I love baths. In general, I love all water, I grew up in Maine, spent all my summers at the beach in my hometown. I fell in love with pools when I would go stay with my dad’s friend Wayne and Pat outside of Phoenix as a kid. I even fell in love with lakes when I lived in Chicago. My favorite way to relieve stress is either take a bath or stare at a large body of water. I make my own bath salts, and especially in winter, love to run a long hot bath, and sit there until I’m way past prune-y and my book has gotten slightly damp.

When Soni and I moved last fall, we moved into a live/work space which has a dreamy studio space, but alas, there is no bathtub. Thankfully in Santa Fe there are a number of options for hot spring/hot tubbing it. When we have visitors, we’ll head out to Ojo Caliente for all the hot springs. Or we’ll go up to Ten Thousand Waves and sit in the Grand Bath and look at the trees and mountains and snow. If it’s just the two of us, we head to Sunrise Springs for a private tub. We went a few times last year, but we’ve been going more often now that we live in a bathtub less house. The private tubs are outdoors and can be reserved for an hour. They have a little fire place and shutters that you can open to look out over the pond, which is especially gorgeous in the Fall.

When Caitlin and Amy of Simply Social (and @simplysantafe over on Instagram) got in touch and said they were organizing a weekend healthy cleanse at Sunrise Springs, and did I want to join them, I jumped at the chance. While Soni and I have often gone to the tubs, I’ve never stayed there, seen the grounds or tried out any of the activities that they are known for (i.e. puppy play classes).

Early in March, I arrived at Sunrise Springs for the weekend and met a small group of women, from Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We got a tour of the grounds and then got shown to our rooms. They were actually casitas, and were super cute, each with its own small private courtyard. I unpacked and then headed back out meet the others.

About half of our group were going to participate in a sweat lodge. I’d done a Temescal in Oaxaca the year before, and it’s similar but also very different, so I was excited to try it. We met outside a small stone building near the pond, and Concha and her nephews introduced us to the sweat lodge and gave us all a blessing ceremony. The small stone building had two rooms, a changing space and then the sweat room. The evening was broken up into four parts, for the four seasons, with sharing on a certain idea during each, and a small break between to cool off with the evening air. It was really intense, the heat and the conversation. And afterwards we all felt pretty great, and I slept amazing that night.

I spent the morning on my own, in the best outdoor tub, and tried a facial for the first time. And then walked along one of the short trails around the grounds. After lunch there was a hatchet-throwing class that I just had to take. Which is apparently really fun, and a thing now. I hear that there are a number of hatchet-throwing bars in New York, and now even one in Albuquerque. Then we met up with the rest of our group for an ayurvedic cooking workshop, which I loved. I’ve since tried out the recipes at home, they were a huge hit with Soni! I was definitely impressed with the different activities that they had to offer. The next morning, I went to hang out with the puppies that live on the grounds who are all in training to be assistance dogs. It’s a great program. The puppies live and train in a building on the grounds and some of the guests come and get to interact with them, which seems to be a win-win for everyone. Visitors get to hang out with puppies and the puppies get used to meeting different people. I definitely enjoyed it.

Thankfully we had umbrellas, but it was still magical in the rain

the little Sweat Lodge building in the rain

*The weekend stay at Sunrise Springs was gifted to me, but I didn’t receive any payment for this post. All opinions are my own.