Finding my way in Vietnam and far beyond.

Let’s call it wellness 4.0?

Vietnam might not be your first choice when thinking about wellness, in all fairness it might not even be your second choice. But there is a group of visionaries who have found a sacred place where wellness comes off the land like a gentle mist and then swells with the inclusion of all the right people and energy. The Aman Resorts, known for imparting privileged access to some of the world’s most beautiful apertures, opened Amanoi on the east coast of Vietnam and south of the little town of Nha Trang a while ago.

It is here where I found not only a glimpse into wellness in its purest form but stillness and a vision for the way wellness could be for not just for me – but for everyone. 

Wellness, the word of the century, is certainly on my tongue right now and apparently on everyone else’s too. If it’s not the corporates hunting down physical and mental health for their employees in elaborate schemes in remote locations, it’s the destination traveler unsatisfied with the status quo and in a quest for something more.

But it hasn’t stopped there: the city yogis and country Pilates buffs are also aiming to take their practice into the next realm of fine fettle and self realization and self-books are the best sellers on Amazon yet again. Of course, the ordinary folk are watching extreme workouts and health cooking shows on their smartphones while taking the train into and away from their lives and so it’s only natural that wellbeing has replaced Facebook in terms of everyday importance. Everyone is reevaluating what wellness and wellbeing means, and everybody wants to know how they can get access to its very soul. And I am no different; I am a seeker for exactly the same thing. 

The very word “wellness” is now generally used to mean a “healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being.” This is the way it has been used in the context of alternative medicine since Dr. Halbert L. Dunn used the phrase “high level wellness” in the 50s – but what we know as the contemporary use thrown around town became popular in the 70s. He published this book in 1977 and in fact he’s what we could call the “father of wellness” as we know it. It’s the OG, before all the quackery started…

Since then the word has taken over our lexicon, with an emergence of the middle class throughout the globe people started to pursue wellness as a form of self-improvement and expression. What it really encompasses, according to Wellness.com, may include “mental, physical, spiritual, social, occupational and environmental health conditions” and means that wellness is the quest for a “more optimal, holistic and balanced state of being”. It truly sounds ever so inclusive and a perfect goal for me, the 21st century human. 

Walking the parks in high rise central Hong Kong and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I watch the blissful early risers doing Tai Chi as the sun starts to bat its eyelids, on the promenades (from San Francisco, to Rio and back to Cape Town) I see how packed with runners it is at the end of a day come rain, mist or shine. The gyms I frequent are full and opening on every block in every city I visit – not to mention this month’s craze of specialized workout fissures whether it’s on a chair, or a bike, it’s mushrooming all over my neighborhood like Starbucks did in the 90s.

Remember our favorite First Lady, Michelle Obama, who was encouraging kids to move with her national campaign? Everyone is thinking about it for the last decade. And then in India and Bali’s ashrams and their holistic programs are getting more and more popular as mediation is replacing cell phone use. Eat Pray Love, some more please. It’s everywhere – even the Russians could get a free metro ticket for a few squats or pushups at the station while the Sochi Olympics were on. Maybe that doesn’t apply anymore, or maybe it should more than ever?

But it’s not just action that’s driving this craze; it’s the eating and drinking habits too. There are the juice shops, health stores, non-alc drinks, organic promises on labels and billboards, Ozempic, endless talk about healthy eating options on television and NPR radio filling my day. Talk shows have left politics and embraced food and drink as the new wave of interesting debate with supposed experts coming from every possible culture and country. Even chef Jamie Oliver is paying attention to what he’s consuming and dishing up and clammy Nigella Lawson post-divorce is always doing something…let’s not forget when Adele lost all that weight and made us wonder what we are doing with our lives…thin or not.

I did check myself with an app (before that annoyed me): tracking my exercise, my eating, all the sex, my water consumption and even my phone-off time per day so it doesn’t come as a surprise that the rest of the world is doing something similar. And that Gwyneth Paltrow scoops with her Goop more and more apostles daily. It’s like swearing, it’s happening whether you like her or not. I can list all the celebrities that have joined this craze, but I’m make myself fall asleep. And I’d rather go for a minor dose of mushroom or a run on Riverside Park…

One of the key drivers of this amazing shakedown is better knowledge, people are finally becoming more health-literate and being more conscious about health and wellness has become more than just reading the labels on goods bought from the store or reading another blog. Well, if you read anything at all, this is a pretty good place to start right here, HOW NOT TO DIE. I like it. I guess my husband’s company is based on exactly these principles. And he’s not dying on me, ever.

The baby boomers have also reached a certain age, and status, that means that disposable income can now be spent on wellness and the under 40s like myself have discovered that being drunk and eating French fries is a whole lot less sexy than being a trail runner coming off the Cross Fit gym who also meditates and binges on green juice. Erewhon much?

I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it: something has changed across the world – wellness, and health as a component of it, is on surge. Look at the hospitality industry, for years the luxury hotels of the world offered, in their words, “revitalization” or “escape” or even an ambitious “rejuvenation” to their guests. But all it really consisted of was pampering. As much as the world is looking towards health and wellness, the purveyors of wellness, and me included, have been massaged to death and soft-soaped enough. They, these crusaders, now want more and they are willing to pay for it and most certainly willing to suffer under it and this is where the Aman starts to play a role. 

Like Susie Ellis, CEO of Global Spa & Wellness Summit, says in her yearly report “If the gym and spa have traditionally been positioned as mere ‘amenities’, now those walls are being conceptually (and literally) broken down.” She believes that the healthy hotel trend will take diverse forms: “from the rise of wellness-branded hotel chains, to far more fitness, spa and healthy eating and sleeping programming percolating across so many more properties”. But Amanoi is taking this one step further, on the edge of the cutting edge. 

The west has finally realized it needs to look to the east for stillness lessons, and the east has discovered that it needs to look to the west to survive in a contemporary world. And it is somewhere in the middle of these two worlds where Amanoi has their merging of old world healing meets new world pragmatism. Besides the spa, yoga pavilion, Pilates studio the resort presents an array of healers: from massage therapists all the way to a more subtle energy healer. But the land itself, caught between pinkish rocks and the roughest sea sits this fane like structure as beautiful as any Eastern holy temple. Gently placed between the elements the resort perks on the cliffs facing the sea inviting fresh air, indigenous creatures and a sense of wellness just from its locale.