Take part in a master-led healing retreat in the Maldives

My body is melting into a puddle of gold. In reality, I’m lying on the floor in a timber-clad room suspended over a sparkling Indian Ocean lagoon. Both sound far-fetched, but I’m at a master-led healing retreat in the Maldives, and scenarios like this have become my new normal.

I’ve travelled to The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands to spend four days with Susy Markoe Schieffelin, an LA-based sound healer, kundalini yoga teacher and reiki master, who’s in residence at the hotel as part of its Masters of Crafts programme.

Over a lunch of spicy tuna poke bowls, looking out across a circular infinity pool, Susy explains the powerful healing qualities of sound. “As soothing frequencies created by the bowls wash over you, your brainwaves quickly and effortlessly shift into the deeply restorative alpha, theta or even delta states, similar to meditation or deep sleep,” she says. “This allows profound relaxation, emotional release and energetic realignment to happen effortlessly.”

For Susy, years of suffering from anxiety, alcoholism and addiction had driven her to hit rock bottom. A chance opportunity to attend a group sound bath quite literally changed the course of her life. She quit her job in luxury hospitality, trained as a reiki master and started leading her own sound-healing experiences soon after.

Fast forward eight years and millions of people have experienced her sound baths both online and in person. During the sessions, Susy uses her signature crystal bowls. “They’re made of 99.9% pure quartz crystal and infused with precious metals, gemstones and earth elements,” she tells me. “Each bowl creates frequencies that connect with either a chakra (an energy centre) or an endocrine gland, which produce hormones, supporting deep physical and emotional healing.” While most of her sessions are now held online, I get to enjoy the rare privilege of one-on-one time with Susy as part of my personalised retreat in the Maldives.

This is how I end up making my way to the hotel’s halo-shaped spa, located across a slim boardwalk leading out into the ocean. A ring of circular overwater villas wraps around it like a cocoon, a design devised by renowned Australian firm Kerry Hill Architects and one that looks like it’s been dropped from space.

After a short meditation and intention-setting session, I lie down on a mattress and Susy covers my eyes with a small pillow. As she starts to play her bowls, I quickly sink into a stupor, the sound moving through me as if it’s massaging different parts of my body. I dip in and out of consciousness, unaware of time passing and unsure when Susy is playing the bowls or using the healing practice of reiki by moving her hands across my body.

It’s as the sounds disappear into silence that my body melts to gold, my mind a lake of iridescent calm. A twinkling bell brings me back to the real world and as I sit up, Susy invites me to pull an oracle card from her deck. When I turn it over and see the word ‘gold’ spelled out in capital letters and an image of a figure basking in it, goosebumps erupt up my arms and tears prick my eyes. After a few months bogged down by self-doubt, it’s the reassuring sign I’ve been searching for — a reminder that I’m on the right path.

Cycling back along the boardwalk and looking out at the translucent turquoise water that stretches out in every direction, I feel the lightest I have in months. I park my bike by my villa and plunge from its pontoon into the warm Maldivian waters before floating on my back beneath the vast bowl of periwinkle-blue sky.

In between sessions with Susy, I experience other exclusive wellness offerings including an energising one-on-one yoga class with the island’s in-house yoga teacher, Kadek Suyadnya, and a balancing treatment at the Bamford spa, which combines bamboo tapping, gua sha (a skin-scraping treatment) and a traditional massage. A snorkelling trip to a nearby reef with the resort’s naturalist Olivia Forster almost feels like a moving meditation. While a passing storm buckets down above us, underwater everything is at peace, and we float serenely alongside turtles and an array of rainbow-coloured fish.

On my last evening, I join a group sound-healing session with a difference. As opposed to the traditional approach of lying down, the nine of us are suspended in our own aerial yoga hammocks, strung from the ceiling of the fitness studio. In this cosy floating cocoon, I drop back into a similar restorative state to the one experienced in the individual session. The hour of sound passes in what feels like a flash and once again I leave feeling lighter and clearer, any creeping chatter in my mind washed away.

On the plane back, I put my headphones in and listen to one of Susy’s recorded sessions on Spotify. The sounds transport me back to those moments of complete calm — a piece of Maldives’ magic coming home with me.