In 1978, founder Mel Zuckerman transformed his sedentary lifestyle into a wellness-focused one. After two weeks of healthy living, he wanted to guide others on the same journey.

A year later, he opened Canyon Ranch, located about 30 miles from downtown Tucson. As the first-of-its-kind integrative wellness resort, Canyon Ranch combines holistic methods, treatments, and evidence-based methodologies from western and eastern sources to address well-being of mind, body and spirit.

The 150-acre resort can accommodate up to 240 guests in the hotel as well as at Canyon Ranch Living® private residences. You can book a day treatment, stay for a night or a week, depending on your time, budget and intent.

Since Canyon Ranch opened, thousands of guests have changed their lives by scheduling a treatment or a longer stay. Three additional locations are in Lenox, Massachusetts; Woodside, California; and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Activities and programs popularized at Canyon Ranch, including yoga, meditation, plant-based diets and integrative medicine, are now mainstream; and owner John Goff, CEO Jeff Kuster and their team of wellness experts continue to offer innovative wellness guidance.

The Canyon Ranch experience is completely driven by you. Personalized services begin from the moment you book your stay. A personal wellness team assists you, including a guide, who conducts a one-on-one consultation to determine your intentions for visiting, even before you arrive on property. You must provide proof of full vaccination upon arrival or proof of a negative FDA-approved PCR or antigen COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours prior to arrival.

Using the information you provide at registration, the team provides guidance to optimize your stay. Their goal is for you to return home feeling empowered to continue on your wellness path, and with the tools needed for long-term success.

Canyon Ranch’s 1,500-plus expert-led services are embedded in five wellness pillars: health and performance, fitness and movement, mind and spirit, nutrition and food, and spa and beauty.

Nutrition and diet includes crafting a wholesome diet, but that doesn’t require food-lovers to abandon culinary enjoyment. Executive Chef Shayne Spradlin started as an intern at Canyon Ranch, and has been an employee there for nearly 17 years. Certified by the Arizona Culinary Institute, Spradlin is passionate about cooking and food. His attention to detail, high-quality ingredients, presentation and customer service is well known. He loves inspiring guests on their journeys to optimize health, wellness and vitality through nutritious meals. He says,  “You only get out what you’re willing to put in.”

Similar to the other departments, the spa experience is very intentional, including services and products. Canyon Ranch believes each experience should be inspired by you, and the resort empowers its experts to use their creativity and intuition to offer custom services, whether you have a chronic condition that needs attention, or are simply seeking relaxation.

Eight Pathways

Canyon Ranch offers bundled experiences called “pathways.” These pathways are collections of curated services designed to help you achieve a specific goal, such as reconnecting with joy. Book these for three-, five- and seven-night stays.

Pathways include:

• Live your Healthy Weight –– Pursue whole health and wellness while you reach and learn to maintain your ideal weight for life.
• Lifestyle Reset –– Reimagine your way of life and emerge on a new path toward greater energy, purpose and health.
• Optimal Health Exploration –– Address any existing health concerns, make a solid plan to prevent future ones and learn how to live younger longer.
• Reconnect with Joy –– Recover from loss or trauma, find renewed strength and rediscover joy as a vital nutrient for your lifelong well-being.
• Transition Purposely –– Put career, relationship and life transitions into perspective and set the stage for your successful next phase.
• Outdoor Escape –– Celebrate the beauty of the outdoors. Rediscover how the power of nature strengthens the power of you.
• Personal Discovery –– Forge your own path to self-discovery with a wellness journey designed for you, by you. 
• Just Be Here –– Explore wellness at your own pace with a flexible schedule and one all-inclusive rate.

Some Health & Wellness Tips

Two associates of Canyon Ranch offer some tips.

First, Stephanie Miezen, director of nutrition, on Health and Wellness, says:

• It’s important to adopt the perspective that change for great health has to be a long-term play.
• It’s important to keep improving skills needed to make healthy eating enjoyable and sustainable. Some of the best skills to do this are cooking- and food-literacy skills.
  
• Gain a foundational understanding of how foods fuel us. Learn how to prepare them to be delicious and success will be so much more attainable.
• Excellent well-being can realistically be achieved only if great nutrition is practiced.

Amy Hawthorne, life management director, talks about Health and Healing:

• Be curious with yourself around the life you’re living and the life you want to live while also being very aware of the judgmental narrative that could arise. Healthy self-confrontation, couched in self-compassion, can be a wonderful catalyst for change.
• Set realistic and attainable goals. Ask yourself: Is this what I would expect from someone I love and care about?
• If you want to live your highest life in the fullest expression of yourself, you must start with attending to your thoughts and the relationship with yourself.

For more information or to schedule a visit, click on its website at canyonranch.com or call 520-749-9655.

Author bio

Brown is an Arizona-based writer (azwriter.com).