Six clients, six radically different journeys, and yet the same advice I gave them all: Chenot.
- A woman of twenty-eight, better informed than almost anyone I know, carrying a diagnosis and a body that will not do what she asks of it.
- A woman of thirty-nine who has spent a decade running fast-growing companies in the AI space, and who has given it everything, and who now has nothing left over.
- A man of forty-eight with offices in four time zones, who has decided without ever quite saying so that sleep is optional. Eighteen very good months for the business. Eighteen very bad ones for his gut.
- A chairman who has spent two years between Asian and American time zones and can no longer tell you where home is. Nothing whatsoever is wrong with him, that is rather the point.
- A singer and painter of forty-two who has never once taken a week for herself, and whose body has chosen this year to change the rules on her.
- An ex pro athlete, retired four years ago, still young, who had the best coaches in the world, and who does not recognise the person in the mirror.
They have nothing in common. Every one of them expected a different address.
I sent all six to the same health resort (Chenot !), against all odds.
This letter opens a series on the few houses in the world that both inspire and genuinely repair. Chenot Palace Weggis goes first. Not because it is the most beautiful, and certainly not because it is the most fashionable. Because it is the one I am least often wrong about.
I. The Place
A lake, a mountain, and nothing to decide
Weggis lies on the western shore of Lake Lucerne, an hour from Zurich. It is a stretch of lakeside mild enough that the Swiss call it their Riviera. There are palm trees. Yes, palm trees in Switzerland.
The clinic occupies several buildings, some historical and some new, so the rooms run from small, which they call the Nest, up to lake-facing suites where the view does a good deal of the work unaided. And for each room category, the budget is surprisingly reasonable for this level of comfort in Switzerland. You will be in the room to sleep, and you may sleep more than you have in years.
What matters is the shape of the week. Everything is under one roof, so to say. You do not go out of Chenot for dinner, because there is nowhere you would want to go, and nothing you would be allowed to eat. The gate closes. The lake sits there, and you pursue your Chenot protocol.
The removal of decisions is the first cure. For me, it's one of the essential treatments.
II. The Method
Nothing is improvised, and that is the kindness of it
Seven in the morning, and the corridor smells faintly of ginger.
The Chenot Method sets Western diagnostics beside Eastern energy work and mud wraps, adds technology, and runs the whole thing to a daily rhythm refined over decades. You are assessed on arrival. The week is then adjusted depending on what the assessment finds. The rhythm underneath it does not change for anybody.
The food, since everyone asks. It's truly delicious. Most guests eat around 850 calories a day, though not the ones who come for five-night stays, or who really need to gain weight and keep muscle (like myself). The Chenot Diet is a designed restriction meant to tip the body into cellular renewal. It works, and it is genuinely unkind on days two and three, but totally worth it.
Nobody warns you about the weather that comes with it, so let me explain. When the body puts down what it has been carrying, feelings arrive unannounced and with nothing attached to them. I have cried in a corridor at Chenot. And I was not the only one while I was there.
Which is why the Chenot staff are the thing they are actually selling. I have spent my career watching how guests are handled in the most expensive places around the world, and warmth is never guaranteed, even when the prices go up. Not at Chenot. Each member of staff shows empathy. They are funny when that is wanted, silent when it is not. And always caring.
III. Chenot Programs
Five doors into the same house
Seven nights is the honest minimum for Chenot, but there is a 5-nights program too. Choosing the right program matters, and I'm here to help.
Advanced Detox. The famous one, and the right first visit for most people. It is where the twenty-eight year old went, but she stayed fifteen nights instead of seven. She had been turned away, politely, by other clinics whose doctors took one look at her file and preferred not to. The Weggis medical team read the file, decided to completely customise her program, and changed her life for good.
Recover & Energise. For arriving already emptied out. Two of the six went through this door, and they could not be less alike. One had run a global company into the ground of her own health. The other had spent forty-two years attending to everyone else and had never taken a week for herself. What the assessment found in the painter was not exhaustion at all, but perimenopause and hormones, which is its own long conversation and one I have written about elsewhere. She went home with a plan and, she tells me, with her hands working normally again.
