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I was sitting in a hotel with my feet in a bucket of warm water charged with electricity when it suddenly hit me that maybe "getting well" wasn't going to be as much fun as I thought.

I was receiving an "ionic detox foot bath," one of dozens of allegedly medicinal services offered during a Health and Wellness Weekend held in November at the Edge Hotel in Lyons Falls, New York.

The bath involved placing my feet in a small bucket of salt water charged with a small current for half an hour - a process that was meant to draw out the "yucky stuff" in my body by osmosis, according to its practitioner, Brenda, who assured me the bath was perfectly safe.

"But," she added with a laugh, "I don't know anything about ampage."

Oh, boy. At first glance, this mission had seemed like a breeze: a search for "wellness" - that state that has become as common a come-on in travel circles as "eco-friendly." There are wellness retreats, wellness diets, wellness beauty treatments, wellness classes, wellness resorts, wellness hotels and wellness weekends.

But what exactly is wellness? I thought I'd find out. And so I embarked on a search across the United States. I meditated and hyperventilated, and was ceremonially "crowned." And at the Esalen Institute on the California coast, I got naked with a bunch of strangers.

Esalen, the 50-year-old institute still advertising its goal of "pioneering deep change in self and society," seemed like a pretty good place to explore wellness.

Esalen has commanding views of the California coastline. I went to a relaxing early-morning guided meditation.

I was a touch nervous about the details of the next Esalen tradition: the bath. While the baths are not formally nude-only, I saw not a stitch of clothing on my fellow bathers. Not that I was looking.

With the sun sliding beneath the horizon, questions of modesty or embarrassment quickly vanished. I could hang out here - and let it all hang out here - for a while.

Another stop was Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort just south of the border, in Tecate, Mexico.

I was wandering toward the Rancho's labyrinth - an inlaid stone maze - when I was approached by Briggitte McReynolds, who asked me whether I wanted to "get crowned."

Was it a euphemism for a mind-altering substance? No. Instead, Ms. McReynolds had been running a workshop on making ceremonial crowns out of paper decorated with feathers, baubles, fake flowers and butterflies. Would I, she asked, "energize" one of the crowns in a ceremony?

Well, sure.

Each person would talk about why they made the crown, walk the labyrinth, and then place the crown on their heads.

I rolled my eyes. But then, Ms. McReynolds changed my perspective. "Don't worry," she said. "We're just making this up."

And then, when people began to talk about why they made their crowns and what they symbolized - finding their voice, finding wisdom, for their grandchildren - it was hard not to be touched. I walked back to my room feeling surprisingly good.

Maybe that was it. Maybe wellness - like a crowning ceremony - was just what you made it: a catchall of anything and everything aimed at making you happy, or healthy, or whatever. And just like walking a labyrinth with a paper crown, it might not lead anywhere in the end. But it feels good while you're doing it.

The New York Times

(China Daily 01/06/2013 page9)