I am not usually someone looking for profound self-actualization through my travels, but the truth is, I found myself arriving at a pivotal juncture in my life where a wellness retreat in Costa Rica sounded like a genuinely good idea. I was dealing with impending loss, a recent breakup, and an overarching, pervasive anxiety about getting older. Some might call what I was going through a quarter-life crisis; others might attribute it to a turbulent Saturn return. Surely, I thought, whatever was clouding my mind about turning 30 would clear with the vibrations rippling through The Vessyl’s state-of-the-art “Frequency Dome.”
It was this seemingly new category of wellness that initially piqued my interest in The Vessyl, billed as the "world’s first 4D sound resort," which officially opened its doors in August. On the one hand, the resort followed the classic naming conventions of a modern tech company playing fast and loose with its vowels, and I was entirely prepared to sit down and discuss higher consciousness with the Burning Man set. But feeling utterly fatigued by the repetitive sauna-and-cold-plunge narrative that has dominated the wellness conversation among many of my peers, I was genuinely excited to see what set this New-New Age retreat apart from the rest.
Set across 118 acres of lush rainforest directly beneath the looming Arenal Volcano, The Vessyl accommodates just 32 guests at a time, allowing for an intimate connection with both the natural surroundings and the tech-driven experiences housed inside the Dome. Hosting everything from vibrational yoga sessions and fractal projections to energy alignments and live musical performances, the resort’s immersive showpiece is engineered to help guests physically feel sound, rather than merely hear it.
Yet, as wonderfully experimental as all of this might have seemed on paper, I struggled deeply to decide whether or not leaving New York was the right decision. As the trip grew closer, my 11-year-old French Bulldog, Cooper, had been breaking through his medication with an alarming uptick in seizures, and I knew deep down that he was reaching his final days. It had been 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 had agreed to the French Bulldog as a graduation present, driven by a somewhat manipulative yet ultimately harmless scheme: the guarantee that I would 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—surviving the standstill of COVID-19, two bouts of unemployment, and a series of boyfriends followed by inevitable breakups—always there to stare at me with a cocked head, silently wondering why I was crying.
Even so, there was a quiet comfort in knowing he would be exceptionally well-taken care of by my parents while I was away, and I departed with the lingering hope that this wellness retreat would provide the physical and mental space needed to confront my anticipatory grief. That was how I found myself on a misty afternoon in August, winding through lush, verdant roads on a three-hour drive from San José to the northern highlands of La Fortuna. It is not hard to untangle why so many people in desperate need of soul-searching flock to Costa Rica, a country gushing with waterfalls carrying names like La Paz, which translates to "peace" in Spanish. Its rapidly growing wellness industry—marking a staggering 58 percent market increase since 2019, according to data from the Global Wellness Institute—aligns seamlessly with the "pura vida" tagline that pervades local souvenir shops just as strongly as it does daily life.
When I finally arrived at The Vessyl’s open-air lobby and restaurant, I was instantly taken aback by the breathtaking outline of the Arenal Volcano peeking out behind a sea of clouds, perfectly positioned to meet your eyes at the very edge of an infinity pool. I then made my way to my accommodation at the Sky Tree House, a wooden retreat built delicately on stilts. From its panoramic terrace, I caught sight of the copper-scaled Dome for the first time, glistening as a striking, futuristic contrast to the wild jungle surrounding it. In just a few moments, I would discover what lay inside for a specialized "Bio-Well" scan. Before leaving, I followed a spiral staircase that punctured the living room floor, finding myself in a dark, subterranean burrow that looked as though it had been designed for a wild animal. This is where I was told I could meditate throughout my stay, though I wasn’t entirely sure how much of that I would be doing on my own—having never been particularly skilled at quieting my racing mind.
Upon arriving at the Dome, Chad Wittman, the resort’s chief operating officer, began by giving me an extensive tour of the futuristic space, which was developed in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning acoustician George Augspurger over the course of eleven and a half years. The custom floating floor, he explained, is embedded with 24 transducers—the exact kind also utilized in immersive rides at major theme parks like Disney and Universal—allowing sound frequencies to flow through physical vibration as well as auditory waves. These transducers, combined with advanced spatial audio and immersive visual projections, work collectively to support a profound nervous system reset. As our voices echoed softly off the curved walls, Wittman led me to an adjacent recording studio, which remains accessible to visiting musicians, artists, and scientists deeply interested in exploring sonic frequencies.
Following the tour, I met a facilitator named Ashley Marie, who guided me through the Bio-Well scan in the Dome’s lobby. Developed by Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov, the Bio-Well is a compact cube scanner that uses Gas Discharge Visualization (GDV) imaging to reflect patterns in stress, energy distribution, autonomic balance, and overall physical regulation—essentially capturing a digital snapshot of your current energetic state derived solely from the tips of your fingers.
