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As luxury resorts around the country upgrade and revamp their wellness programming to court today’s health-minded guests, art—from mindful drawing to basket weaving classes—is increasingly on the menu. Of course art therapy did not originate as a luxury amenity for vacationers. A form of psychotherapy that engages the creative process through drawing, painting, dance, and artistic expression, art therapy has been shown to help with emotional regulation and anxiety reduction. In fact, mental health practitioners have utilized the practice since the 1940s, with recent research showing wide-ranging benefits, like enhancing quality of life for adult cancer patients, reducing depression in people with Parkinson’s, and helping children with asthma feel less anxious. If the dozens of coloring books, packs of markers, and glittery stickers I accumulated over a year of personal illness are any indication, art can soothe us during our darkest moments.
As a practice, art therapy translates so well to the non-medical setting of a resort because its benefits—namely, calming way down—can be felt immediately. It doesn’t hurt that many resorts are surrounded by natural beauty, which is itself therapy. Alila Ventana Big Sur, surrounded by giant redwoods and overlooking the Pacific, offers wellness-oriented art programming such as Perfectly Imperfect, a kintsugi workshop in which participants repair broken pottery. The centuries-old Japanese practice is, of course, a metaphor for resilience. At all three of its locations, Miraval Resorts & Spas has a kintsugi class called The Beauty of Imperfection; options at other Miraval locations include Zen Art (staying present during mandala drawing) and Paint the Music (exactly what it sounds like).
Travelers can choose how out-there they’re willing to get. In Sedona, Arizona, Enchantment recently opened its 2,000-square-foot Artist Cottage as a space for healing; it provides programming rooted in the principles of art therapy but with a spiritual edge. Think workshops where you paint the animal you identify with and tree of life pendant crafting. Wherever you find yourself, the point of art therapy is letting go: of perfectionism, stress, self-consciousness, everything. When Hill teaches basket weaving at Blackberry Mountain, she imagines threading her “worries and stresses into the piece and leaving them contained there, which creates a sense of release and peace.”
At the end of the painting class, I studied my completed canvas, then looked up at the landscape, animated by birdsong and dappled light. I had failed to capture the scene’s magic. But damn, I felt happy.
This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
