From the outside, Circle Wellness does not look like a spa. It looks like the sort of large black structure you might hesitate to enter without first texting someone your coordinates. I arrived at its Vancouver, B.C., location on an unusually warm June afternoon and found no windows, almost no signage, and one massive steel door. I typed in my booking code and pulled it open. On the other side, a wood-plank path zigzagged through sparse greenery while water trickled nearby. At the end, a host directed me to a short orientation video explaining how to move through the circuit. She was a real person, worth noting, because almost everything that happened next would be self-guided. For the next two hours, a calm, automated voice would tell me when to soak, sweat, plunge into cold water, and lie on heated rocks.
I do not always retain instructions, which is a real hardship considering my career. I tend to nod, demonstrate active listening skills, then walk away thinking, Wait, what was just said? So I felt an unreasonable amount of relief when I found a laminated, step-by-step guide in the bathroom of my private wellness circuit. Circle had anticipated my kind of person.
The Vancouver-born company will open its first U.S. location Sept. 1 in Seattle at 1326 N Northlake Way, with reservations opening July 30. Sessions last 90 minutes or two hours for one or two people. Each booking comes with a private, mostly open-air 380-square-foot circuit (roughly the size of a boxcar), with a soaking tub, cold plunge, shower, hydration station, heated riverstones, and Circle’s sauna, called the WellPod. Bathing suits are optional. After the host showed me around and left, I did not see or hear another person. There was only a soundscape of ambient music and carefully timed cues, open sky, and the occasional seagull overhead. It was as though the entire city had receded.
Circle Wellness’ private circuits are designed for up to two guests and open to the sky, with a bathroom, soaking tub, cold plunge, open-air rain shower, WellPod sauna, heated riverstones, and living plant walls.
Photo courtesy of Circle Wellness
I started under the open-air rain shower, exfoliating with Circle’s charcoal-fiber cloth and Himalayan salt cleanser, which had a rich, earthy scent. Then I climbed into the cedar soaking tub, filled to the lip so warm water rolled over the sides when I got in. I could float with my face turned toward the sky while taffy-like clouds pulled across the blue, and ambient music drifted beneath the sound of water. I had taken the train north, crossed the border, caught an Uber to the spa, and followed instructions through an unmarked black door. Now all of that was draining out of me.
Founder and chief creative officer Paul Hennessey began thinking about thermal spaces long before the Granville Island flagship opened in 2023. He spent more than 20 years, off and on, working as a swimming pool technician and noticed how often backyard saunas and hot tubs went unused. “I was motivated to make something that inspired people to use it often and not become a storage room,” Hennessey says. Growing up in the Toronto area, he also visited Korean jjimjilbangs, where people gather in open sauna rooms and rest on benchless heated floors. Circle began around 2011 as a design-and-build company, with the WellPod at its center. In 2018, the team opened its outdoor prototype as an Airbnb Experience, giving people a chance to book a session rather than install an entire spa at home. Before the Vancouver spot opened, Circle had accumulated a 20,000-person waitlist. Early sessions were mixed live, with someone controlling the sound and visual elements as guests moved through the circuit. Over time, that became automated.
Just weeks earlier, I had been in Iceland, where I fell for the country’s public bathing culture. Circle offered the opposite, a self-contained space closed off from everyone else. I wondered whether the privacy might feel lonely. Instead, it felt freeing, and I found myself fully sinking into the experience. “When nobody is trying to make small talk with you, or interrupt your experience in any way, it can enable a natural meditative state, allowing for deeper connection to self,” Hennessey says.
Inspired by Korean jjimjilbangs, the WellPod sauna has no benches, leaving room to stretch out beneath walls lined with glowing pink Himalayan salt blocks.
Photo courtesy of Circle Wellness
Twenty minutes later, the first cue sent me into the WellPod, kept at about 122 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature designed for longer stays. There are no benches telling you where or how to sit, so I spread towels across the floor and sprawled out. Pink Himalayan salt blocks glowed along the walls as the light receded from the ceiling, row by row, until the room went completely black (one detail from the orientation video I had remembered). That was my cue for the cold plunge, and by then, I was sweaty enough to be ready for it.
I stepped in, took a breath, and went under. I surfaced shivering but invigorated, then moved to a bed of smooth, heated riverstones. Their mineral smell sent me back to childhood summers at the Yuba River, where I swam in cold green water, then stretched out on sunbaked rocks. I lay on my stomach, then my back, feeling the warmth beneath me while a slight breeze cooled my face and shoulders until I completely lost track of time. At the hydration station, I brewed tea and watched butterfly pea flowers turn the water a startling blue. I drank an astonishing amount of water, then returned to the stones and arranged myself across them like a very hydrated lizard.
Guests can lie on smooth, heated riverstones, designed as an open-air reflexology experience.
Photo courtesy of Circle Wellness
Circle considered several cities before choosing Seattle. The Northlake site sits along the Burke-Gilman Trail near Gas Works Park, where cyclists and joggers pass houseboats, workshops, and Lake Union. “Seattle’s culture of wellness, nature and innovation made it the perfect place for our next chapter,” says co-founder and CEO Scott Emslie. The Seattle circuits will follow the same private format, with living plant walls inspired by Pacific Northwest forests and a custom soundscape guiding guests through the sequence. The tubs will be drained, cleaned, and refilled after every booking, and Hennessey says improvements to the building envelope will make the facility more efficient and resilient in the Pacific Northwest climate.
Although I had gone alone in Vancouver, I found myself thinking about returning with my husband. “Many couples tell us they can’t remember the last time they were able to disconnect from the outside world and genuinely connect with each other without phones, distractions, or competing demands on their attention,” Emslie says. The thought of doing the circuit during a cold Seattle rainstorm is almost enough to make me wish for November.
As my session wound down, the voice let me know 20 minutes remained, then 10, then five. I took another dip in the soaking tub, showered, dressed, and left the circuit. I said goodbye to the host, pulled open the steel door, and stepped outside. Everything looked shockingly bright, like Technicolor. The speckled gray sidewalk, yellow hotel across the street, and people moving around me seemed newly vivid. The smells were stronger and the sounds sharper. I was calm, awake, and happy to be back in the mess of the world. More importantly, I was not wondering whether I had relaxed enough. It turned out I just needed someone else to keep time.
Circle Wellness Seattle is located at 1326 N Northlake Way. Book a session here.