A luxury wellness retreat in the hills above Alicante offers the perfect antidote to the all- consuming nature of the modern world
By the time I arrived at SHA Wellness Clinic, I had well and truly run out of road. I had ignored every flashing warning light my body had politely (and then increasingly urgently) tried to offer up, until the only logical next step was to surrender completely. That is to say: I finally booked myself onto the burnout recovery programme at this renowned temple to health and wellbeing, nestled in the hills above Alicante.
SHA has a reputation as a kind of Shangri-La for the run- down, the reeling and the readjusting. The clientele is diverse but uniformly motivated in the pursuit of wellness: famous faces seeking respite, fashion editors on silent mode, biohacking CEOs with intimidating abs, and me – mildly terrified, aching in places I didn’t know existed, and hoping that someone was finally going to tell me how to press the reset button.
SHA is all about the science: before your programme even starts, you undergo a battery of diagnostics – blood work, ozone therapy prep, medical consultations, body composition analysis and more. The idea is that your week is tailored to you, and the attention to detail is genuinely impressive. There are doctors, nutritionists, therapists and instructors all working in quiet, synchronised harmony to recalibrate your system.
I was there on the four-night Recover and Energise programme, with a schedule of treatments, therapies and movement classes, all with the aim of getting me back on my feet. Speaking of which… let’s get one thing out of the way. Physical fitness is not my claim to fame. Yoga? I creak. Aqua gym? I cling to the edge like a stunned cat. Power walk at 7am? Unlikely. (Or so I thought). But when it came to the ice bath, I came into my own. Following a hypnotic session of Wim Hof-style guided breathing, I found myself slowly, deliberately lowering into a bath filled with actual ice. Up to the neck.
I was told to try and manage between two and four minutes. But something in me needed to prove my body and I could do something well, and I sat there for over five. It was a euphoric, surreal high – something between a system reboot and a spiritual awakening… if you could bottle it and sell it, well – you’d definitely get turned away from a festival for being in possession of it.
Outside of scheduled treatments, there’s a rhythm that settles in: afternoon walks, herbal teas by the infinity pool, journalling or snoozing in the library. It’s a strange, otherworldly bubble that’s blissfully free of decision-making. Every minute is accounted for, and when your brain is fried, that is the greatest luxury of all.
And then there is the food. I was assigned the Kushi menu – macrobiotic, cleansing, and positively ascetic. Or it would have been, if I’d stuck to it. Which I didn’t. I was devastated to be in Spain and find no tomatoes on the menu – banned, due to high histamine levels – and bore my grief heroically. With quiet collusion from my sympathetic waiter, however, I embarked on a one-woman rebellion and mixed-and-matched dishes here and there… whilst it was impeccably done, it turns out I’m just not a vegetable and tempeh lasagne kinda gal. I even sometimes traded the more austere steamed vegetables for the occasional piece of tuna sashimi, and what can I say – it felt wild.
In all seriousness, the food here is impeccable – plated like fine dining, delicate, fragrant, and refreshingly low on smugness. You’ll spend a lot of time in the restaurant (no room service here, this is a place that encourages you to face your food choices head-on), and it becomes a quiet, ritualistic centrepiece to the day.
By the middle of my stay I appeared to have undergone an entire personality overhaul, for there I was, bright and early – 6.30am early – waiting with my fellow early birds to go on a guided walk through the Sierra Gelada nature reserve to reach the historic Albir lighthouse. It was… glorious. From the honeyed early morning light, and the warm fragrance of herbs in the air, to the breathtaking views, even the chorus of chirruping frogs that greeted us as we passed their pond; it was the perfect reminder of the healing power of reconnecting to nature, the ideal accompaniment to the science and luxury of the clinic.
By the end of the week, my skin was clearer, my sleep deeper, and my nervous system noticeably less spiky. But more than that, I felt as though someone had lifted the lid off the pressure cooker. What SHA may have lacked in tomatoes, it more than made up for in what it did give me. It gave me insight, it gave me tools; but most of all, it gave me permission to stop, to listen, to opt out of the madness and sit in the stillness. Stillness is a rare commodity in our overwhelming lives, but I now know where it can be found and you can be certain that I’ll be back for more.
