Danielle Norton creates her own Bali wellness retreat, blending luxe experiences with DIY spa pampering for $120 a day.
Cross-legged, I sit with my hands in prayer position, practising yoga while listening to the morning chorus: birdsong mixed with faint gamelan music from the nearby restaurant. The sun has crept over the manicured tropical garden to warm my upturned face.
I’m staying at Kayumanis Spa and Villa in the coastal town of Sanur, 12km (a 40-minute taxi ride) from Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport. After the class, I order a strong latte from the resort’s Gong Restaurant.
While I’m thoroughly enjoying my stay here and know it’s important to take time out to look after your wellbeing, I’m also aware that not everybody can splash the cash on a week of expensive treatments and guided meditations.
To counteract the high price, I’ve built my own Bali wellness retreat, combining resort indulgences with self-sought pampering.
With a nod to mindfulness, I take out my journal, thrilled that I’ve just saved a few thousand dollars by designing a one-week wellness retreat while basing myself at Kayumanis Sanur. I’d been wanting a reset, to step away from caring for others and focus entirely on myself, without blowing my budget or following someone else’s schedule.
Earlier in the year, I’d done a six-night retreat at Escape Haven, the most awarded women’s wellness retreat in Bali. Kiwi Janine Cottle is the owner and also co-owns Mana Sanctuary Bali, a premier wellness and longevity eco-resort which combines ancient Balinese wisdom with modern science to focus on rest, reconnection and restoration of the body and mind.
Both of Cottle’s retreats give participants tools such as breathwork, strength training and culinary skills, with actionable strategies to implement these techniques back at home. Recognising and understanding the importance of movement, healthy food and mindfulness is only the beginning.
“A retreat doesn’t survive the impact of reality if it is just a pampering holiday. We use a methodical approach in everything we do to ensure the retreat’s benefits last long after it finishes. Without this intentionality, we wouldn’t be doing the job properly,” she says.
Escape Haven and Mana staff stay connected with guests after their retreats end. Escape Haven has a Facebook group where yoga sessions are broadcast live – a weekly reminder to take time out to look after your body – and Mana sends guests home with a 21-day programme and remains in touch with participants throughout this time.
I’ve decided to apply the professional retreat principles I learned at Escape Haven to my own DIY retreat, so I planned a seven-day wellness-oriented itinerary that I know will make me feel great by the end of the week. The trick with a DIY retreat is to treat it like something you’ve paid for and be strong enough to stick to your own schedule – even when you feel like sleeping in.
I set aside a budget of $120 a day, which allows me to do one class and one pampering treatment per day, and can accommodate an extra like a manicure or pedicure (both around $25). This leaves plenty of cash for dining out. At local warungs (locally owned roadside food stalls), meals like nasi goreng can cost as little as $10, whereas upscale restaurants with international menus can set you back $50.
Massage is always high on my list of priorities when trying to de-stress, and spa time is essential for true relaxation on a DIY retreat, so the first thing I do when I arrive is book the treatments included in my Luxury Escapes package (two hours) with Kayumanis staff. Then, between dips in and out of my villa’s private pool, I get a taxi into town and wander up and down the main street examining the various yoga and Pilates studios and scoping out the spas. My TikTok research has shown me exactly where to go, and the influencers are not wrong.
One day I book an evening yoga class at Power of Now Oasis, the bamboo studio on the beach in Sanur. It’s a sensory experience: you can hear the roar of the ocean while you stretch and inhale the fragrance of the local restaurants prepping their cuisine.
Nearby, Koa Shala offers a different experience; it has a serene garden studio down a laneway from Sanur’s main street with classes costing only $12. Koa Shala is also home to a boutique spa which offers herb poultices for ailments, Ayurvedic-style massage and reflexology treatments from $42).
Another day, after my scheduled beach walk and yoga class, I visit The Nest Boutique Spa, where I enjoy a 90-minute treatment - a mix of Balinese and Thai massage techniques for $40 and I float back to my villa without a care in the world.
Throughout the week I take pleasure in wandering, never in a rush. I carry the yoga mantra of “nowhere to be, nothing to do” as I meander along the 7km Sanur Beach promenade, passing hotels, markets and the Icon Bali shopping mall.
A true retreat for me must also include mental nourishment. Each morning, I read for at least 30 minutes. No phone, no laptop, no e-reader.
I order from The Gong restaurant’s menu: light, nutrient-rich meals, with fish, vegetables and Indonesian spices. I feel like royalty, sequestered away, as staff parade through the iconic candi bentar, the Balinese split wooden gates that provide protection from the outside world, and into my villa carrying silver domed trays.
After a few days of solitude, I visit the Bali Zoo to brunch with Capybaras and try the brand-new Elephant Explorer experience. Hand-feeding these creatures fills me with childish delight, and I squeal as elephants spray water into the air and snuffle food from my palm. Later, as the cheeky capybaras climb over me to get to their pails of food, I’m reminded that joy is an essential, often overlooked, aspect of wellness too.
Each night at Kayumanis I drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep. The point of retreating is to rest, relax and rejuvenate, and this small pause within the sanctuary of a private villa has left me feeling completely reset and ready for my next adventure.
A word of warning, though. It’s important to do your research. After Googling “Sanur spas near me”, I had one sub-par (albeit super cheap) massage at a local business which happened to be on a main road. The traffic noise intruded into the building, making it a far less enjoyable experience than the others. If I had my time again, I’d skip this one.
By the end of the week, I decided my favourite DIY wellness experience was yoga by the beach at the Power of Now Oasis because it gave me so much joy to focus entirely on my body, surrounded by fellow yogis, locals and travellers alike.
Create your wellness itinerary
Define your why
What are you retreating from? Is it incessant phone notifications, domestic labour, young children or elderly parents? Or is it the constant buzz and bright lights of city life? If you don’t move enough, do you need to include exercise?
Decide your where
Choose a destination that you know will make you feel happy. If the sound of the ocean exhilarates you, pick a beach. If you love the cold, book a mountain lodge.
Curate, don’t stuff, your itinerary
Decision fatigue can suck the joy out of any experience. Pre-book your activities (horse riding, cooking classes, golf, Pilates) and leave space for sunbathing, napping and daydreaming.
Create some boundaries
Be intentional about your goals, as you would be on an expensive retreat.
The writer was partly hosted by Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa & Spa by Luxury Escapes.