The compression boots went on first, zipped around my legs from little wiggling toes all the way to my hips. I was flat on my back in a zero-gravity bed at Ember Lily Spa in Jackson, trying out their brand-new recovery circuit.
It’s one of a growing number of such offerings across Wyoming, where resorts, ranches, and spas are leaning hard into a booming global wellness trend.
In Wyoming, the search for wellness can mean sweating it out in a 175-degree sauna before plunging into 52-degree water. It might mean goat yoga for some, or Vino and Vinyasa for others.
It could be high-tech and high-dollar, or just a simple walk in the woods. Call the latter forest bathing if you will, but the promise remains the same regardless of price level or woo-woo description.
It’s a chance to leave feeling restored and less wound up.
The wellness-tourism boom is showing up indirectly in the state’s own tourism research, the Wyoming Office of Tourism’s Hailey Stevens said. At least 19% of Wyoming travelers have identified mineral hot springs as among their destinations.
Tourists, Stevens added, have different expectations than they once did for their Wyoming vacations.
“What we’re seeing isn’t just interest in Yellowstone,” she said. “It’s really a shift in what people hope to get out of travel — people are looking for those places that help them to really reconnect with nature, spending more meaningful time together and returning home feeling restored.”
The Office of Tourism doesn’t track wellness tourism as a specific category, Stevens added. But the demand for restoration and outdoor connection has become increasingly visible.
“Wyoming is a natural fit for this type of travel,” she said. “Whether it’s soaking in hot springs, spending time in the outdoors, disconnecting from technology, or simply slowing down in wide-open spaces.”
The Ember Lilly Spa is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A massage table at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Pink electrolyte water is supposed to replace vital minerals that can be lost at high elevations. It's available at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Himalayan salt therapy room at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
High-Tech Healing In Jackson
Ember Lily’s recovery circuit is only weeks old, and I’m one of its first customers — or is that a guinea pig?
Some of the kinks are still being worked out, my spa hostess told me with a smile. But she added that she has tried the compression boots and thinks I’m really going to like them.
They should prevent soreness by improving blood flow in my feet and legs, she said, particularly after a long day of winter skiing or summer hiking.
“It feels nice at the end,” she reassured me. “Your legs will definitely be able to tell the difference.”
She hooked my zippered boots up to a pair of compression hoses, and I heard a little “snick,” a bit like a seatbelt latching. It felt like the point of no return. She flipped a switch and the leg tightening began, starting with my toes.
At first, it was so gentle and so slow, I wondered if my feet were in the boots right. Didn’t my feet need to be tucked all the way into the toe portion?
“Not to worry,” she assured me. “It just takes a second.”
No sooner did she say this than the real tightening began. An iron grip seized my toes and swiftly climbed to my ankles.
She handed me a pair of vibrating goggles to wear over my eyes.
“These have a thermal setting, a vibration setting, and also just three different settings you can try out,” she said. “You can adjust them right here in the back.”
“This is serious business,” I said, looking the goggles over.
“It is, yes,” she agreed with a chuckle.
I put the goggles on and felt instant heat against my face, as well as a bee-buzz hopping around, circling my eyes.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Does it feel nice?”
“It’s distracting me from what’s happening to my legs!” I said and laughed.
As the iron vise continued climbing, higher and higher, tighter and tighter, I couldn’t help but add, “That’s probably a good thing.”
It was a bit like a blood pressure cuff at the doctor’s office, squeezing long after it’s already as tight as it’s ever going to get.
A large hot tub area is available at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
An interior hot tub at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
These compresson boots are part of a four-station recovery circuit at the Ember Lily Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, which is now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Andi Kerr adjusts compression boots for Cowboy State Daily at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Pink Holy Water
The high-pressure squeezing and the buzzing goggles were actually Station No. 2 in Ember Lily’s $45 athletic recovery experience.
That begins with a hydration station, where guests choose between herbal tea or electrolyte water. The latter is designed to replenish vital minerals lost to high elevation and grueling mountain sports.
Not that I’d done anything grueling, but I opted for the electrolyte water, which to my mind seemed akin to wellness holy water.
It came gushing out of the dispenser a decidedly unholy, bright pink. Neon juice in a glass.
“Oh wow,” I said, eyeing the almost beet-colored juice. “Is that going to make my pee pink?”
My spa hostess laughed, admitting she wasn’t sure.
“I haven’t tried it yet,” she said.
At first, I took only a cautious sip of the pink holy water before moving to compression and then aromatherapy.
My last station was called mineral immersion. I plunged my stockinged feet into a copper bowl of heated clay beads and was invited to smush them all around.
It was fun and relaxing. The music was mood-enhancing.
I felt so calm and relaxed I even finished drinking all my electrolyte water.
Who cares if it does turn my pee pink later?
