ALL IS WELL

THE ULTIMATE WELLNESS RESIDENCE IN MEXICO'S BAJA BIG SUR.

- MARY GRAUERHOLZ

Jasmine Scalesciani-Hawken was lingering on a beach in Baja California Sur, Mexico, basking in the serenity of the ocean before her. Her husband, the environmentalist Paul Hawken, was at a local conference, and Scalesciani-Hawken had a little solitary time.

Suddenly, she was enveloped in a wistful childhood memory of Sardinia.

"It was very wild and beautiful," she says of the Italian island. As a child of Europeans, she foraged the untamed landscape of Sardinia as her playground and natural teacher. Adding to the enchantment was her family's elegant Sardinia home, perched on a rocky cliffside and designed by the now-renowned architect Alberto Ponis, a friend of her parents, to blend seamlessly with nature. In life's rearview mirror, it strikes Scalesciani-Hawken today that her childhood experiences were the foundation of wellness and, eventually, her lifelong career as a wellness coach.

After 25 years as a wellness-industry expert, including stints as a creative director, Scalesciani-Hawken has landed on her life's ultimate work: the design and operation of Nua Nakui ("to nurture the well"), a wellness residence, or center, in El Pescadero, a small farming village in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.

Nua Nakui, as pristine in architecture as it is in practice, is a small center devoted to Ayurvedic retreats. Clients from around the world partake in natural body treatments and, when desired, private fasting.

Two gleaming white buildings, separated by a swimming pool, form the property's center.