Here's Why Spain's Sha Wellness Clinic Is One of the Best Spas in the World
If you were to land at Spain's Alicante airport and head northeast on the black ribbon of highway bounded on both sides by brown, barren landscape, you'd eventually come upon L'Albir, a small, nondescript beach town that could exist anywhere else in Europe, dotted with souvenir shops and a few eateries with plastic tablecloths over thin fabric ones. It is an unlikely locale for Europe's jet-set to unwind, save for the fact that Sha Wellness Clinic, an elite holistic health center and spa, is located on its outskirts. My taxi driver makes a sharp turn away from the beach, winding through stucco-walled residential streets at a steady incline until we come to an abrupt halt. Directly ahead: a waterfall that cascades tastefully over three silver letters: SHA.
A striking series of white buildings ascend the cliff-like stairs. To my left: the portal to the complex. The silent glass doors slice open as I enter, feeling like a bumbling earthling who tripped into some pristine world order where pedestrian things like tennis shoes and undereye bags do not exist. Inside, between the glass walls, glossy floors, and dark, quiet hallways, facials, massages, and wellness tune-ups are taking place (the menu reveals options like underwater massage, electro-lymphatic drainage, and shiatsu). But this is no "treat yourself" spa. Doctors in starched white coats walk the hallways at a clip, darting to and from consultations and workups with clients.
My breakfast outfit is a large piece of fabric and little else — most of Sha's clientele walk around in the spa's (of course, white) robe and slippers, only wearing real clothing at dinner, where it's required. I'm served fresh vegetable juice, miso soup with a slice of lemon, turmeric-and-cardamom oatmeal, a (gluten-free, sugarless) chocolate-and-almond roll, and a slice of tempeh. It's a far cry from my usual highly processed, highly glutened breakfast, but it's delicious, and the panoramic ocean view from Sha's dining patio could make anything seem palatable.
The next few days are a cornucopia of hourly appointments: a private yoga session, a general health exam, a nutritional consultation, a neurocognitive assessment consultation, an acupuncture session, a deep-tissue massage, a "therapeutic recipes" cooking class. It's Utopia for the wellness set. Every single aspect of your holistic health is measured and considered both quantitatively and qualitatively by medical experts, and then you're prescribed a proper course of action to optimize that facet of your well-being. Though they offer anti-tobacco, weight control, and stress management programs, I'm here for the Discovery program, which allows neophytes to indulge in a sampler platter of Sha's offerings over the course of a few days. As one of the few millennials at the spa (likely due to the 1,500- to 7,500-euro price tag of a week at Sha) and a frequent flyer at both my acupuncturist's office and my local barre studio, I expected to breeze through all my medical workups. I did not.
Each doctor grew serious as they asked me a battery of questions. I'm too young, they said, to be reporting the symptoms of fatigue that they were seeing. My massage therapist, a man from the Balkan peninsula with the physique of a bodybuilder, struggled to grapple with my jerky-like shoulders and back. Another doctor warned that if I didn't sleep more and stress less, I could expect serious health complications down the road. "You must be very strong," she said, "but you can't keep doing this to yourself."
There are, of course, more spa-like moments: a microcurrent facial, a mud-mask body treatment administered in a special heated bed. But I was still on the clock writing and editing, waking up early to take advantage of Sha's sunrise hikes, one of the few opportunities to go off campus. At the end of my stay, I came home feeling slightly better, and a better thing than that: knowing better.
Now read more about spas:
Done reading? Now watch this beauty editor try a $450 wine bath:
You can follow Allure on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on all things beauty.
Originally Appeared on Allure