It’s supposed to be good for me.
Yoga and goat yoga are among the wellness options that attract people to the Brush Creek Ranch near Saratoga looking for a Wyoming vacation while improving their health. (Brush Creek Ranch) 
Health tourism is a growing industry for Wyoming. (Brush Creek Ranch) 
Health tourism is a growing industry for Wyoming. (Brush Creek Ranch) 
Yoga and goat yoga are among the wellness options that attract people to the Brush Creek Ranch near Saratoga looking for a Wyoming vacation while improving their health. (Brush Creek Ranch)
What Of Swedish Massage?
Pink wellness water, vibrating goggles, and compression booties might sound a bit sci-fi. But they’re just the tip of the wellness iceberg.
Good old-fashioned Swedish massage and sauna days are still around. But things like “bio-hacking” have a trendier ring — exactly what luxury tourism venues are eager to sell.
Take, for example, the new Hoback Club just up the road from Jackson in Teton Village. The $400 million residential club has leaned heavily into wellness tourism, starting with air scrubbers and water filters for its members.
There is a fourth-floor wellness spa, where members travel a thermal circuit that cycles from a 175-degree sauna down to a 52-degree cold plunge. It’s supposed to shock the nervous system and crush muscle inflammation.
It all starts innocently enough in a Himalayan salt room that cost multiple millions to build. Floor-to-ceiling blocks of salt cover all four walls.
Guests choose their favorite color to illuminate the wall — purple, blue, yellow — whatever light feels best.
The walls are all just an expensive parlor trick, though.
The real work, I’m told, is done by a hidden machine that’s blowing salt particulates into the space.
“For our skin, it’s giving like a gentle exfoliation,” my thermal experience teacher Devin Bailey explained. “For our lungs, we’re like inhaling that salt and it’s creating an anti-inflammatory effect in the esophagus and the lungs.”
Yoga and goat yoga are among the wellness options that attract people to the Brush Creek Ranch near Saratoga looking for a Wyoming vacation while improving their health. (Brush Creek Ranch) 
A copper bowl of heated clay beads is supposed to soothe tired feet at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Andi Kerr hands an aromatherapy scent stick at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The mineral immersion therapy includes warmed clay beads for tired feet at the Ember Lilly Spa, which is part of the former Snow King Resort in Jackson, which is now known as Trailborn. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
When A Minute Lasts Forever
The thermal experience also unfolds in a relaxing space, where guests pay attention to breathing and settle into the warm hug of heated, zero-gravity lounges.
After this, heat that prickles the skin like cactus and then cold squeezes all that heat away. It will feel like muscles being run through an old-fashioned wringer washing machine — for an entire elongated minute.
All that sounds a lot easier than it felt, by the way. The one minute of cold felt like infinity.
“You’re at 40 seconds,” Bailey told me, and I couldn’t believe there was that much time left. “You’re almost there. Breathe. You can be laughing, you could be yelling, whatever you need to do.”
I laughed and wiggled my fingers at her. “Jazz fingers,” I said, trying to keep things lighthearted and distract myself as I waited for the last 20 seconds of infinity to end.
Finally, time released me from its icy grip. The countdown was over. I could get out.
But Bailey stopped me with a suggestion.
“You could stay another minute if you want to?”
That got roughly a nanosecond of confused consideration before I climbed out.
“You did really, really well,” she said.
“I feel numb,” I replied. “My feet are numb.”
“The heat in the sauna is going to feel really amazing,” she said.
“OK,” I said, shivering all over as we walked to the 175-degree sauna. “I feel like I just visited the doctor’s office and had a shot and the doctor’s like, ‘Here, do you want a piece of candy?’”
Bailey laughed at that and said, “You were such a good little girl.”
The heat after all that felt just as amazing as Bailey promised.
I really did feel like a million bucks as I walked away from that million-dollar salt room in Jackson Hole.
From Luxury Ranches To Rustic
Jackson’s not the only tourism destination leaning into wellness tourism, by far. It’s happening across the state at many different venues, ranging from high-end Brush Creek Ranch to more affordable options like the Boyer YL Ranch near Savery.
Both report substantial gains in people seeking wellness experiences since the COVID-19 pandemic, though neither could put a specific number to it.
Brush Creek offers a full complement of wellness programs, including forest bathing, sound baths, goat yoga, vino and vinyas.
A sound bath is where waves of sound and physical vibration wash over a person to create a meditative state.
Goat yoga is the most popular, and while other activities took longer to catch on, they are growing.
When Brush Creek Ranch’s wellness manager Caitlin Holleron first put forest bathing on the menu, for example, “not a single person signed up for it,” she said. “And now we’re doing forest bathing all the time.”
