A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel de Allende.
Temazcal, horse whispering, sadhana, earth-based ritual. The practices filling Mexico’s retreat itineraries come from these lands, and the bills are increasingly written for people who can fly in to pay them. One five-day program at the base of Los Picachos is asking what that leaves for the people who live here.
Before wellness in Mexico had a market size, it had a Tuesday.
It had a stall at the Martes market with gordolobo and árnica and ruda in paper cones, sold by a woman who can tell you what each one does without looking anything up. It had an egg passed over a child in a kitchen in San Antonio, a prayer said fast and low. It had a sobadora down the street who charges what a neighbor can pay. It had temazcales in family patios, domed and low, where steam comes off volcanic stones in a hiss and the dark goes total inside a minute, and you enter on your knees because that is the design.
None of it was precious. It was the ordinary architecture of taking care of people, and it was priced for the people it took care of.
The numbers now moving through this country tell a different story. The global wellness economy is worth 6.8 trillion dollars and is forecast to reach 9.8 trillion by 2029. Mexico is the fifteenth largest wellness market on earth at 98 billion dollars, growing close to ten percent a year, up 59 percent since 2019. Very little of that expansion has been designed with Mexicans in mind.
In San Miguel, the growth arrives weekly. Sound baths in colonial courtyards, cacao ceremonies on rooftops, breathwork at ten in the morning in a room with lime plaster and a very good playlist. Almost all of it is priced in dollars, in a state where the average monthly wage is 6,430 pesos and more than half of all work is informal.
Which is why a short paragraph at the bottom of one retreat page is worth reading closely.
From January 25 to 29, 2027, Alison E. Berman, the founder of Lifeforce Labs, will lead Answer Your Call to Adventure, a five-day journey into Kundalini yoga and mythic wisdom, taking place at Casa X, a property at the base of Los Picachos, twenty minutes from Centro and far enough out that the city drops away. Berman is a trauma-informed Kundalini teacher and Co-Active trained coach who spent a decade designing experiences for venture firms, media companies, and think tanks before building her own somatic approach to nervous system regulation, embodied transformation, and mythic inquiry. Her own version of the story starts at thirteen, on a twenty-two-day backpacking expedition through the Oregon wilderness, where she first discovered the transformative quality of immersive expeditions.
The framework of the retreat follows Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the mythic architecture of the Monomyth, in which the hero or heroine leaves the familiar, crosses a threshold into the unknown, encounters trials and transformation, and ultimately returns changed.
These five days are held between opening and closing ceremonies. Mornings begin with sadhana at sunrise, the hour when the practice does its quietest work. Days unfold through Kundalini yoga, mythic storytelling, and workshops centered on exploring the deeper life questions calling each person forward. Afternoons loosen into sauna, cold plunge, hot tub, pool, and stretches with nothing scheduled at all. There are earth-based rituals, a day trip into historic San Miguel, ecstatic dance under a sky with no city in it, and three daily meals nobody has to think about.
Two of the days belong to place-based rituals of San Miguel itself. Alehandra Deses, a local horse whisperer, will lead horse therapy, where the animal reflects back whatever a person walked in carrying. A local shaman will lead the temazcal on the fourth day, once the group has been together long enough to be honest with each other inside the dark. The retreat’s own materials make something of the geology, noting that San Miguel sits atop rose quartz, the stone of the heart.
Adrián Barajas, a Toltec wisdom and Kundalini Yoga teacher originally from the region and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, will join the retreat as a guest teacher. He will guide participants through Toltec Recapitulation, a traditional regional practice of reflection and breathwork, bringing another dimension of cultural connection, embodied inquiry, and integration to the retreat.
There is another piece of Answer Your Call to Adventure that Alison Berman has been intentional about: creating a way for people who live in Mexico, and particularly in the San Miguel community, to be part of it.
Like many destination retreats, the standard rate reflects an all-inclusive experience: four nights of lodging, three meals a day, programming, workshops, yoga, ceremonies, and access to the property and its amenities. Shared occupancy begins at $2,099 during early pricing, while private rooms begin at $2,599.
But Berman did not want the retreat to exist as an enclave for international travelers, disconnected from the place and community hosting it.
