Weekend Wellness Retreats Within a Few Hours of NYC
You don't need a week in Tulum to feel like a person again. Plenty of good wellness retreats are a Friday-afternoon drive from Manhattan, and if you leave straight after work you can be in a sauna (or on a meditation cushion) by dinner.
This guide covers five areas within about three hours of the city: the Catskills, the Hudson Valley, the Berkshires, the Poconos and the coast. They make for very different weekends. At one end there's a monastery where breakfast is eaten in silence. At the other, all-inclusive spa resorts where the hardest decision you'll make is which treatment to book after lunch.
Pick the retreat by the reset you're after
Work out what you want to come home feeling, then check the drive. The times below are from Midtown without much traffic, so add an hour on a summer Friday.
| If you want | Go to | Where to stay | Roughly from NYC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silence and a real meditation practice | Catskills | Zen Mountain Monastery | 2.5 hours |
| Yoga, workshops and a loose schedule | Berkshires | Kripalu | 3 hours |
| A big-name teacher for the weekend | Hudson Valley | Omega Institute | 2 hours |
| Hiking with a serious spa at the end | Hudson Valley | Mohonk Mountain House | 1.5 to 2 hours |
| All-inclusive, adults-only pampering | Poconos or Berkshires | The Lodge at Woodloch, Miraval Berkshires | 2 to 3 hours |
| A cleanse or juice fast somewhere small | Catskills | Sanivan Holistic Retreat & Spa | 2 hours |
| Ocean air and a seawater pool | Montauk | Gurney's Montauk | 3 hours |
The Catskills
The Catskills are for when you want fewer people and worse phone signal. The retreats here are small and tend to lean spiritual.
Zen Mountain Monastery, Mount Tremper
The monastery's Introduction to Zen Training Weekend is designed for people who have never done formal meditation. It runs from Friday to Sunday inside the cloister and covers zazen (seated meditation), chanting and work practice, along with a private meeting with a teacher. Mornings start early and a lot of the day is silent. The suggested fee has been $250, and the monastery lets you pay less if that's a stretch. You can get there by public transportation, too.
Menla, Phoenicia
Menla is on a 320-acre forest preserve and has something on most weekends: yoga, breathwork, sound healing, women's retreats. It's a gentler place than a monastery, with the Dewa Spa and plant-based meals sourced largely from its own garden. Program rates include meals and lodging, but what else is covered depends on the weekend, so read the details before you book.
Sanivan Holistic Retreat & Spa, Hurleyville
Sanivan has three guest rooms, which is about as personal as a retreat gets. Hosts Saniye and Ivan have run holistic programs since 2005 and offer guided juice fasts, a three-day cleanse and a reset for burnout. Between sessions there's a sauna, a steam room and an indoor pool. It's around two hours from the city.
The Hudson Valley
This is the easiest region to reach on a Friday night. Both places below are roughly 90 miles north of the city.
Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz
Mohonk is a Victorian castle on the Shawangunk Ridge. It opened in 1869 and the Smiley family still runs it. The spa is 30,000 square feet, with 16 treatment rooms, an outdoor heated mineral pool and more than 200 windows looking out over Lake Mohonk. The trails are the bigger draw, though, and there are 85 miles of them. A yoga hike in the morning and a massage in the afternoon is a very good Saturday. If you can't stay the night, a spa day pass gets you the trails and afternoon tea as well.
Omega Institute, Rhinebeck
Omega is a nonprofit campus on 250 acres that runs more than 300 workshops and retreats a season. The range is wide, from meditation weekends to a mindfulness program with Jon Kabat-Zinn, and most people choose a weekend for the teacher. One catch: the campus season ends in October, so this is a spring-to-fall trip.
The Berkshires
The Berkshires are about three hours away, which is an hour more than most of this list. For that hour you get more serious wellness resorts in one place than anywhere else here, most of them around Lenox and Stockbridge. Lenox alone has two of the best-known spa retreats in Massachusetts, a few minutes' drive apart.
Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Stockbridge
Kripalu's R&R Retreat is the most flexible format in this guide. Your stay includes three meals, daily yoga, workshops and guided outdoor activities, and you decide how much of it to actually do. It runs all year. Shared dorm beds keep the cost down, and there are private rooms if you'd rather have your own space.
Canyon Ranch, Lenox
Canyon Ranch is built around an 1897 mansion and has a 100,000-square-foot spa. If you want more than treatments, it also runs structured programs, including yoga and meditation retreats and multi-day immersions on joy and on recovering from a hard stretch of life.
Miraval Berkshires, Lenox
Miraval is adults-only and asks you to put your phone away for the stay. Meals, non-alcoholic drinks and most classes are included, and there's no tipping. The Life in Balance Spa has 28 treatment rooms. If you'd rather not drive, Miraval runs a shuttle from Wassaic, the last stop on Metro-North's Harlem Line.
The Poconos
The Lodge at Woodloch, Hawley, PA
Woodloch is about 95 miles from the city: an adults-only destination spa (16 and up) with 58 rooms on a private lake. Your rate covers three meals a day and a full schedule of fitness and mind-body classes, plus kayaking and hiking. Spa treatments and alcohol are extra. It makes a good first retreat because there's nothing to plan. You arrive, look at the day's classes and choose.
The coast
Saybrook Point Resort & Marina, Old Saybrook, CT
Saybrook Point sits where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound, about two hours up I-95. It's a spa hotel more than a retreat with a set schedule, so it works well for couples. Book a massage-and-facial package, spend the afternoon between the indoor and outdoor pools, and walk the waterfront before dinner.
Gurney's Montauk
Gurney's is open all year, which isn't a given on the East End. The Seawater Spa is built around an indoor pool filled with sand-filtered Atlantic water, plus a bathhouse circuit of thermal pools, a sauna and a eucalyptus steam room. Booking a treatment gets you into the pool and the bathhouse. There's a 2,000-foot private beach too, and outside the summer season the whole place is much quieter.
Before you book
At Omega, Menla and Zen Mountain Monastery, the program sets the weekend, so pick the program before you think about the room. The popular ones fill up weeks ahead.
"All-inclusive" means different things in different places. At Woodloch, meals and classes are covered but spa treatments and drinks aren't. Miraval covers most of its programming and has a no-tipping policy.
You can leave the car at home for some of these. Miraval has its shuttle from Wassaic, and Zen Mountain Monastery publishes public-transit directions.
Most programs start on Friday evening and wrap up around Sunday lunch, so take the Monday off if you can. One extra night turns a rushed weekend into an actual rest.
Pack layers, walking shoes, a water bottle and a book, and leave the laptop behind.
Still deciding?
If none of these line up with your dates, you can browse more wellness retreats across the US by type, from fasting and silent retreats to couples' weekends. For a first try, though, pick whichever place above is closest to you and book the next free weekend you have.