Yoga and Energy Healing in a Former Hudson Valley Mansion

22.02.2024 - 16:15 / nytimes.com

When the Ranch at Malibu opened in 2010 as a luxury health resort on 200 acres in California’s Santa Monica Mountains, its approach was somewhat radical: Guests signed up for a full week of group hikes, fitness classes, spa treatments, nutrition consults and communal, organic meals without caffeine, gluten, soy or dairy. The goal, says its founder Alex Glasscock, was “for people to mentally and physically reset and recharge.” On April 15, a second location, the Ranch at Hudson Valley, is scheduled to open near Tuxedo Park, N.Y., in a slate-and-stone lakefront mansion surrounded by state parks. Glasscock hopes the 25-room property, which he describes as “like a big, luxury dorm,” will facilitate connections between those who stay. Guests will do yoga under the ornate plaster ceiling of the former ballroom and, in Glasscock’s ideal world, come to dinner in their pajamas and robes. This new outpost offers a few additional treatments including colonics and energy healings — which incorporate techniques such as hypnosis and sound therapy. In winter, guests can sled or snowshoe, and in summer there’s paddleboarding on the lake. The Ranch has also relaxed a few of the restrictions: You can book three nights at the Hudson Valley property instead of the seven required in Malibu, and, in concession to the most common request of all, caffeine is no longer taboo — organic Nicaraguan coffee is served at breakfast in both locations.

For much of the 20th century, the Michigan furniture company Herman Miller was the star-maker of American design, responsible for turning Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames into household names. But the brand’s archive, which spans 119 years, also includes contributions from hundreds of talents whom history has overlooked, and whose work Herman Miller’s team began resurfacing through an ongoing collectible poster series launched in 2021. Among those getting their due in the project’s latest edition, which debuts next week, are Linda Powell and Barbara Loveland, who worked in the company’s graphics department in the ’80s and ’90s: Powell’s rainbow-striped 1978 Ideas magazine cover is now a poster, as is Loveland’s 1981 promotional print for the Wilkes Modular sofa (aka the Chiclet). The standout of the collection, though, is a group of three abstract Op Art compositions by the Japanese American graphic designer Tomoko Miho; as head of George Nelson’s design team and later of her own firm, she counted among her clients not just Herman Miller but Noguchi, MoMA and the Smithsonian. “She’s someone who did the work but wasn’t, as many women weren’t, quite celebrated,” says Amy Auscherman, Herman Miller’s archive director. “She created a lot of bangers, so it’s great to