At Costa Rican Wellness Resort, Learning About My 'Human Design'

On the brink of a new chapter in her life, writer Jessica Sulima travels to Costa Rica in hopes of quieting her mind and looking inwards.I’m not usually looking for self-actualization through my travels, but the truth is, I found myself at a time in my life where a wellness retreat in Costa Rica sounded like a really good idea. I was dealing with impending loss, a recent breakup, and an overarching anxiety about getting older. Some might call what I was going through a quarter-life crisis; others, a Saturn return. Surely, I thought, whatever was clouding my mind about turning 30 would clear with the vibrations rippling through The Vessyl’s “Frequency Dome.”It was this seemingly new category of wellness that piqued my interest in The Vessyl, the “world’s first 4D sound resort,” which opened its doors in August. On the one hand, the resort followed the naming conventions of a modern tech company being loose with its vowels, and I was prepared to talk consciousness with the Burning Man set. But fatigued by the same sauna-cold plunge story that has dominated the wellness conversation among many of my peers, I was excited to see what was different about this New-New Age retreat. Set on 118 acres of rainforest beneath the Arenal Volcano, The Vessyl welcomes just 32 guests at a time to connect with the natural surroundings and the tech-driven experiences inside the Dome. Hosting everything from vibrational yoga sessions and fractal projections to energy alignments and live performances, the resort’s immersive showpiece is engineered to help guests feel sound, not just hear it.The Frequency Dome of new wellness retreat The Vessyl. VessylSound experiences at The Vessyl. Nick WartyBut as wonderfully experimental as all this might have seemed, I struggled to decide whether or not it was a good decision to leave New York. As the trip grew closer, my 11-year-old dog, Cooper, had been breaking through his medication with an uptick in seizures, and I knew he was reaching his final days. It was a devastating few months, watching a brain tumor control his little body in unpredictable ways. Cooper came into my life at age 18, right before I left for college. My dad said yes to the French Bulldog as a graduation present, with a somewhat manipulative yet ultimately harmless scheme in mind: that I’d always come back to New Jersey to visit. And just as planned, Cooper saw the entirety of my 20s play out in the comfort of my parents’ home—the standstill of COVID, two bouts of unemployment, a series of boyfriends and the breakups that followed—always there to stare at me with a cocked head, wondering why I was crying.But there was comfort in knowing he’d be well taken care of by my parents, and I left with the hope that this wellness retreat would provide me with the space to deal with the anticipatory grief. That’s how I found myself on a misty afternoon in August, winding through lush roads on a three-hour drive from San José to the northern highlands of La Fortuna. It’s not hard to untangle why so many people in need of a little soul-searching flock to Costa Rica, a country gushing with waterfalls named things like “La Paz” (“peace” in Spanish). Its growing wellness industry (a 58% market increase since 2019, according to the Global Wellness Institute) aligns well with that “pura vida” tagline that pervades souvenir shops just as strongly as it does daily life.Clouds disperse around the peak of the Arenal Volcano, as seen from the swimming pool of The Vessyl. VessylWhen I finally arrived at The Vessyl’s open-air lobby slash restaurant, I was taken aback by the outline of the Arenal Volcano peeking out behind a sea of clouds, perfectly positioned to meet your eyes at the edge of an infinity pool. I then made my way to my accommodation at the Sky Tree House, a wooden retreat built on stilts. From its panoramic terrace, I caught sight of the copper-scaled Dome for the first time, a glistening contrast to the wild jungle surrounding it—in just a few minutes, I’d be seeing what it was like inside for a “Bio-Well” scan. Just before leaving, I followed the spiral staircase that punctured the living room, finding myself in a dark burrow that looked as though it was designed for an animal. This is where I was told I could meditate throughout my stay, but I wasn’t sure how much of that I’d be doing on my own—I’ve never been good at quieting my mind.When I arrived at the Dome, Chad Wittman, chief operating officer, began by giving me a tour of the futuristic space, developed with Grammy Award-winning acoustician George Augspurger over the course of 11 and a half years. The custom floating floor, he explained, was embedded with 24 transducers (the kinds also present in rides at theme parks like Disney and Universal), which allow frequency to flow through vibration as well as sound. These transducers, combined with spatial audio and immersive visuals, work to support a nervous system reset of sorts. As our voices reflected off the curved walls, Wittman led me to the adjacent recording studio, available for musicians, artists, and scientists interested in exploring frequencies.The Vessyl's ‘Harmonic Hearth’ sweat lodge VessylI then met a facilitator named Ashley Marie, who would guide me through the Bio-Well scan in the Dome’s lobby. Developed by Russian physicist Konstantin Korotov, Bio-Well is a little cube of a scanner that uses GDV-style imaging (Gas Discharge Visualization) to reflect patterns in stress, balance, energy distribution, and overall regulation—essentially a snapshot of your current energetic state—all taken from your fingerprints alone.