Fivelements Ubud

By Karine Lackner

WHERE WELLNESS BECOMES A RITUAL

t Fivelements Ubud, wellness is not something added to the experience. It is woven through everything, from the food on your plate and the river beside the spa to ancient rituals that invite you to release what no longer belongs in your life.

Set amid the lush tropical landscape of Bali and embraced by the flowing Ayung River, Fivelements Ubud feels less like a traditional wellness resort and more like entering another rhythm of life.

Here, nature is not simply the backdrop. It is part of the experience.

Water, bamboo, tropical vegetation, fire, food, and Balinese traditions come together to create an environment that encourages you to slow down, listen and reconnect to our innate wisdom of being.

And over the course of my stay, I discovered that all these memorable experiences were also the simplest: the sound of a river during the traditional foot bath before the massage, a fresh young coconut, an extraordinary plant-based dinner, a piece of paper placed into a ceremonial fire.

Wellness You Can Drink

Even the drinks menu reflects Fivelements’ philosophy of nourishment.

There are pure tropical juices such as watermelon lemonade, Electrozyme Tonic, Super Immunity Booster and cleansing green juice, alongside concentrated wellness elixirs containing turmeric, moringa, ginger and healing roots.

Sparkling lemongrass and tonic, rosella kombucha and fresh young coconut water offer lighter alternatives, while the superfood smoothies and shakes feel almost like meals themselves: Green Energy Smoothie, Balinese Superfood Smoothie, Himalayan Goji and Matcha Super Green sit alongside more indulgent choices such as Chocolate Mousse Shake and Strawberry Vanilla Milkshake.

Then there are the intriguing Stingless Bee Honey creations, combining tropical ingredients in drinks such as the Virgin Pineapple Coconut Cooler and Lemon Basil Refresher.

It is a drinks menu that manages to make wellness feel abundant rather than restrictive.

PLANT-BASED CUISINE WITHOUT THE FEELING OF SACRIFICE

The same philosophy continues in the kitchen.

Fivelements Ubud demonstrates how creative plant-forward cuisine can become when vegetables, herbs, spices, grains and fermentation are treated as protagonists rather than side dishes.

Kale avocado tartare, chickpea and cassava flatbread, Southeast Asian-style tacos, mushroom dumplings, and the Fivelements Superfood Salad are among the lighter dishes.

The main courses become more adventurous.

There is an awesome (not so) spicy avocado nori roll I had, Tropical Garden Pizza, curry laksa, shiitake beetroot burger, beetroot and red rice risotto and a Balinese sampler, alongside changing dinner specials such as Asian kale slaw and barley-moringa risotto.

Soups might include mushroom coconut or miso, while the Fermentary introduces another dimension to the culinary philosophy.

Fish, including pan-seared barramundi, may also be available separately, although it should not be confused with the retreat’s plant-based menus. It’s an option, which with the variety of dishes and flavors never crossed my mind.

For those wanting to turn dinner into an experience of its own, there is a Chef’s Tasting Menu and the beautiful Bamboo Dining Experience.

And then there is breakfast. A new breakfast world opened for me.

Breakfast at Fivelements Ubud deserves another story entirely. It was simply exceptional, overwhelmingly nutritious, the kind of breakfast that makes you reconsider why the first meal of the day is so often treated as an afterthought.

“It was simply exceptional, overwhelmingly nutritious, the kind of breakfast that makes you reconsider.”

THE SOUND OF THE AYUNG

My afternoon, however, belonged to the spa.

The wellness sanctuary sits alongside the Ayung River. Here all the ingredients for scrubs and treatments are carefully prepared in the healing laboratory.

The ritual began with a traditional Balinese foot bath.

From the first moment the sound of flowing water becomes part of it, then the sound of Tibetan sound bowl takes over with another frequency to declare the start of the massage session. Delicious coconut oil scent enhances the feeling of total pleasure and relief from any lingering thoughts.

There is something profoundly soothing about receiving a massage while a river moves beside you. No soundtrack can really imitate it.

The Balinese massage was extraordinary.

Hot bamboo was incorporated into the treatment, but what impressed me most were the hands of my therapist. Her understanding of pressure, movement and rhythm was exceptional. She seemed instinctively to know where pressure was needed, how much to apply and when to soften.

