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Luxury Spa Resorts: Within the entirely renovated ME by Meliá resort, ostensibly Cabo San Lucas’ hippest and hottest urban resort where the fabulous come to stay and play, isYHI Spa — a 7,036-square-foot pleasure palace that transcends the traditional spa experience with comprehensive wellness and rebalancing encounters based on ancient healing traditions of the Mayans and Aztecs.

YHI Spa’s minimalist and subdued Zen-like atmosphere, where silence is revered, allows guests to duly focus on recharging and renewing their bodies, minds and spirits. As my body, mind and spirit was overdue for a recharge of its own, I recently visited YHI Spa with my husband for a couples deep tissue massage where, after a quick and friendly check-in, I was treated to a tour of the facility.

I was first whisked into a compact but well-appointed locker room with lockers for personal effects, a dry sauna, herbal steam room and shower and toiletries available for use. Here, I changed into a robe and slippers before I made my way through the rest of the facility.

YHI Spa is otherwise divided into three distinct centers: Fitness, Hydrotherapy and Relaxation. The Fitness Center is a world-class location that offers free-weights, nautilus machines, cardiovascular equipment, and a YHI MOVES Studio with an outdoor movement garden where special group Yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates classes are held.

The Hydrotherapy Ritual Center includes indoor and outdoor relaxation areas, thermo-hydrotherapy experiences, a native Temascal sweat lodge and an outdoor waterfall with a cascade-shower. Guests are actually invited to arrive an hour early to experience YHI Spa’s unique “Water Rituals” hydrotherapy circuit that involves participating in a series of heated and scented massage showers, which are set up along a path of heated stones leading to an outside spa therapy pool. Here, you can enjoy lounging in an underwater massage chair that overlooks the ocean until you are escorted inside to begin your spa treatment. It’s noteworthy to mention that each guest at YHI Spa is assigned a personal spa valet to ensure he or she garners the maximum benefit from the spa visit, personal escorts to the various facilities and otherwise.

YHI Spa’s Relaxation Center offers reflexology paths and a complete selection of signature spa treatments to help patrons relax and renew, with therapies designed to invigorate and purify. Therapists here incorporate indigenous and imported organic ingredients into the treatments, such as blue corn, Caribbean ginger and citrus honey, which are known to have therapeutic benefits.

YHI’s “Anuiti Collection spa ritual” treatments are categorized based on the various parts of the body being targeted: Exfoliations (body), Renewal (massages), Transformations (wraps), Restoration (facials) and Revitalization (scalp, hands and feet).

Exfoliation treatments include the 25-minute Pericu Body Polish, which revitalizes and moisturizes the skin with a combination of fruit essence (green apple and kiwi) and barks known by the Pericu shamans for their healing properties. Sea salt mixed with petals of Jamaica flowers and honey leaves your skin smooth, and the treatment ends with a refreshing spray from an herbal tonic using your selected scent.

My husband’s and my 80-minute Renewal deep tissue couple’s massage was delivered in one of YHI Spa’s many private cabana-esque treatment rooms with a fitting décor of natural materials and scents of aromatherapy wafting in the air. The treatment room also boasted a large private shower. The two therapists who executed our simultaneous deep tissue massages were quite adept at their craft, putting their hands, heart and soul into the treatments to assure our utter satisfaction, checking often to ensure we were comfortable, that the hand pressure was adequate and such. As an admitted massage snob with an insatiable appetite for deep tissue treatments, I can say that I would definitely return to YHI Spa for this — my treasured therapy.

***Some or all of the accommodations(s), experience(s), item(s) and/or service(s) detailed above may have been provided at no cost and/or arranged to accommodate this review, but all opinions expressed are entirely those of Merilee Kern and have not been influenced in any way as per the disclosure policy on our “Legal” page***