The Swiss resort town of Gstaad – pronounced “Shtahd” by those in the know – needs little introduction. It’s a snow-globe billionaire’s playground that prides itself on its understatement – unlike its glitzier sister resort town, St Moritz. Inside the town’s picturesque traditional weathered wood chalets, you may find a full “iceberg” renovation – four storeys added below surface, perhaps with a heated swimming pool or a dance floor. Elizabeth Taylor, Roger Moore and Prince Rainier of Monaco have all owned chalets here. The town also caters to non-skiers. Those who take their winter holiday in the French Alps at resorts like Courchevel and Chamonix tend to be serious about their skiing, rising early for a full day on the slopes; in Gstaad, 30 to 40 per cent of visitors do not come to ski. This is the observation of Tim Weiland, the German general manager at The Alpina Gstaad, a five-star hotel that opened its doors in 2012. Snowflakes have begun to fall as we arrive and the tree-lined pistes are beckoning with their icing-sugar snow. Expecting a queue, we rush for our ski fitting. We needn’t have. From the whole 56-room hotel, ours is one of only three rooms whose occupants have come to ski. How do we fix our brains once the Covid-19 nightmare finally ends? After a thrilling morning carving up deserted slopes (a Gstaad lift pass covers 200km, or 125 miles, of pistes), a treat awaits: the hotel’s famous spa, the only Six Senses Spa in Switzerland. As I enter the calm, Asian-inspired space, I realise now where everyone has been. The therapists are booked back-to-back and guests in fluffy robes and slippers are lounging by the subterranean pool, with facilities including hydrotherapy tubs, a juice bar, colour therapy room, hammam bathing room, a salt room and much more all available. I enjoy a deep tissue massage from Clara, a therapist from Barcelona. She expertly teases out all the knots from my back using myofascial release, which functions in a similar way to cupping . Next is a session with head therapist Antonis Sarris, a Greek holistic therapist who specialises in tai chi, traditional Tibetan medicine and energy treatments. Under his direction the hotel recently implemented a stress-relieving Tibetan healing retreat that includes meditation, yoga, Hor-me therapy (which uses herbal sacks soaked in hot oil to heat certain acupressure points), the three-stage Kunye oil massage, and sound healing . Today, though, he is going to cleanse my chakras, the seven points of energy (directly translated as “wheels”) throughout the body, according to Ayurvedic medicine . I lie down on the bed and for the next hour he does Universal White Time Healing, an energy healing technique using his hands hovering an inch over my head and body. I can feel areas of intense heat and at one point, convinced he must be holding something hot above my arm, I open my eyes, but it is just his hands. At the end of the hour-long session he shares what he saw in my chakras, strange visions that relate to deaths from past lives, including the energy imprint of a spear in my right shoulder, and one blocking my throat chakra, of a noose around my neck. He found swellings and strange colours around my stomach and left brain, which he told me he cleaned up to improve the energy flow. Whether or not I believe in the chakras, my digestion did seem to improve over the next few days and perhaps I did regain a little more clarity. It might just be the Alpine air. A time-poor, high-flying set are drawn to the hotel, suffering from burnout or anxiety, looking for respite, Weiland says over a glass of Veuve Clicquot in the lobby bar. “A lot of our guests experience the hotel as a safe haven, away from their hectic lives,” he says. “They come and they don’t want to leave.” The hotel taps the growing demand for wellness tourism, defined as “travel associated with the pursuit of maintaining or enhancing one’s personal well-being” by the US-based non-profit Global Wellness Institute (GWI). The institute predicts annual growth in wellness tourism of 21 per cent up to 2025, bringing the sector’s value to US$1.1 trillion. To ensure patrons get quality sleep , the hotel is launching a new sleep suite with a FreshBed temperature-controlled bed that keeps track of your temperature during the night, heating up or cooling down accordingly. In these suites, herbal tea, sugar-free snacks and CBD drinks will take the place of alcohol, caffeine and less healthy goodies. Energy supplements that work with your biorhythm (the idea that our daily lives are affected by rhythmic physical, emotional and intellectual cycles of varying lengths) will be provided, following a spa consultation, along with a pair of Swanwick blue-light-blocking reading glasses to wear two hours before bed. The resort’s creative director and chairman, Nachson Mimran, found his sleep improved after wearing the glasses. He appears at the hotel bar with a customised pair perched on his nose. Mimran has helped shape the hotel’s focus on “wellness and regeneration, on the best waking experiences and the best night’s sleep”, he says. He also helped frame the zero-waste, healthy culinary ethos orchestrated by hotel executive chef Martin Göschel, whose specialities include faux foie gras made from tofu , sole baked in beeswax from the hotel’s beehives, and a golden latte made from coconut milk, ginger and turmeric that I order at breakfast. Perhaps the biggest drawback to my stay at this wellness oasis is that it must come to an end. The writer was a guest of The Alpina Gstaad. Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here .