Get up close and personal with exclusive, inspiring interviews and taste profiles delivered with a cheeky twist to your inbox daily. By subscribing to our email newsletter, you agree to and acknowledge that you have read our Privacy Policy and Terms. The Bali-based Banyan Tree Escape defies logic. The property, which is intentionally designed to connect you to nature directly, is so shockingly beautiful that it shakes the senses.
Nestled into the jungle, each of the 16 villas is a free-standing treehouse with no walls, doors, or windows and degree views from every angle. All this beauty, but I could only think of how growingly unwell I felt with each passing hour. Feeling ill on any vacation is drab, but being sick on a wellness retreat?
A special and new level of hell. A post shared by Banyan Tree Escape banyantree. The point of a wellness retreat is to leave more inspired, grounded, and at peace than you arrived. However, I somehow grew more and more unwell with each passing day. I had a good reason to fear, too.
So, you could say I have a healthy and robust fear of UTIs. When one crops up, I waste no time on over-the-counter tinctures and powders and instead head for the hardcore stuff: antibiotics.
And if looks could heal, consider all who lay eyes upon Banyan Tree properties invincible. I am sitting face-to-face with a Balinese healer who had been aligned chakras since before I was even born. We meditated together for 30 minutes so he could assess my blocks, and then I laid face down with nothing but a sheet covering me for a minute treatment where he targeted the pesky blocked chakras. His hands hovered above and then kneaded areas that needed focus, which felt similar to a massage-meets-reiki treatment, where you could feel heat and attention in certain focused areas of the body.