There was a beautiful flow to the entire treatment.

And then came the facial.

I have experienced countless treatments over the years, but I genuinely struggled to remember the last time I had received a facial this good. It felt precise, professional, and deeply restorative.

But the afternoon wasn’t finished, the most meaningful part was still to come.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KEEP?

Before the ceremony, we were invited to write.

On a piece of paper, we considered what we wished to welcome into our lives, and, more importantly, what we were ready to leave behind.

What do I want? What no longer serves me? What am I willing to release?

They are remarkably simple questions. Yet when you are sitting in Bali, surrounded by nature and preparing to take part in a centuries-old spiritual tradition, they somehow acquire a different weight.

We carried those thoughts with us into the fire ceremony.

INTO THE FIRE

For approximately 45 minutes, a Balinese priest guided us through a world of mantras, prayers, offerings, blessings, and fire.

Watching the ritual offered a glimpse into something much deeper than a wellness activity. It connected us, even briefly, with the spiritual traditions that remain part of everyday Balinese life, in temples, homes and communities across the island.

There was a moment to bless ourselves, and our families. Our friends. And the world.

And there was a moment to receive. To stop controlling everything and simply open ourselves to whatever life, or the universe, might bring.

Then came the release. The paper containing what we no longer wished to carry was offered to the fire. But another symbolic ritual stayed with me even more strongly.

Holding a young coconut, we were invited to mentally place into it the things we wanted to let go of, the unwanted thoughts, patterns, ego, fears, or whatever else had become too heavy to continue carrying.

Then came the physical act. The coconut had to be struck hard against a rock until it broke, there was something incredibly powerful about it.

A thought becomes an intention. The intention becomes an action. And then what you have chosen to release disappears into the fire.

Flames consume it. Smoke rises, and for a moment, you simply watch it go.

Whether one approaches such rituals spiritually, symbolically, or psychologically almost doesn’t matter. The act of consciously deciding that something no longer deserves space in your life can itself be profound.

It was magical.

FROM FIRE TO WATER

After the ceremony, we walked back to our beautiful villa, passing old trees, small waterfalls, entering a different world for a few days. There was something wonderfully elemental about what followed.

After the fire, there was water.

I stepped into the open-air shower beside our private pool, surrounded by Bali’s tropical atmosphere, the moon, the old trees, and then got ready for dinner.

By then, the entire day seemed to have developed its own rhythm: nourishment, touch, water, reflection, fire, release, and finally celebration.

Dinner awaited in the magical bamboo sanctuary, where the light is dimmed so one feels hidden from the rest of the world, just surrounded by smiling people.

AND THEN CAME DESSERT…

Even after such a day, Fivelements Ubud still had one final challenge for me.

Choosing dessert.

There was coconut-cashew ice cream in vanilla or white chocolate, raw chocolate and truffles, a trio of seasonal tropical-fruit sorbets, mocha semifreddo, pandan coconut panna cotta, coconut-lime cheesecake, Chocolate Symphony, and a delicate coconut-passion-fruit blossom.

How exactly are you supposed to choose?

Fortunately, at Fivelements Ubud, it is difficult to make the wrong decision. Whatever arrives at the table feels like the perfect ending.

MORE THAN A WELLNESS RETREAT

What stayed with me most about Fivelements Ubud was not one massage, dish or ceremony.

It was the way everything connected.

The food nourishes without feeling restrictive. The spa does not separate treatment from nature. The frequency of the river becomes part of the massage. Balinese spirituality is not reduced to decoration. And the ceremony asks you to participate rather than merely observe.

Modern wellness often promises that we can add something to ourselves, a treatment, supplement, technology or practice to become better.

Fivelements Ubud quietly proposes another possibility, wellbeing is sometimes about removing.

Removing noise and tension. Removing habits and thoughts that have outlived their purpose.

Removing, even for a little while, the constant need to hurry. And that is why the image I will remember is not simply the beautiful villa, the extraordinary food or the Ayung River.

It is a coconut breaking against a rock. A small piece of paper disappearing into a ceremonial fire.

And the strangely liberating feeling of watching something you no longer need turn into smoke, and letting it go.