a raw course of study number out , I ’d notice that something from the garden had resurface on my shell . Throubi ’s chef , Charalampos Koukoudakis , culls his ingredients from the patch of herb and vegetable that grow 100 metrical unit from his kitchen .
On my 2nd day at Andronis Concept , I woke up to the Lord’s Day setting the caldera on fire outside my window , painting Oia gold . At 8 ante meridiem , I headed for it on human foot with Nina Kasiteridi , a health practitioner at the hotel , who direct me and five other guests on a wage hike to townsfolk . As we picked our style along the ridge , we passed ancient churches , empty cave dwellings , gamy - domed beacon , stopping every so often to get our breath and take in the views . Everywhere I looked I saw the stuff of mailing-card .
A few hours later at the hotel ’s spa , Nina drop three different essential oils onto my wrist , and asked me to pick out my favorite . I opted for “ Balance”—a blending of orange , geranium , and sandalwood source from an constituent farm in Crete — and slip under a plush towel .
A few minutes into the massage , I entered a pipe dream body politic . I realize baskets of gamboge , the faces of my friends and family , airport terminals , roadside booth . I buy tickets to events I could n’t name , room vessels bound into wall of white . Nina kneaded into my hands , my wrists , my calf , my shoulder blades , deleting latent hostility from my body I never knew subsist until it was gone .
Oku Kos
Kos
I found myself in a constant land of reverie atOku Kos ; something about the place made it feel like time did n’t exist . I cast the grounds aimlessly and endlessly , taking in the Nipponese idol of it all : the clear lines of the three-dimensional white villas , the purity of the white stone walk paths , the mathematical preciseness of the gridded gardens . I plucked an olive from a tree . I walked to the sea and have the wind blow through my hair . I sat on a couch on a terrace and read , return in and out of sleep in the dappled shade , for hours .
It was an unutterably easy place , where a yoga class each sunup matt-up like all you needed to accomplish . From there , it seemed , your only job was to lounge . So that ’s what I did : I lounged in my way , where the cool stone floors , slate - colored couches , and uncomplicated hardwood furnishing had a viscerally soothe outcome on my brain and body . I lounged on my patio , rock back and forth in a woven knoll by a broad pond , where curving palms feathered in the cushy wind . I lollygag at the beach , sippingfreddo espressoon a cushioned lounge professorship and listening to the waves break over the sand , watching kite surfers cut graceful arcs across the H2O .
I think of my time at Oku Kos in intense , fleeting images : four Equus caballus jog along the sand with the sun at their backs , turning them into silhouettes ; rise from savasana and staring up at a thatch roof above me , where daytime poured through the slats and fall in crisp lines against a Edward Durell Stone wall ; smell Zea mays everta , and watch over the scent to the putting green at the center of the attribute , where a crowd of citizenry posture silently in low chairs , watching a picture externalise onto a across-the-board white paries .
On my last dark at Oku Kos , I take the air to the beach at crepuscule and sat on the shore , tracking the sunlight as it skid down toward the waterline . It sink behind an island on the horizon , move around the sky so many coloring material — faint garden pink , hopeful gold , diaphanous blue — and dyeing the ocean the burn orange of candleflame . I keep an eye on the clouds whirl and wan , the light slowly draining from the sky until , eventually , everything went disastrous . I looked up and down the beach . There was no one there but me .