Prevention & Ageing Well. Diagnostics and the actual thorough interpretation layer, aimed at the decades to come. The chairman, who has nothing wrong with him and knows it, and who wanted his brain back more than his body. He is the guest this program was designed for and the one who books it least often, because there is no symptom pushing him. But he now returns to Chenot twice a year and loves the compounding benefits of it.
Sleep Cycles. He came for his gut and for the weight gained in the last eighteen months. The assessment went after his sleep first, because his sleep sat upstream of both. He was, I gather, quite annoyed about it for two days. He has since rebooked.
Body Insights & Optimisation. Composition, metabolism, performance, and the most measurable of the five. The former athlete, who has been coached by the best in the world and did not need another coach. He needed a building that would take the decisions away for a few days, since he was not mentally ready for a full week, so he could start again from something other than guilt. He left with a routine he actually likes sticking to.
Insomnia, illness, hormones, burnout, weight, a body that used to be a career. Not six versions of one complaint. Six different lives, and Chenot addresses them all, and the root causes of the problems. As well as so many other client cases.
IV. First Time, or Ninth
The question they ask each other
Over the broth, or the alcohol-free apero, nobody asks what you do for a living.
They ask how often you come back. Many come every year. Some come twice. You learn more about a place like Chenot from that one question than from anything written about it.
The newcomers arrive somehow skeptical, usually dragged there by a spouse or a friend, or by me.
What disarms them is how medical it is, and how strong and profound the actual process is. They are measured, they are fed quite little, they are deeply looked after, and they go home with tangible improvements on all levels.
Chenot delivers excellence. And trust me, that is not an easy thing to deliver every week of the year.
V. Practicalities
When to go. Open all year, and there is no bad month, only different ones. Winter is a little austere, yet better than the rest of Switzerland thanks to the micro climate, and it suits the cure. Summer is green and the lake is at its best.
And through July and August every seven-night detox currently includes the Firm & Tone experience, which adds vacuum therapy or Lymphastim and a session of focused ultrasound. July and August are actually not too crowded at Chenot Palace Weggis, in case you were wondering.
When I say no. It is not a holiday, and the people who wanted one are unhappy by day 3. It is not for anyone hoping to be told they are already doing well. And if what you need is gut work in the Austrian tradition rather than a Chenot cleanse, I will say so and send you elsewhere: the two methods differ more than the brochures suggest.
When it is Chenot, but not Weggis. The method is available in a few other places. Gabala runs the full residential week and programs in Azerbaijan. The lighter version lives inside hotels, at L'Albereta near Milan, One&Only Portonovi, and Selman Marrakech. The pleasure of enjoying Chenot protocols, and Chenot diet, inside a holiday: it feels less clinical than Chenot Palace Weggis, and sometimes easier to combine Chenot programs while the family enjoys their week too.
What you take home. You return home with unprecedented levels of energy. And looking younger, with more presence. Usually, you also integrate one or two lifestyle habits you thought were optional until now. Mine was the use of my arms in my fitness routine: a HIIT with my water rowing machine, every day, with very loud trance music, because otherwise it is so boring.
VI. From One Traveller to Another
Why open with Chenot?
Because I have spent years inside these health resorts and wellness clinics: the converted alpine palaces, the desert retreats, the Italian clinics, the hotels with wellness packages that photograph so well, and almost all of them lean on luxury or medicine, rather than marrying both. The dream or the science.
Weggis is exceptional at delivering both a true high-end experience and preventive health, in a highly structured format which makes it actually repeatable.
About the six clients I told you about: all six came home. Not one of them had the same week. That is the whole thing, really. But the core protocol looked strikingly similar. And yet the experience and the path to wellbeing was very different for each of them.
It is also one of the only places I would pay to go back to. I am invited anywhere. But Chenot is where I want to return.
— Victoire
Flights, transfers, the right room, and above all the right program for the state you are actually in rather than the one you booked in a hurry. We arrange all of it, and our guests receive amenities that are not available booking direct.
The wellness clinic this letter is about
Chenot Palace Weggis
Weggis, Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland
Independent advice, the right program for you, and amenities you cannot get booking direct.
Serenity Ways exclusive perks
- 160 CHF spa credit when you book a Junior Suite or Suite
- Facial treatment (190 CHF value)
- Skincare product (140 CHF value)
Advanced Detox
From CHF 8,370
7 nights · 1 guest · cheapest room