A new wellness experience just launched in August is already drawing guests, Holleron added. It’s called Trail to Tranquility and is a horseback ride to the historic schoolhouse for a sound bathing experience that Holleron said acts as a nervous system tuneup.
“Think about how you’d tune a guitar,” she said. “Our nervous system can get out of tune or dysregulated. Being in a sound healing helps the nervous system come into a state known as parasympathetic. So it’s really allowing your body to get into the state where it knows how to heal itself.”
A Brush Creek glamping experience starts at $4,500 a night for a package that can include up to eight people. Those who want even more pampering can get a three-bed cabin at The Lodge & Spa at Brush Creek Ranch starting at $9,700 per night for up to eight guests, or $1,212.50 per night per guest.
The company’s French Creek hunting and fishing ranch, which is a buy-out of four one-bed cabins and a yurt, starts at $8,800 for 14 people per night. That works out to about $628.50 per person per night.
A Long Walk In The Woods
At Boyer YL, the strategies might not come with sophisticated descriptions. But the foundation is solid, and it’s pure Wyoming.
“You’ve got all these uber high-end places that really cater to the uber-rich,” Jock Boyer told Cowboy State Daily. “This ranch is a huge opportunity in Wyoming for folks who don’t have 1,000 to 1,200 bucks a night to spend but still want to experience Wyoming.”
Boyer’s philosophy about health and wellness revolves around functional medicine, an approach he said he’s embraced for 40 years. Many of the most popular trends right now are tapping into that, he said, and all of that just comes naturally to Wyoming.
Take forest bathing, for example. That's basically just taking a nice long walk in the woods, Boyer said, which Boyer YL Ranch has in abundance.
“Forest bathing is pretty amazing because the red light that comes into the forest emits through the leaves,” he said. “The Japanese have done some pretty cool studies on that and what it actually does.”
Boyer hasn’t done much to hone in on that trend specifically. It’s just natural to the ranch.
Often, he finds a long walk in the forest is the kind of healing people didn’t even know they needed.
“One of our guests is a child neurologist and he leads a very stressful and a very emotional life,” Boyer said. “He came out here and he was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I had no idea how much I needed this place.’ And he would just stand in the field sometimes and cry.”
Later, after the neurologist returned home, Boyer kept getting texts from him saying that just thinking about the ranch was helping him cope better with his stressful job.
“We have a dog named Baloo who is an amazing therapy dog,” he added. “He just loves people, and he will just find the people who need it and spend the day with them.”
Like the family with an autistic child, who gained a pal for the duration of the trip, when Baloo decided to adopt the boy.
Global Wellness Tourism Nearing $1 Trillion
People have never been more interested in wellness, according to Global Wellness Institute research fellow Katherine Johnston.
The institute puts wellness tourism at $894 billion and growing, part of a wellness economy that has topped $6 trillion and is projected to pass $9 trillion by 2029.
“These shifts are fueling growth across all wellness sectors,” she said in the Institute’s latest report. “From wellness real estate and mental wellness to hot springs and social bathing, to more sophisticated preventative and medical wellness solutions.”
Grace Donohue has felt that shift in her own Reiki practice. My session with her at the Hoback Club felt like a spiritual blend of evergreen-scented soft touches and encouraging words, punctuated by melodies that splattered like raindrops across the mind.
After my session, Donohue said she’s seen a tenfold increase in her practice’s sessions, which blends a bit of her clinical counseling background with a lot of Reiki, a Japanese healing art that she describes as “acupuncture without the needles.”
“We’re working with energy,” she said. “With acupuncture, there’s a lot of meridians to activate and open up. Essentially, we do something very similar with Reiki, just no needles.”
Clients tell her that her unique approach really works for them to sleep better, feel better, and think more clearly about the problems they’re facing.
Donohue’s summation pulled at a thread that ran through every wellness tourism experience I tried. People feel that they’re wrestling with modern society and losing.
“We have a country that’s way too sick,” Boyer said. “So many chronic diseases. So much just poor food.”
We’re all chronically out of time to care for ourselves, Holleron said.
“Wellness is probably the first thing that gets put on the back burner when we get busy,” she said. “But it’s probably the very thing we need to put on the front burner.”
Wyoming offers an endless number of resets in all different shapes and forms. It could be a $45 recovery circuit with vibrating goggles and neon-pink electrolyte water and warm clay beads. It could be a Himalayan salt room, a 52-degree cold plunge and a 175-degree sauna in a luxury club.
It might mean goat yoga, a sound bath in a historic schoolhouse, or a plain and simple walk in the woods.
The packaging can be futuristic and expensive, or as simple as a river and a horse with a dog named Baloo who won’t leave your side.
It all points toward the same thing: People are missing a sense of peace in the modern world.
When they come to Wyoming, they hope to take some of it home with them, along with their souvenirs.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