“You guys aren’t gonna clone me, are you?” I asked Wittman, half-jokingly.“Oh, we don’t have the technology for that,” he responded.It was a funny thing to say in a space that was engineered to zap away anxiety, but I surrendered my fingerprint anyway.The machine generated about a dozen or so graphs, marked by human figures and bursts of colors that denoted energy fields, broken down by organ—and even tooth. I could also track my “biorhythms,” waves charting my physical, emotional, and intellectual levels over the last few weeks. I cross-referenced the dates to see when those levels were low, and it was remarkable to realize they were the stress-ridden bundle of days I spent with Cooper at the neurologist earlier that month.The lush surroundings of The Vessyl retreat. Nick WartyGuest rooms are immersed in the sounds of the Costa Rican rainforest Nick WartyAfter the exam, Wittman explained the itinerary for the next few days, which would ultimately involve a lot of thinking about myself. I had already been doing a lot of this, because the end of Cooper’s life signaled the closing of a chapter for me as well. I’m not where I’d suspected I’d be at this age—not only here, in Costa Rica, and the many places I’d traveled to before this trip, but also without a strong desire for the marriage-and-kids track. I am aware that things are changing: I have two gray hairs, lower back pain that could turn into something serious if I don’t act on it, and a fear that the decisions I make from here on out will hold a little more weight than they used to.Later that night at a family-style dinner under the stars, I met the founder of The Vessyl, Josh Stanley. Over passed plates of yuca gnocchi, pejibaye croquettes, and octopus ceviche, Stanley explained how he’s no stranger to getting people to understand something that hasn’t yet entered the mainstream, referencing the time he and his brothers helped to save the life of a five-year-old girl named Charlotte Figi with the hemp strain they were growing at home—this was in 2013, when cannabis was still taboo, and Charlotte’s Web would eventually spark a CBD movement.During this meal, I started to hear whisperings of “human design,” which I initially thought was just a fancy way of saying “personality.” But after chatting with lead facilitator, Svetlana Parmar, I learned it’s actually a very involved personal mapping system, like a postmodern astrological chart that draws on several things, including the Kabbalah, the I Ching, numerology, the chakra system, and quantum physics. Developed in 1987 by Alan Robert Krakower (who later changed his name to Ra Uru Hu), the system uses your birth date, time, and location to generate your “bodygraph.” It also happens to be a trending practice on TikTok.Guests lie on the floor of the retreat's Frequency Dome VessylIt was in the Dome the next day when I first became acquainted with my human design. I, along with my fellow guests, was given a pair of headphones and a blanket to get comfy on the vibrating floor. Lying on our backs, we stared up at the spherical ceiling, which featured a projection of a continuous, black-and-white spiral. A calming, female voice began delivering a personal message through my headphones: “Hello Jessica, I’m your higher self... the eternal, quiet presence that has walked beside you through every shadow and every spark of light... I’m the part of your soul that exists beyond the world's confusion... living in absolute, loving calm.”What followed was a series of patterns I had allegedly experienced throughout my life. It was essentially hypnosis, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was being inducted into a cult. The words resonated at times— the urge to turn mystery into intellectual certainty, for instance, or worrying about what comes next—though they were ultimately a little vague, and I found myself wondering how much of it really was all that different from self-optimization—a “road map” to my inner self still sounded a little data-driven. It didn’t help to learn later that AI had crafted my specific messaging after it was fed my bodygraph.Eventually, we were told, these self-knowledge sessions would be synced with an app, so guests can continue their journey upon returning home. The experience made me think a lot about how much self-awareness is too much self-awareness, and the lengths we’ll go to biohack our way to success. There’s never been a stronger desire to know the ins and outs of our physical being, to harbor on our individuality, often with the help of devices—from Neko Scans to the Oura Ring. Taken to an extreme, it can make us obsessed with metrics and, counterproductively, a little less human. The irony was not lost on me that I left the session doing exactly what I wasn’t supposed to be doing: intellectualizing.I was looking forward to getting out of the Dome and into the rainforest the next day, where I’d be doing a one-on-one reading with Parmar. We sat together on an outdoor patio, a citronella candle burning between us, and the possibility of a sudden downpour looming overhead. As she displayed my bodygraph on an iPad, with all nine of its geometric shapes and endless channels, I tried my best to submit to the information. After an hour whizzed by, I realized that all the technical details didn’t actually matter. Here we were, two women talking about relationships, aging, fears, and excitements. Yes, Parmar revealed information about me with oracle-like accuracy, but even more powerful was the realization that I already knew so much of it—that I’m deeply