Hotel Therapy: Mii amo in Sedona, Arizona

Food is also available to-go here, and I bring a veggie burger, avocado toast, and a quinoa salad back to my Spa Suite. It’s an 800-square-foot homage to the spirit of tranquility. Beiges and natural reds are an instant calm with an indoor fire- place, accented with Native art. I walk through the living and dining room and take my food out on the patio and enjoy it under the bright stars that flicker above the now shadowed mountain plateau.

When another guest tells me about her transformative experience with Zlata (in the weight room), I replace a massage with something out of my comfort zone: a 60-minute weight-training class. She works with me to create a custom weight-training program. “What’s your current circuit?” she asks, as I look blankly at a set of free weights. She then helps me create a routine I can do on the go. She spends nearly two hours with me and leaves with me a custom-designed plan for the month. This kind of one-on-one dedication follows me throughout my stay. Each trainer/therapist seems personally invested in my journey. “You can Skype me anytime if you need advice,” she tells me as I head to my next treatment. From classes in an upstairs studio and this weight room, Zlata and the fitness staff are a great resource for the various activities that can be taken advantage of either as a free activity or, like this private lesson, as one of your daily treatments.

My journey continues with a lymphatic massage, something I’ve always wanted to try. Using her fingers, she begins by softly brushing up and down my arms and legs; she repeats this process when I am on my back. I try hard not to giggle over the awkwardness. What in the world could this do? I ask myself, trying hard to focus on the entire experience. She moves my legs around like windmills, and I try hard not to resist, but still hear her gently say, “Don’t resist!” She begins to massage the lymph nodes around my face, slowly and gently applying pressure around my eye sockets and under my chin. I turn around again, and I feel a massive rush overcoming my body; flushing of fluids, like endorphins swishing around after a long run. “You feel that?” she asks. After another half hour I vibrate out of the room in pure bliss, feeling like all the toxic energy that was being harbored has been redirected, and filtered out.

I’ve always respected people who believe in holistic approaches to healing and medicine, but it has always been from a respectful distance. After the lymphatic drain my therapist tells me that I should try a reiki healing ceremony. Once I walk into my treatment room, she looks me up and down and says, “I feel your energy flowing, and it’s like your vibrating on a new level.”

Mii amo Community Table

She has me sit in a chair and picture all the negative things on my mind or from the past. She tells me to imagine them being thrown into a garbage truck. “I keep getting a circle with you, a brightly colored circle,” she says as I go to sit on the table. She begins to write things down. She’s pin- pointing traumatic/important experiences in my life by age. One after the next after the next, she’s identifying moments that even I thought I had forgotten about. The end reduces me to tears. She looks at me and says. “I kept picturing a pink circle, and I don’t know why or what that pertains to, but keep that image with you throughout your journey.”

I grab a book and sit alongside the indoor lap pool. It’s quiet as a flurry of snow begins to fall on the Red Rocks. I look at a couple in the heated outdoor pool giving one another a kiss, before they run out in the below-freezing weather and head back indoors. I am surprising myself, I think. I can’t concentrate on my book. I keep thinking about what I experienced throughout the day, it’s a type of introspection that I’ve never experienced before, and it pulls me into a sleep filled with cosmic dreams that play like a page from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Skipping a morning fitness class, I join in on a hike through the canyon. “It’s a womb,” my guide tells us as we exit the resort, and we look up at the striking cliffside. “The native people here believed the canyon to be a womb,” she says showing us with her hands how the canyon slowly opens. The canyon entrance is also identifiable by two rock formations. Kachina Woman rises high and is slender while it opens into a walkable path, nearby Warrior Man is much shorter. A flute player is high up on the cliff, and our guide describes the history of vortexes as we walk around the grounds. And we literally “ground” ourselves by taking off our shoes to connect with the earth. It’s in this canyon that I find my rock, and we form our meditation circle. As a cool rain begins to fall, cleansing us, we head back to the resort where I follow up my hike with a sleep therapist.

It’s unusual that I get a full night’s sleep at home. In Sedona, though, I’ve been falling asleep quickly, but experiencing unusual dreams. Before meeting with my therapist, I had pictured an uptight doctor who would come and teach me some sort of magic trick to falling asleep. Instead, I am met with a middle-aged woman with unkempt hair and a strong presence about her. I tell her about my sleep patterns and explain that I’ve been having bizarre dreams. “It’s the vortex energy and the detoxification of your body,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “Let me hear your dreams,” she commands. I tell her, and she immediately begins to ask me questions. “Who do you think that represents?” “Were you in that situation for a particular reason?” “What does that say about your own fears?” She continues to press me until I have a major breakthrough. “Close your eyes, and picture yourself hugging yourself as a child,” she continues. “Now what comes to your head when I ask you to become any creature on earth, what’s the first thing to pop in your head?”

I take a deep breath, trusting her guided meditation and see the massive Douglas fir in the backyard of the house I grew up in. “A tree from my childhood,” I proclaim. “Now, zoom out from that tree, like you are flying,” she demands.

As I zoom out in my head I see the house I grew up in, and see a pink hula-hoop that I once threw up so high that it caught to a branch of the tree. The circle I think, and I begin to cry.

“Picture that tree whenever you need to relax, feel the roots in the ground, absorb its strength,” she says concluding the meditation. “You were meant to be here,” she says. “Your journey has come full circle.”