This SoCal Four Seasons Offers 100+ Wellness Treatments At Luxury Hotel Brand’s Biggest Spa
The Four Seasons Westlake Village boasts the world’s largest Four Seasons spa, with over 40,000 square feet of wellness space.
Sure, some of the best wellness retreats send you out into the unknown—to desert foothills to rest up and dry out under an expansive sky, or to remote mountain retreats, where you can disconnect from your phone and reconnect with nature. But what if you don’t have the time to take planes, trains, or helicopters out into the wilderness?
Well, that’s when you look for luxury a little closer to home. The recently-renovated Four Seasons Westlake Village offers immersive wellness retreats just 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. Despite the convenient locale (it’s only ten minutes from Calabasas), swing open the curtains to your room and the Santa Monica mountains soar majestically overhead.
What we’re here for is one of the property’s Center for Health & Wellbeing retreats, which are designed for busy city-dwellers: four days and three nights in length (or, a long weekend), with an itinerary lush with body mapping, nutrition consultations, and healing spa therapies. Depending on what part of your life you’d like to refresh, schedules are padded with canyon hikes, art therapy, personal training sessions, sound bath meditations, cooking classes, and private consultation with fitness and wellness experts.
My partner is an athlete, so his schedule was tweaked to focus on his game—training harder not smarter. A personal trainer helped him adjust his stride so he was falling on the right side of his foot (no more knee injuries!). He worked with a nutritionist to help tweak his diet to integrate more nutrients and proteins. He was happy to spend time in the behemoth gym, outfitted with a dedicated yoga and Pilates studio, plus the newest version of every cardio and fitness machine you could dream of.
I lean more towards the leisure side of a getaway—facials and frosty drinks, pool lounging and pedicures. Which could be easily found—the resort boasts the largest spa of any Four Seasons globally, with over 40,000 square feet of space and more than a 100 different treatments offered. But I also wanted rest and relaxation, but also self-care that lasted well beyond the last knead of a massage.
The big thing about the Four Seasons’ Center for Health and Wellness is that they don’t exclusively focus on immediate relaxation. A team of specialists leverage state-of-the-art technology to help guests achieve both their short- and long-term goals. My partner underwent a quick cardio respiratory fitness test and a quick dip into the BodPod—a body mapping pod that measures body composition–to help the pros design him a custom training program. I preferred to use my free time talking with nutritionists and a life consultant, helping identify stress points and tweak my diet to avoid things that would cause inflammation and my perpetually low energy. They helped make subtle tweaks to my lifestyle that would help ensure the feelings of rest and relaxation lasted beyond the last knead of a massage.
While the programming is hyper focused on wellness, the resort itself isn’t overly granola—the property offers serenity in spades. If teeing off is your way of unwinding, add a round into your schedule—Westlake Golf Course and Lake Lindero Golf Course are a short drive away. If your version of wellness includes cocktails and catching up on a book, Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village recently built out a $20 million, two-acre pool complex called The Cove off the main building. There’s a steel-clad bar serving craft cocktails and plates of oysters, three hot tubs, and a grand pool that weaves around the complex. There’s also a hammock garden, daybeds tucked into private nooks and a bocce court in the center. Grab a book and a margarita and settle in.
Also on property? A Japanese sushi bar (with a focus on largely-local seafood Nigiri and hand rolls) and a speakeasy cocktail bar—perfect for unwinding mentally after morning hikes and gym afternoons. Coin & Candor, a locally loved lobby restaurant, is a California brasserie, with a menu that digs deep into the local bounty—the majority of ingredients are sourced from the resort’s culinary gardens. Dishes have a California-cool lean, like adobo marinated whole Baja snapper, huitlacoche risotto, plus grilled avocado salads for those following a health-conscious diet. The wine menu? Largely local, with keen focus on biodynamic and sustainably-produced farmers, like Oregon’s Cristom and San Luis Obispo’s Scar of the Sea.
If you can be dragged from the resort’s confines, the SoCal coast offers a lot to explore. Hiking trails weave outwards from the property and up into the Santa Monica hills. Climb upwards and through the brush and sage, turn corners, and spot the ocean, glittering off in the distance. (A property representative hints, from personal experience, that it’s a good place to propose.) Once you’ve ascended to the top, take a moment to appreciate your wellness journey. You’ve earned it.
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