inquisitive, for instance, but tend to take myself too seriously—and part of the joy of getting older is starting to feel like you’ve done enough trial and error to mark your traits in permanent ink.A view of the retreat's looming Frequency Dome. Nick WartyBut I never want to have fixed ideas about what buttons will or won’t push me, and I was delighted to be proven wrong during somatic breathwork in the Dome, a session I was warned could be overwhelming. As someone who has never cried during Savasana, and whose yearly resolution is always “less thinking, more feeling,” I wasn’t exactly concerned about not being able to control my emotions. So when our facilitator Dylan Baird revealed to the group that what we were about to do might be the closest thing you can get to a psychedelic experience without actually doing drugs, I thought Yeah, right.I, along with my fellow guests, laid on our backs in a circle, with Baird and Marie at a sound bath in the center. We were given eye masks to minimize observational distractions, and fell into a collective, somewhat quickened rhythm of breathing—three seconds in, three seconds out, for 40 minutes straight—as the two facilitators gently pushed on our shoulders to release tension, or tapped our cheeks to help relax our mouths. As I continued to exert this flow of oxygen, my hands felt completely numb, and I started to get cold.Then we slowed down, allowing for the 20-minute integration period. I felt a profound sense of heaviness, and a ripple ran along my body, resulting in a (real or imagined?) lift in my chest. I started to see visions—nothing profound, just a few scenes involving some of the other guests at the resort—which I can best describe as the kinds of things you see right as you’re about to fall asleep, but are still kind of awake. And then I started to cry—tears that seemed to be triggered not by any particular, sad thought, but rather, total nothingness. When I awoke, I had never felt so relaxed, a feeling completely foreign to me.So what actually happened? “During active, connected breathing, carbon dioxide falls, temporarily raising blood pH, reducing cerebral blood flow, and activating the sympathetic nervous system,” says Dr. Diva Nagula, co-founder and chief medical officer at The Vessyl. “This produces the tingling, buzzing, muscle tightening, and involuntary contractions that some people experience as energy moving through the body.” The regions of the brain that control emotion and memory, like the amygdala and hippocampus, also function differently during this altered state. Once normal breathing resumes, parasympathetic influence increases, and the body relaxes big time. The Dome, with its spatial sound and vibrations, seemed to help create the conditions for turning my attention inward.When we arrived back at the restaurant for lunch, we saw the imposing Arenal without cloud cover for the very first time. It was cause for celebration, but I couldn’t help but think it was just as beautiful when it was being shy.It’s hard to say whether I preferred the natural experiences to those of the Dome, or if the Dome helped to sharpen my awareness of the environment. But one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to a nearby stable, where we witnessed a line of Criollo horses filing into their stalls after an afternoon of grazing. A horse whisperer named Enrique Molina led us and his four-legged team down the road to a round, sandy training area, and paired us each with a specific steed based on our temperament—this involved a test of leaning his body weight into our sides to see how we reacted—and explained how nothing about the way a horse interacts with a human is personal; it’s based entirely on what’s presented before them, whether that’s hesitation, fear, or confidence. I offered my trust to a white horse named Rosa, and she and I rode into the jungle, Molina pointing to poisonous frogs and toucans along the way. Had it not been raining heavily overnight, we would’ve taken our horses straight into the Arenal River for a dip, but accepting nature’s fate was part of the lesson.Just before we left for the ride, I broke off from the group to use the bathroom at the training area, and realized that the pointy little Doberman that belonged to Molina’s son, Steven, was trailing behind. When I got out of the stall, she was still there, bowing before me to invite a game of chase. We whirled around the circle of sand, our bond instantaneous—the difference between horses and dogs, I thought. I started to tear up again, this time triggered by memory, and I let the tears fall. I was brought back to the day we brought Cooper home, how he followed behind me clumsily in the way that puppies do, with only one of his ears still floppy and folded over. Now, how I wish he could still follow me, as I make mistakes at 30, 40, and beyond.Jessica Sulima is a Commerce Writer at Condé Nast Traveler, where she covers hotel and booking content, as well as travel deals. Originally from New Jersey, she attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she holds a Bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Spanish and Art History. Previously at Thrillist, ... Read MoreMore hotels nearbyRío Perdido Hotel & Thermal River$$ | Costa Rica, Provincia de Guanacaste, East from San Bernardo soccer field, 4kmLose a sense of time and location while gaining perspective at this private Costa Rican sanctuary.$$ | Jamaica, Montego Bay, 7 Jimmy Cliff Ave.$$ | St. Lucia, Cariblue Beach,Give body and mind a break at this one-stop shop for mental and physical well-being (along with regular beachy fun).