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Weekend Wellness Retreats in the Hudson Valley Are Booked Solid

New Yorkers are trading the city for two-day resets upstate, and a cottage industry of retreats has sprung up to meet them.

1 min read
Weekend Wellness Retreats in the Hudson Valley Are Booked Solid
Photo: Hillebrand Steve, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The two-day wellness retreat has become a fixture of the New York calendar, sending stressed city dwellers north to the Hudson Valley for hiking, meditation, and forced disconnection. Weekend spots at the better-known properties now sell out months ahead.

The fictional retreat Still River, set on a former dairy farm near Kingston, caps its gatherings at twenty guests and collects phones on arrival. Its organizers say the demand comes from people who can't unplug at home and want someone else to enforce the boundary.

The retreats blend yoga, journaling, and long walks with locally sourced meals. For a couple hundred dollars a night, they promise the thing New Yorkers seem most desperate to buy: a quiet weekend where nothing pings.

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