Below the US pricing tiers sits an offer of eight non-overnight retreat passes for Mexico residents and members of the San Miguel community, offered at a sliding-scale price of 4,000 to 6,000 pesos. The pass covers the full run of retreat practices, workshops, meals, and ceremonies, and is arranged by writing to Berman directly at [email protected].
It is a small paragraph. In this market, it is close to singular.
“While I was in San Miguel this summer building the retreat, I had the opportunity to lead a local women’s circle,” Berman says. “Sitting in that room, I realized that many of the amazing women I was practicing alongside would never be able to access the retreat at U.S. pricing. In that moment, I knew I could not come into this community and offer an experience that was financially out of reach for the people who live there.
“Offering eight local passes at a reduced rate in pesos is one way I’m trying to approach retreat work with greater integrity. I come from the business world where you’re often taught to build a profitable model first and bring in impact later. To be in integrity with the community and my personal values of inclusion, I realized this mission could wait. Leading a retreat is a privilege. Teaching is a privilege. We have to begin creating the change we want to see in the world now, no matter how small the first step may be.”
Consider what writing it costs. Less revenue per bed. Places held that cannot be sold at full price. A room containing both the person who flew in from California and the person who grew up looking at that mountain. Most operators handle the discomfort by never raising it, and the ones who do usually reach for a foundation or a nonprofit arm rather than touching the price itself.
For Berman, that distinction matters. It is part of a broader intention to honor and engage with the community and culture that make gathering in San Miguel possible. The hope is to create a retreat where someone arriving from California practices alongside someone who calls San Miguel home, bringing together people whose paths might not otherwise cross, but who find themselves exploring the same question: what is calling me forward, and who might I become by answering?
The mix is not a concession; it creates a richer, more connected retreat. A temazcal ceremony takes on deeper meaning when it is held in relationship with the people, traditions, and place from which the practice comes, and anyone who has sat in both kinds of spaces knows the difference within five minutes.
San Miguel is about to have a great many more retreats, and every operator arriving will face this decision, most of them by never quite making it. So it is worth naming what a complete answer looks like, now that someone has opened the door. Print the local number in pesos beside the dollar one, so nobody has to ask for it. Publish the page in Spanish. Name the temazcalero and the healer the way the facilitator is named. Hold a fixed count of places rather than an unspecified few. None of these choices is expensive. All of it is uncomfortable, which is the only reason it remains unusual.
Mexico has never been short of healing. What the industry built on top of it has been short of is a way back in for the people it borrowed from. One program at the base of Los Picachos has propped that door open with a paragraph, and the more interesting question now belongs to everyone else setting up here.
“Access and inclusion in wellness and healing spaces is also a huge problem in the U.S., where many underserved communities cannot afford the kinds of transformative and healing experiences that could support them,” Berman says. “Transformative experiences have profoundly changed my own life, and I believe access to them cannot be limited to people with financial privilege. My hope for Lifeforce Labs is to continue building that principle into the model from the beginning. For my next retreat, I aim to secure grant funding that allows us to offer even more subsidized spaces and scholarships in the U.S. as well, to those in deep need of self-nourishment.”
– Ashley Stachon, Director of Metta Mama at Metta Yoga in San Rafael, with 20+ years of experience in yoga and somatic movement, will serve as the lead retreat assistant.
Answer Your Call to Adventure takes place January 25 to 29, 2027, at a private retreat property at the base of Los Picachos, approximately twenty minutes from the historic center of San Miguel de Allende.
Shared occupancy begins at $2,099 USD with early-bird pricing ($2,399 standard), and private rooms begin at $2,599 ($2,899 standard), with two of five private rooms remaining. Early-bird pricing ends October 4, 2026.
For Mexico residents and members of the San Miguel community, eight non-overnight passes are available on a sliding scale of 4,000 to 6,000 pesos. Local passes include participation in the retreat’s practices, workshops, meals, and ceremonies, but do not include overnight accommodations. Those interested should email Alison at [email protected] to express interest and schedule a call with her before registering.
The retreat includes four nights of accommodations, three meals daily, Kundalini Yoga and somatic practices, mythic workshops and storytelling, ceremonies, a temazcal, and time to explore San Miguel. Private massage, equine-assisted experiences, and additional outings are available as optional add-ons.
Learn more and register at the Answer Your Call to Adventure Retreat page.
A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel.
