Rest assured: Sha Wellness Clinic to open first Middle East facility
Sha Wellness Clinic has announced plans to bring its award-winning health proposition to the UAE. Sha Emirates will open in 2023 at AlJurf, a destination halfway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, that’s currently under development by Abu Dhabi’s Imkan.
For Alejandro Bataller Pineda, vice president and cofounder of Sha, Sha Emirates represents an important milestone for the world-famous wellness clinic. “We’ve been operating Sha for 11 years, and from the very beginning, we dreamt of opening more than one property, but we soon discovered how challenging it was to transform someone’s life in a time frame as short as seven days,” he says.
“We thought it was more realistic to open one Sha per continent,” he elaborates. For the Middle East, Abu Dhabi is the location of choice. Sha Emirates will consist of 120 rooms spread over 125,000 square metres of pristine coastal land shared with sea turtles, gazelles and various species of birds.
Using a fusion of ancient eastern disciplines and modern western techniques, Sha Emirates will offer a range of treatments, procedures and programmes. From cleansing and detox to nutrition-led plans that make use of macrobiotics, the facility will tailor its services specifically to the requirements of individual guests.
Walid El-Hindi, chief executive of Imkan, explains that the site is also a place of historic importance. “AlJurf in Arabic means the hill, you feel it’s something elevated and it is also the sea. This was the historic name given to this area by the ancestors of this country,” he explains.
The original Sha facility, which has won more than 100 wellness awards, is in Alicante, Spain, and has a clifftop location overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. A second clinic is set to open in Mexico in 2021. Sha Emirates will draw on both of these properties, but will also have its own identity. This will include a sleek design that makes use of local materials and sustainable building methods. The carbon footprint of the entire AlJurf project will be limited, and indigenous wildlife will be protected.
Sha Emirates will follow the same principles of the original clinic, where the team have been perfecting their treatments for more than a decade. “Our goal is to keep Sha Emirates 80 per cent the same, and then 20 per cent personalised, following three principles,” explains Bataller Pineda. “One is to take advantage of the local culture, knowledge and treatments. The second is our nutrition, to take advantage of what nature has to offer around us. Third, we want every Sha property to have a unique signature that the others don’t have,” he laughs. “But we’re not going to reveal that today.”
Sha Emirates is set to have a sleek design that makes use of local materials and is sympathetic to its natural environment
Located less than 40 minutes from Dubai Marina or Abu Dhabi, Sha Emirates will feel a world away from the big city. “What we want is for guests to not feel the need to go outside; this is key to our reputation. They must not feel any temptation, but they also cannot feel trapped. We want you to feel that you’re in the right place,” explains Bataller Pineda.
Transforming someone’s life in less than a month is a big ask, but Sha’s goal-focused treatments, which include watsu (a type of underwater shiatsu massage), sound wave therapy and Japanese-inspired macrobiotic menus, have proven successful. And with over 6,000 guests visiting the Spanish location every year, it must be doing something right.