"You guys aren’t gonna clone me, are you?" I asked Wittman, offering a half-joking smile.
"Oh, we don’t have the technology for that," he responded deadpan.
It was a humorous proposition to ponder inside a facility specifically engineered to melt away modern anxiety, but I willingly surrendered my fingertips to the scanner anyway.
The machine generated roughly a dozen graphs, marked by human anatomical figures and vibrant bursts of color denoting distinct energy fields broken down by individual organs and even specific teeth. I could also track my "biorhythms," which mapped physical, emotional, and intellectual waves over the preceding weeks. Cross-referencing the calendar dates, it was nothing short of remarkable to realize that the lowest troughs on my charts directly corresponded with the deeply stressful days I had spent sitting with Cooper at the neurologist earlier that month.
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After the examination, Wittman outlined the itinerary for the upcoming days, which would inevitably involve a significant amount of deep introspection. I had already been doing plenty of that internally, acutely aware that the impending end of Cooper’s life also signaled the definitive closing of a major chapter for myself. I am simply not where I once suspected I would be at this age—not only here in Costa Rica, traversing the many places I had visited prior to this trip, but also standing firmly without any traditional desire for the conventional marriage-and-kids life path. I am increasingly aware that my body is shifting; I have discovered two distinct gray hairs and an emerging lower back pain that could easily turn into something serious if I fail to address it, coupled with a lingering fear that the decisions I make from here on out will carry substantially more weight than they used to.
Later that evening, during a communal family-style dinner served under a canopy of stars, I met the founder of The Vessyl, Josh Stanley. Over passed plates of yuca gnocchi, pejibaye croquettes, and fresh octopus ceviche, Stanley explained how he is no stranger to the uphill battle of helping people understand concepts that have not yet entered the mainstream. He referenced the time he and his brothers helped save the life of a five-year-old girl named Charlotte Figi using a specialized high-CBD hemp strain they were cultivating at home back in 2013—an era when cannabis remained heavily stigmatized, long before the Charlotte’s Web enterprise ultimately sparked a global CBD movement.
During the meal, I began hearing soft whisperings about "human design," which I initially dismissed as a fancy buzzword for personality typing. However, after chatting extensively with lead facilitator Svetlana Parmar, I learned it is actually an intricate personal mapping system—a postmodern astrological chart of sorts that draws upon a diverse array of ancient and modern traditions, 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 utilizes an individual’s exact birth date, time, and geographical location to generate a complex visual "bodygraph." It has also, somewhat predictably, become a major trending practice across social media platforms like TikTok.
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The following day inside the Dome, I was formally introduced to my own human design profile. Alongside my fellow guests, I was handed a pair of high-end headphones and a soft blanket, invited to get comfortable directly on the vibrating floor. Lying flat on our backs, we gazed upward at the spherical ceiling, which displayed a continuous projection of a mesmerizing black-and-white spiral. A calming female voice began delivering a personalized message directly into my ears: "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 detailed recitation of psychological patterns I had allegedly experienced throughout my life. It felt remarkably akin to guided hypnosis, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was being gently inducted into a sleek, high-tech cult. While the words certainly resonated at times—particularly the persistent urge to turn life’s mysteries into intellectual certainty, or the endless fretting over what comes next—they ultimately felt somewhat vague. I found myself quietly wondering how much of this practice was truly different from standard self-optimization, as a data-driven "roadmap" to one’s inner self still felt firmly rooted in metrics. It did little to ease my skepticism when I later learned that an artificial intelligence algorithm had actually crafted my specific messaging after digesting my personal bodygraph.
Eventually, we were informed, these self-knowledge sessions will be fully synced with a dedicated mobile application, allowing guests to continue tracking their journeys long after returning home. The entire experience prompted deep contemplation regarding how much self-awareness is actually too much self-awareness, and the extreme lengths modern society will go to biohack our way toward personal success. There has arguably never been a stronger collective desire to dissect the inner workings of our physical being, obsessing over our individual metrics with the assistance of wearable devices—ranging from advanced biometric scans to the Oura Ring. Taken to an extreme, this relentless tracking can render us overly obsessed with numbers and, counterproductively, a little less human. The irony was not lost on me that I had emerged from the session doing precisely what I was supposed to be avoiding: over-intellectualizing.
I was eagerly looking forward to stepping out of the Dome and back into the living rainforest the next day for a private, one-on-one reading with Parmar. We sat together on an outdoor patio, a citronella candle flickering between us while the looming threat of a sudden tropical downpour hung heavy overhead. As she displayed my complex bodygraph on an iPad, showcasing all nine geometric centers and an intricate web of connecting channels, I tried my best to surrender entirely to the information. Yet, after an hour flew by, I realized that all the technical jargon and complex diagrams didn’t actually matter. Here we were, simply two human beings talking candidly about relationships, aging, personal fears, and quiet excitements. Yes, Parmar revealed startling insights about my personality with oracle-like precision, but far more powerful was the sudden realization that I already knew most of it deep down—that I am deeply inquisitive by nature, yet prone to taking myself far too seriously, and that part of the inherent joy of getting older is finally feeling like you have accumulated enough trial and error to etch your traits in permanent ink.
