The Body as Medicine: Toward the Next Layer of Longevity in Hospitality

It is no longer enough for hotels to offer a yoga class at sunrise, a herbal walk, a meditation on the terrace, or a spa menu written in the language of balance. These are the minimum, the visible signs of wellness that travellers have come to expect. The real question is what lies beyond.

The global wellness economy is forecast for robust growth, expected to reach nearly $9 trillion by 2028, driven by increased health consciousness, chronic disease prevention, technological integration like AI and wearables, and a focus on physical and mental well-being.

I am convinced the future of hospitality will be defined not by adding more activities, but by adding another layer: depth. Spaces where guests are not simply occupied, but transformed. Where the body itself becomes the medium of experience, but not through optimisation machines or fleeting rituals.

This is why the work of Elizabeth Hargreaves, founder of PureYogaCanarias, feels so timely. She speaks of fascia as “liquid crystal,” of the body as spiraled rather than mechanical, of trauma as a matter of past time. The vocabulary here may seem far from hospitality, yet it points exactly to where the industry must go if it is to remain relevant.

From mechanics to spirals

For centuries, 400 years to be exact, Western anatomy has reduced us to machines: elbows as hinges, muscles as levers, bodies as parts, when the church allowed science to dissect bodies in exchange for claiming the soul. What was gained in anatomical detail was lost in wholeness.

“We are not machines assembled from pieces,” she tells me. “We are spun into being from the inside out, more like an orange than a hinge.”

If this is true, then hospitality that treats wellness as a schedule of activities risks missing the point. Guests do not need more to do. They need environments that allow them to allow them to be whole.

Fascia and the intelligence of the body

Libby (as her yoga students know her) cites Joanne Avison in that we are all biomotional creatures, as a distinction that offers us the roundness, the spirality, the chirality and the charism of our natural movements.

“Fascia surrounds every cell,” she explains. “It is a liquid crystal. It records memory. It densifies under stress, and with the right attention, it can become fluid again.”

This single idea reframes ageing. Not inevitable decline, but a drying out. Not simply loss, but rigidity that can be softened. Movement, hydration, environment, and gentleness become longevity practices in themselves.

For hospitality, this is radical. Instead of importing more medical machinery, properties could design experiences and atmospheres that restore fluidity, through silence, rhythm, architecture, and beauty.

The inner technology

Libby’s philosophy condenses into one sentence: If you have a human body, you have the technology to experience yoga.

We are surrounded by a hospitality industry racing to adopt new technologies with genetic testing, AI-driven diagnostics, sleep optimisation dashboards. But the more radical idea may be this: the technology is already inside us. What guests need is not another external intervention, but the conditions to listen to their own system.

This is where I see the opportunity: properties that curate not programmes, but states. Not “what guests do” but “how guests return to themselves.”

Time as medicine

Trauma, Hargreaves says, often arises from a lack of time to process. The cycle never completes, the tissue crystallises. “Slowness is medicine. When time expands, the body reorganises. Just by itself.”

This reminds me of long therapeutic fasting. I have just completed a 28-day Buchinger fast, something I return to every three years to clear inflammation, a practice passed down from my mother, who is strong and healthy in her older age. In fasting too, it is less about what you do than what you stop doing. The body repairs itself when given time. Science now calls this autophagy, recognised by the Nobel Prize in 2016, but my family always knew it as renewal.

True luxury therefore might not be more activity but expanded time. Silence, stillness, intervals of pause. Hotels that can suspend time through design, atmosphere, or rhythm, will do more for their guests than any list of treatments.

Reflection

Wellness as an amenity is already everywhere.

The next era of hospitality will be shaped by those who go further: who understand the body not as a machine to be optimised, but as a spiral to be listened to; who design for coherence rather than distraction; who treat beauty not as surface, but as medicine.

Elizabeth Hargreaves’ language gives a glimpse of what this looks like: fascia as the “world wide web” within.

In the next decade, the most relevant hotels will not be those with the most elaborate menus of treatments, but those that dare to strip away the noise.

The future will belong to properties that translate this wisdom into space. Not just offering yoga, but truly creating the conditions where guests remember themselves. Not just building spas, but building atmospheres where time slows. Not just curating activities, but curating coherence.

That is the layer still missing. And that is where hospitality, at its highest form, will evolve.

interview & words by Jean Linda Balke