The Team

Practitioners,not personalities

No gurus, no influencers. Physicians who publish, coaches who still train, and teachers with lineages older than the wellness industry.

Six practice leadsPhysician oversightContinuing care

Longevity medicine

Dr. Elena Vásquez

Medical Director

Dr. Vásquez trained in internal medicine at Barcelona and completed a fellowship in preventive cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic before spending six years building one of Europe's first longevity practices. She joined SOMA to do the same work outside the clinic — where habits are actually formed.

She leads the Longevity Protocol in Nicoya and personally reviews every guest's diagnostic panel. Her clinical interest is the compression of morbidity: not adding years, but keeping the good ones good.

“The best medicine looks like a life you'd choose anyway.”

MD, Universitat de Barcelona
Preventive Cardiology Fellowship, Cleveland Clinic
Board certified, lifestyle medicine

Strength & movement

Mika Tanaka

Head of Movement

Mika spent a decade as a strength and conditioning coach for Olympic swimmers and alpinists before concluding that the athletes least in need of help were getting all of it. At SOMA he coaches executives, founders and parents — bodies that sit too much and carry too little.

His method is scaled, patient and outdoors wherever possible. He designs the movement architecture across every SOMA retreat and personally leads Blue Horizon on Milos.

“Strength is the vessel. Whatever you want from life, you carry it in that.”

MSc Exercise Physiology, Waseda University
Former S&C coach, Japanese national swimming
Certified mountain guide, JMGA

Metabolic nutrition

Amara Osei

Head of Nutrition

Amara is a registered dietitian who left a London metabolic clinic after too many appointments spent undoing internet advice. Her work at SOMA is deliberately unheroic: protein, plants, meals eaten sitting down, and the patience to let a palate reset.

She built the kitchens' nutritional architecture at every SOMA property and runs the CGM program that turns each guest's glucose data into something they can act on for life.

“Nobody was ever nourished by a rule they resented.”

RD, King's College London
MSc Clinical Nutrition
Continuous glucose monitoring researcher, 400+ guest datasets

Breathwork & cold exposure

Jonas Keller

Breath & Cold Lead

Jonas came to breathwork the honest way: as a burned-out commodities trader whose physician suggested it as a last resort before medication. Ten years, several thousand hours of teaching and one Engadin relocation later, he leads all breath and cold protocols across SOMA.

He is known for teaching deliberate cold without machismo — his lake immersions are quiet, precise and strangely calm. He leads Alpine Clarity and the silence work in the Agafay.

“The breath is the only lever on the dashboard you can always reach.”

Advanced Oxygen Advantage instructor
Certified Wim Hof Method instructor
2,000+ supervised cold immersions

Bodywork & contemplative practice

Leïla Haddad

Head of Spa & Stillness

Leïla grew up between Marrakech and Geneva, apprenticed in her grandmother's hammam, and later spent four years in silent training at a Zen monastery in the Japanese Alps. That combination — the hammam's warmth and the zendo's precision — is the signature of every SOMA spa.

She designed the treatment menu across all properties, trains every therapist personally, and leads the Desert Stillness silence retreat. Guests describe her presence as the treatment before the treatment.

“Hands can say 'you are safe now' faster than any words.”

Traditional hammam lineage, Marrakech
Four years' residential Zen training, Nagano
Founder, SOMA therapist academy

Sleep medicine

Dr. Samuel Ortiz

Sleep Physician

Dr. Ortiz ran a university sleep laboratory for eleven years before concluding that the lab was the wrong room: nobody sleeps normally wired to machines on a Tuesday. At SOMA he studies sleep where it actually improves — dark villas, quiet cliffs, disciplined light.

He designed the sleep architecture of every SOMA property, from the 19°C sleep pavilions of Uluwatu to the star-roofed desert beds of the Agafay, and leads The Reset in Bali.

“Sleep is not a skill you learn. It's a permission your day either grants or refuses.”

MD PhD, sleep medicine, Universidad de Madrid
11 years directing a clinical sleep laboratory
Author of 40+ peer-reviewed sleep studies

Work with them

Every retreat is their classroom.

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