Even so, I never want to harbor fixed ideas about what emotional buttons will or won’t push me, and I was genuinely delighted to be proven wrong during a subsequent somatic breathwork session in the Dome—an experience we had been explicitly warned might prove overwhelming. As someone who has notoriously never cried during Savasana, and whose annual personal resolution is invariably "less thinking, more feeling," I wasn’t overly concerned about my ability to keep my emotions tightly under control. Therefore, when our facilitator Dylan Baird casually informed the group that what we were about to experience was perhaps the closest thing one could get to a psychedelic journey without actually ingesting any substances, I thought to myself, Yeah, right.
Alongside the other guests, I laid flat on my back in a wide circle while Baird and Marie managed a live sound bath from the center of the room. We wore dark eye masks to minimize visual distractions, quickly falling into a collective, accelerated rhythm of breathing—inhaling for three seconds, exhaling for three seconds, continuously for 40 minutes straight—while the facilitators occasionally pressed gently on our shoulders to help release physical tension or tapped our cheeks to relax our tight jaws. As I maintained this steady, forceful flow of oxygen, my hands grew completely numb, and a biting chill spread across my skin.
Then, the breathing slowed, transitioning into a 20-minute integration period. I was struck by a profound sense of physical heaviness, accompanied by a rippling sensation running down my body that resulted in a distinct, uplifting expansion in my chest. Vivid visions began flashing behind my closed eyes—nothing overly profound, merely fleeting scenes involving some of the other guests at the resort, akin to those strange, threshold images you see right as you are falling asleep while still partially awake. And then, quite unexpectedly, I started to cry. These were tears triggered not by any specific, sad thought, but rather by an overwhelming sense of total nothingness. When I finally opened my eyes, I realized I had never felt so deeply relaxed—a state of profound calm that felt entirely foreign to my usual baseline.
So, what scientifically occurred during that process? "During active, connected breathing, carbon dioxide levels fall, temporarily raising blood pH, reducing cerebral blood flow, and activating the sympathetic nervous system," explains 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 specific regions of the brain responsible for governing emotion and memory, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, also function quite differently during this altered physiological state. Once normal breathing patterns resume, parasympathetic influence surges, allowing the body to relax deeply. The Dome, with its specialized spatial sound and physical vibrations, appeared to act as an effective catalyst, creating the ideal environmental conditions for turning my frantic attention inward.
When we eventually returned to the resort’s open-air restaurant for lunch, we caught sight of the imposing Arenal Volcano completely unclouded by fog for the very first time. It felt like an impromptu cause for celebration, though I couldn’t help thinking it was just as inherently beautiful when it was hiding behind its veil of mist.
It remains difficult to say whether I ultimately preferred the organic natural experiences over the high-tech offerings of the Dome, or if the Dome merely served to sharpen my acute awareness of the surrounding environment. However, an undeniable highlight of the trip was an excursion to a nearby local stable, where we watched a line of Criollo horses quietly filing back into their wooden stalls after an afternoon of grazing. A local horseman and whisperer named Enrique Molina led our group down a dusty path to a round, sandy training enclosure, carefully pairing each of us with a specific steed based on our individual temperaments—a matching process that involved the horses leaning their body weight directly against our sides to gauge our physical and energetic reactions. Molina explained that horses never interact with humans on a personal level; their reactions are based entirely on what is presented before them in the immediate present, whether that happens to be hesitation, fear, or quiet confidence. I offered my trust to a gentle white horse named Rosa, and together we rode out into the jungle as Molina pointed out vibrant poison dart frogs and toucans along the winding trail. Had it not been for the heavy rains that had battered the region overnight, we would have taken our horses straight into the rushing Arenal River for a refreshing dip, but learning to gracefully accept nature’s unpredictable fate was very much part of the curriculum.
Just moments before we departed for the horseback ride, I broke away from the group to use the restroom near the training area, realizing that a small, pointy-eared Doberman belonging to Molina’s son, Steven, was quietly trailing behind me. When I stepped out of the stall, she was still waiting there, playfully bowing her front paws to invite an immediate game of chase. We whirled around the circular pen of sand, our bond forming instantly. The difference between horses and dogs, I thought to myself with a quiet smile. Suddenly, I started to tear up once again, this time triggered entirely by memory, and I simply allowed the tears to fall unchecked. The moment transported me right back to the day we first brought Cooper home as a clumsy puppy, following closely behind me with only one of his ears flopped softly over. Now, I found myself wishing more than anything that he could still be here, following along behind me as I navigate the mistakes and milestones of turning 30, 40, and beyond.
